There's no big deal like today none of that nonsense. I'm a fixie rider. He had a bike and he had fixed wheel and that was it
It's off the hook, it's off the hook, with no time to run
It's off the hook, it's off the hook, she don't want me out of mind
It's off the hook, it's off the hook, well I guess I'm out of my sniff to run
It's off the hook, it's off the hook, well I guess I'm out of my sniff to run
It's off the hook, it's off the hook, well I guess I'm out of my sniff to run
Very much control of a bike when you're on a single foot. You're very much part of the bike. It's hard for a moment for a week.
I started by about 52, 53. I want to go out with a club. 90% majority on single foot.
Oh in those days, in the very early days, you fixed wheel. Your gear was not very high gear, so you could get up pedals and just twiddle down to the side.
It's the speed of twiddling. Legs used to be a blur, but there's a technique in holding the feet down on the pedals and holding the bike.
But everyone developed that, so they always went out of control. And that was it, and some could do it better than others.
I recognise all the control around me.
I toured Southern Ireland on a single fix. I couldn't afford gears at that time.
In the mid 50s, there's still very much austerity with crawling out of them, so you used to go fortnight touring with your saddle bike on the back of the bike.
And there was absolutely no traffic until the 50s. Traffic was very, very many months of sailing.
When you get 30 hours on the club load, you get big clubs meeting each other, and everybody knew Sunday and the other club.
And you miss another cyclist, and you're automatically blood blurs, because you both rode bikes.
No problem.
I'm not a cyclist by the light of the moon, but I'm cool. Baby, don't do it.
It wasn't just your whole life, you went to work on your bike, so it was your mode of transport, no car.
Then you rode your bike on a Sunday with the club, it was a social day, therefore that led into social evenings with the club.
Then you used your bike for fortnight's holiday touring. Everything was round that bike. I've been to social dances and parked the bike in the cloakroom with dozens and dozens of other bikes, club events,
dozens of other bikes, ridniting as soon. That's what was done.
It was a social day. You didn't have much option. You had walks, pedaled, and caught a bus.
Well, I mean, the world of people with cars don't get me wrong about that, but the likes of us lads, the bunch of old people, we were working class people.
We don't only, not only didn't have cars, we didn't know anybody about that. That's the difference. It's not just that we didn't have cars in our family.
We didn't know anybody who had cars. If somebody had access to a car, they'd say they might be a doctor, or they might be a delivery man.
And then those days, if you were a delivery man, a small man, you didn't bring it home. It was taken to a garage for where you went for.
GPO fans used to see out every night and get went by to garages. So the evenings as well, traffic completely disappeared up the road in the evening.
Right from the club room, you'd be coming through back into Manchester and the outlying countryside.
And there were people queuing up to the cinema on a Sunday, on a lovely Sunday sun as evening.
And that seemed alien to us. We couldn't have done that.
You should ride back. Because in those days, cinema was big. I mean, there was one in every corner. So everyone went to the cinema.
Of course, we'd be riding past these long queues waiting for the place to open or the second house to start, or whatever.
But the rest of the world was just continuing outside of our activities.
We did not have any interest in what was happening out there. It was bike, bike, bike.
Today's star seems to be, you have a life and you ride a bike to sports.
It wasn't like that. It wasn't like that. The bike was everything.
You did judge another cyclist while he was serious, by his bike and the gear that he had.
You judge them whether it was serious.
But remember, in those days, you couldn't buy lycra.
It wouldn't exist.
There was no such thing as lycra. It was cord shorts or gabardine shorts.
And two clips.
None of the innovations that you've got for clipping to a pedal now.
What we used to do, we used to buy a frame.
And then you bought the various equipment that you thought was good or you could afford.
The wheels, the separate handlebars, the brakes, the gears, the whole individual to your taste.
And you put it on that frame.
So your bike was unique. So every clip cyclist's bike tended to be unique except one or two,
that had bought mass production for rallies in the doors.
We don't know whether it's our age group because we'll talk about this Fred and Bill and Ray and Anna.
Modern track bikes, they look business-like and workman-like, but they look clumpy.
They look heavy.
They're not heavy, but they look at the size of the tubing.
And ours look like racehorses.
You know, racehorses.
It's the racehorses of a shire horse in appearance to me.
And that's what you're looking at.
You're looking at the foot of the bike and you look at the other side of the frame.
Standing around acting like you got wires or blood and anybody else, but you ain't.
Because I'm the one that has it, not you.
