I used to cycle a lot when I was growing up. However, between the ages of 18 and 31 this pretty much stopped. Mainly due to a lack of a bike (and not being bothered to buy one). Then, 6 years ago, I bought one. And it’s pretty much sat in my shed ever since.

This was due to 2 things..

1. The most god-awful saddle ever going. It feels comfortable to the touch but is, in reality, an ancient torture device.
2. The tyres never stayed up. I assumed I had a puncture. However, a few weeks ago I took the tyre apart (never done that before) and tested the inner tube – nope, definately no punctures. I then bothered to read the PSI rating on the tyre and buy myself a tyre pressure guage. That found the answer. I didn’t even have a quarter of the air required in it, even after much pumping and the tyre feeling quite hard. In the end I splashed out on a professional pump which had the tyres up the the correct PSI within a minute. And the tyres have been fine since.

My daughter got a bike for her birthday, so now we all have one and I’ve been left with no excuses not to use it. I bought my wife one a few years ago and what both hers and my daughters have in common is the fact that I went and bought it from a “proper” bike shop – already assembled, tested and serviced. Mine was a flat-pack effort bought from a large chain of toy retailers. I put it together myself from the “translated to English” instructions which were blatantly designed to get the bike put together but nothing else. Hence, nothing has been quite right since I first assembled it.

So, we all went out for a ride yesterday and it was great fun. Now all I have to do is find a decent saddle…