(continued from vol.2)
KENSINGTON GARDENS (HIGH ST. KENSINGTON)

(Left) A-bike’s tiny figure is difficult to photograph…
(Right) …but the tininess is its biggest strength.

I and my sis rode for about an hour, then exit the park in search of our lunch around Kensington Road area. A French cafe on Thackeray Street served us right (see pic).

On the way back to Kensington Gardens for some more cycling, we were rolling A-bikes to pass a restaurant on a small ally. It had to be the second time we went by them, a group of ladies at the outside seating of the restaurant caught us.

“Say, Could you tell me what that thing is?”
“What? bicycle? then how does it work? ‘cos you seem only rolling it.”

Oh, this was a good one. They didn’t think A-bike was actually a functional bicycle!!

We had a nice conversation with them. I showed how to fold/unfold A-bike and one of the ladies even tried riding on my sister’s A-bike! (see pic below.)

The lady’s impression of A-bike from the test-ride was “feels bumpy and not suitable for a long ride”. She wasn’t wrong, but I had to tell her I already rode more than 10 miles (16km) on that day with my modified A-bike. She certainly seemed to be surprised by the potential of Sinclair A-bike.

GREEN PARK

After a bit of cycling through Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park, we came out to Hyde Park Corner, then we decided to walk up Piccadilly towards Piccadilly Circus. Unexpectedly, somethng crazy was going on the route we chose. We had no idea, but we just saw a huge number of people gathering all along Piccadilly (this is a name of a big road)!!

When we got near Green Park Station, we finally figure out what all these crowd were waiting for — noisy cars.

It was Cannonball Run in London. Right, so it’s a street race. Can they really race in London’s traffic? nah… too many double-deckers blocking the way. forget it.

Having said that, it was really entertaining to see lots of heavily modified motorcars, and I know the public absolutely loved it, because it was only after the show’s over, people started asking about A-bike. haha

Photo oppotunity — the whole point of this cannonball run in London.

A-bike: “One day, I shall challenge you…”
Car: “Yeah right, whatever.”

I could only rode A-bike about 13miles or so on that day. I wanted to go more, but my A-bike experienced a hardware problem (*it’s my fault, not manufacturer’s), so I had to take a bus back to my flat… Thanks to traffic jam, it took much longer than A-bike!!

Ah, now I remember London actually has Summer.

(continued from vol.1)
HYDE PARK (MARBLE ARCH)

Many people were having nice time in Hyde Park and the whether was just nice for cycling there. This was the main objective of the day — not just for fun, but to take photographs for a Japanese online info-mag, which my sister contributes. This week’s article was 3-pages on “casual cycling in London feat. A-bike”. Yap. she’s another A-bike owner. hahaha

My sister bought her A-bike on the same day as me, but the day was the first time I actually saw hers. Her A-bike looked different from mine. It wasn’t because mine is modified. It was the way the rear brake cable was treated. (see pic below) Since when A-bike manufacturer started to built their bike in this way? Am I lucky to witness this mis-assembled A-bike or what? mmm… anyway my sis is happy with it, so never mind.

(right) A guy interestingly mistook our A-bikes as one bike, which takes two people at a time. This shot was taken in Kensington Gardens.

Folders in Hyde Park: The mature couple on Bromptons were very cool, and I was really happy to see Stridas for the first time in London!

To Be Continued…

Taking part in this A-bike Central blog encourages me to document my A-bike life, then I realised it’s very hard to summarize a day event of A-bike… so much happenings in one day!! Yeah, last Sunday was another long day for me and my A-bike.

Anyway, in the morning, I arranged a meeting with my sister at Speaker’s corner in Hyde Park. According to Journey planner at transport for London website, my flat to Speaker’s corner (Marble Arch) takes 40 mins by conventional bicycle. This means about an hour and 20 mins by A-bike.

Since I had to go through an unfamiliar route, I gave 2 hours for myself to get there.

In the end, it took only an hour (not too bad, eh?), so I detoured around London. The first stop was Big Ben and House of Common.

(Good news. From now on, some images can be enlarged by clicking them)

WESTMINSTER / BIG BEN


A bit of the eye, the cab, the clock and the bike — All the goodness of London in one picture. (Don’t mention the bus. It’s evil.) Oops. I kept my light on the handlebar.

I was sitting in the square island in front of Big Ben along with the famous squatters for couple of minutes to take the photo, and some motorists stopped by and asked me… you know what. A-bike seemed to be more eye-catching than Big Ben for some people there.

BUCKINGHAM PALACE

To be honest, I don’t visit this place really… unless ICA (Institute of Contemporary Arts) hosting some good shows. I have no idea whether having no car around the palace is usual on Sunday or not, but it was pretty relaxing to ride without a fear of traffic.

HYDE PARK CORNER (WELLINGTON ARCH) and
MARBLE ARCH (SPEAKER’S CORNER)

From the palace to Hyde Park via Wellington Arch was easy. I heard some passer-by giggling about my A-bike though.

Even I spent a lot of time riding slowly and wondering around, I was still early, so I let my A-bike (not myself) to listen to some speech there till my sister showed up.

To Be Continued….

A-bike : a son of Sir Clive Sinclair, born on July 12, 2006.
             his two legs are not foldable but telescoping.
             he always enjoys HEELYS.

Fast :  taking a relatively short time compared with passersby.

Frustration : a feeling after trying to pass any usual bicycle.

Heavy : exactly 85.1kg

Lake : a small one of rainwater on the road.

Mountain : a gentle slope near by A-biker’s house.

Ravine : a channel for carrying away rainwater,
             built between a pavement.

Roadblock : over 1 inch height of fence on the road.

Until a few days ago, the communal staircase of my shared house was filled up with a lot of bicycles — at least 4 of them.
There wasn’t any space left for another, so this became one of the reasons I chose A-bike.

Today, I see only one neglected vintage bike sitting there.

Where are other bikes gone?

A piece of paper on the wall answers to the question.

“Hi, someone helped themselves to my bike last night!!
Did anyone hear or see anything?!”

Sadly, it’s a common story in London — a stranger comes into a house and nick things — but this is still quite disturbing.
I hope the stolen bike and the thief to be found…

I’m just glad I have A-bike and it enables me to keep the bike in my tiny flat without any fuss.

Now the staircase has free parking space, but I guess I’ll stick to A-bike.

I was driving home tonight, and just after 6pm I heard Chris Evans on Radio 2 talking about the A-bike!

They were very complimentary about it (and Sir Clive Sinclair) and were running a competition to swap the A-bike with an item from a listener.

It was great to hear national exposure – you can hear more by visiting this link although the interface is a little difficult to use. They mention the “fold-up bike” right at the start of the show, but it is about an hour in that they talk about it more.

According to official Google data, the top 3 cities for A-Bike related searches are Osaka, Tokyo and London. The top 3 regions are Japan, Taiwan and UK. This does seem to match well with the membership of the A-Bike Central forum. I’m sure it also has something to do with the fact that the average modern Asian city is a far less pleasant place to drive a car than even us Europeans are used to The notoriously car loving Americans aren’t doing too badly in 6th place.

Here is the full top 10 list of regions:

1.     Japan
2.     Taiwan
3.     United Kingdom
4.     China
5.     Spain
6.     United States
7.     Finland
8.     Ukraine
9.     Norway
10.    South Africa