Bikes and trains: an unhappy marriage

Like many of my fellow commuters, I’m going I’m going to buy a bike and take it on the train to work each day.

I’ve no intention of riding it. I just intend to take that cumbersome monster about with me on trains, station platforms, and along narrow pavements to be just about as damn awkward as I possibly can – exactly how my fellow commuters treat me.

I can make a massive fuss trying to get my bike in and out of the bike rack on the train. I can wheel it along the platform with the handlebars bumping into all and sundry (even using them to whip a newspaper out of someone’s hands). I can bash people’s shins with my pedals and generally act like a mindless cretin on a two wheels.

Oh, and them I’m going to try and hog a double seat on the train using my cycle helmet and dayglo backpack to ‘reserve’ that seat next to me.

Don’t you just love ‘em?

I’m all for cutting carbon emissions and cycling (not that I’d ever dream of doing so on the UK’s roads now where an RTA is a mathematical certainty rather than an acceptable risk), but the more I see of this awkward marriage, the more I’m certain that bikes and trains just don’t mix.