The first Cycle

Whilst helping (or more accurately observing) friends fix a bike in clapham I was reminded of my first bicycle. Yellow, and about the size of a grown man's shins. It had two features of pure genius, dreamt up by an engineer obviously far ahead of his game. For a start, the pedals were attached to the wheels. Now this is all very well initially, as a turn of the pedal results in a turn of the wheel. However, the rather disarming predicament this leads to is that a turn of the wheels results in a turn of the pedal. In other words you better make sure you only travel as fast as you can pedal, because once that speed is exceeded your ankles are in mortal danger. Secondly, it only possessed a front brake, which is more than we can say for whatever possessed the designer. Surely this has been an age old problem of the brakage featurette. Back brake results in cool skidding, gentle slowing, and basic general honest-to-goodness safe riding. Front brake leads to loss of front teeth. Everyone knows brake with the front and over the handlebars you will go. So two features of rather astonishing impractability for a first bike. Couple that with the fact that I grew up on a hill, and it's a wonder I made it to five.