Author: Carlton Reid

22nd September 2022

The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast

EPISODE 306: Eco Adventure on Proposed Sail-powered Bike and Foot Ferry From Dover to Boulogne

SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles

HOST: Carlton Reid

GUESTS: Andrew Simons, Brandt Williamson, Robert Tickner, Tom Treasure, Caroline Tyndall, Wayne Godfrey

TOPIC: A pioneering wind-powered cross-channel ferry for cyclists and pedestrians from Dover to Boulogne operated by startup SailLink had a series of test runs earlier in September, and Carlton Reid was on the first crossing to northern France. SailLink plans to commission a bespoke craft for its 12-passenger service, but the demonstration crossings used a smaller vessel, the Mago Merlino, a 12-metre catamaran certified to carry six paying passengers and two bicycles.

LINKS:

SailLink

Tres Hombres

Guardian article

TRANSCRIPT

Carlton Reid 0:13
Welcome to Episode 306 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was published on Thursday 22nd of September 2022.

David Bernstein 0:23
The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Tern bicycles. The good people at Tern are committed to building bikes that are useful enough to ride every day, and dependable enough to carry the people you love. In other words, they make the kind of bikes that they want to ride. Tern has e bikes for every type of rider. Whether you’re commuting, taking your kids to school, or even caring another adult, visit www.tern bicycles.com. That’s t e r n bicycles.com to learn more.

Carlton Reid 1:06
That’s the unmistakable roar of a Merlin engine

of a Spitfire, and that was coming from Biggin Hill, taking people on £3000 jollies over the White Cliffs of Dover. And that’s exactly what I’m looking at right now. I’m looking at Dover castle. I’m looking at the White Cliffs of Dover. And I’m looking at some ferries.

And I’m going to be going on a ferry very shortly from Dover Marina.

But not P&O, not DFDS. I’m going on a new ferry company, SailLink

And SailLink is taking cyclists and pedestrians across the channel from here in Dover Marina to Bolougne, in France, but not using big old boats.

The roll on roll off motorcar ferries, this is only for cyclists and only for pedestrians. And it’s a sailboat ferry. So it’s going to be the eco way of getting across the channel. And I’m waiting in the marina here for Andrew, who is taking his boat out.

For a bit of a test. He’s going to come back into the marina, very shortly. I’m gonna be getting on and I’ll be putting my Tern S8i onto the ferry. I’m guessing other guests is going to be joining us. And we’re going to be going across to France.

Andrew Simons 2:56
This is

Toby the Skipper.

Okay, you can pull up your head and lines on the floor.

Toby Duerden 3:08
Yeah. Right. So wear life jackets the whole time we’ve gotten just behind you that

Andrew Simons 3:15
I am Andrew Benjamin Simons Stolz.

Carlton Reid 3:19
we’re in the we’re not quite in the middle. Where are we in?

Andrew Simons 3:21
We’re not in the middle of the channel about where we are just coming in to the southwest bound shipping lane of the traffic separation scheme of the Dover streets.

Carlton Reid 3:35
Is that a dangerous place for us to be

Andrew Simons 3:38
Potentially, but there are very clear clear rules and for what we’re doing, and we all have a lot of equipment on board to avoid collisions. So there’s a lot going on. I don’t disagree. This is a really intense area if you look on a website like marine traffic and then focus in on the Dover Strait, all you will see is dots of ships. But that is not those those those markers on the website and not in real size, but it makes it look like there’s no way through it. But you can look around here. There’s lots of space, there are ships coming at us. But we can avoid those quite happily what we’re doing is perfectly permissible.

And we’ve followed the rules for doing what we’re doing. And there is plenty of space for this.

Carlton Reid 4:28
Toby has knocked the engine off now it’s the engine was ticking over to charge charge the engine basically

Andrew Simons 4:34
That was to charge the batteries we had some issue earlier. Yeah, that somehow for some reason the batteries not the engine battery, but the battery we have for things on board had drained quite a lot. So we were just charging up again. But now we have a hydro generator running in the water behind us because

Carlton Reid 4:51
you’ve got solar power,

Andrew Simons 4:52
we’ve got solar and now because we’re going along at a good speed there’s a good wind, we can drop this hydro generator in the water behind

us it’s not going to impact on our speed at all. And it’s going to charge the batteries using all using the wind.

Carlton Reid 5:06
And the wind is powering the sail.

Andrew Simons 5:08
Exactly. So we have a, we have an engine now above us in the form of the sails. And we have a fuel in the form of the wind that is blowing onto those. And it’s, it’s readily available for us and for the next person to use.

Carlton Reid 5:24
So Brandt there is walking. Yes. From here. Yeah, I’m cycling to and from here. So we’re green, the power that you’re generating from the solar and from the, from the hydro generator

And obviously the sails

Andrew Simons 5:41
Yes. Also, yeah.

Carlton Reid 5:42
Is that basically your schtick? You are taking people across who are pedestrians and cyclists using a green method. Is that is that that is at your sales pitch?

Andrew Simons 5:54
It isn’t actually no, it isn’t because we have to be careful of economies of scale. And if we would really do the calculation, you know, you’ve heard as we’ve on this vessel, we have one diesel engine and one electric engine, but the diesel one is more powerful. We use that to get in and out of the entrances to the to the ports where there’s tide running and things. So, you know, if we would boil it down and look at the co2, for example, or greenhouse gas emissions per passenger kilometre, we’re demanding, depending on how you’re doing, we might not be any better than a ferry. But it all depends how you make that calculation. And actually, I’ve worked in that field. So I know how complex and often misleading those calculations can be. So and the other reason I don’t sell it primarily on that basis is because we all have to go in the direction of being environmentally friendly, and reducing our impacts, also the big ferries. So if I, if that is my sales pitch in a few years, I hope I will lose my sales pitch, if that is it.

So I have to have other ones to keep my business unique and to keep that competitive advantage. And I believe that that that sales pitch is based on the experience,

but also provide in

connection with not only with the culturally with the places we’re going to and from, but also with the ocean we crossing we have in a completely different experience of the ocean, of the winds, you’ve already learned, I think just in this short time, an incredible amount about how a boat works and what we need to look out for. And what we’re using in order to get across. You’ve heard about tides, about winds, we’re using those natural prevailing conditions to get ourselves across. Yes, we have to use a little bit of fuel. But in the future, we’re also going to reduce that hopefully down to purely electric and be able to charge some of that onboard or recharge overnight at the the pontoon. And hopefully their sources of electricity are also going to be quite green.

Carlton Reid 8:14
So, how many people can you fit on here because this is not going to be the eventual boat?

Andrew Simons 8:18
This is yeah, this is this is

an interim boat. Yeah, this is purely for the pilot phase. And also I’ve used this boat in the past in the last couple of years with its skipper-owner, to explore the possibilities here and to to do the crossings and to yeah, really just run the feasibility on it.

Carlton Reid 8:41
Feasibility of it with the next boat is how many passengers?

Andrew Simons 8:46
12, 12 People 12 passengers is a reg is an international maritime limit. Which means we’re actually if we stay with a maximum of 12 We’re not actually a passenger vessel, we’re not classed as a passenger vessel. And that means that we can use in theory any port we like we don’t need to go to a big ferry terminal in order to put our passengers through the passenger cross border procedures with a limit of 12 of course you are still a passenger on board. But we are permitted then to use a marina a harbour. And with good collaboration the border authorities, the agents come to us

or if it’s not possible we send out and they need. For example if a UK passenger is going to France now they must get stamped into France. And if the border authorities don’t come to meet us in France, then the passenger needs to go to

Calais to the port authorities and get their passport stamped in your case. You’re doing a very quick turnaround. It doesn’t matter it’s

it’s quite fine for us to arrive or a person to drive on

on this boat

on late in the evening, like we’re doing today and say, I’m going to go tomorrow, that’s alright. You don’t need to get your Passport, passport some immediately as you step off the boat. It’s just not practical. And they are very, they’re very pragmatic about it. But you do need to pretty much go straight there as soon as you can.

Carlton Reid 10:19
Now this this, this crossing isn’t the choppiest in the world.

But it still to me chopp to me compared to when I’m on one of those big boats.

Andrew Simons 10:28
Okay, yeah. Yeah, there’s some movement.

Carlton Reid 10:31
And that’s giving me a fresh appreciation of these these refugees in their tiny inflatables who are getting even worse bobbed

around the sea than than we are. So

what? How are you viewed by both border authorities? And secondly,

if you see

them coming across, did they come this way? What do you have to do?

Andrew Simons 10:59
Okay. Yeah. So to the first question, I had exactly the same sort of

anxiety about posing this concept, this very concept to the border agents thinking, they were just telling me, please, we have enough on our plates don’t come with this kind of thing. But I absolutely got completely the contrary, they greeted me with

welcome and enthusiasm for what I’m doing. And because I really, I spent the time of COVID really following up

on the regulations and making those connections and finding out how can we design this according to, to stay within the regulations we need. If we’re to operate the ferry day in day out, we have no other option but to work within those boundaries. And it’s only going to make our lives more easier if we, if we really cooperate, and if we can get them on our side and they cooperate with us. So I put a lot of effort into that before I really went to the public on this.

So actually, yes, you say, I actually, I did get a very warm welcome. And we’ve had a lot of exchanges and we found a way to do it. We’ve had them on the boat for discussion. I’ve been to the port to Police aux Frontiers offices in Calais now at least twice, to discuss with them. And they’re very, all very pragmatic and obliging.

And then to the to the, to the migrant issue, it is a very, very, very sad situation. It’s a very

personally, I feel a very, very sad reflection on on the UK

using its castle,

not only its castle status, but that castle.

fact that it is surrounded by this moat of the English Channel and they require

by not having an asylum procedure on the French coast, they they make these people have to cross the channel in order to claim asylum on French or English shores. But yes, they do not know what they’re getting themselves into, really, they launching themselves out into the channel into conditions that I really doubt they understand fully tides with the currents, the weather, the distance, where they’re going, how are they going to get there?

And yeah, the Dover straits is not a friendly place for the wheel now is this this is absolutely yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. But that now they’re apparently they’re departing from quite a long stretch along the French coast are no longer focused on Calais

So that could be going southwest, passable on it could be going east, east, past to Dunkirk, you know, so, and then with the tides taken them back and forth, they could be they can find themselves anywhere within quite a large area and thereby a long way from shore if they’re not really on that Calais to Dover stretch, they can be a long way from shore.

Carlton Reid 14:18
And then what do you have to do if you spot them?

Andrew Simons 14:20
We are under obligation every ship passing the Dover straits operating in the Dover straits is under obligation to report to Dover Coast Guard, or to Cap Gris Nez on the French side, sightings of small boats.

There’s a little bit of

interpretation there because you know, anybody is allowed to be out at sea. And just because you say to small boat doesn’t mean you have to get reported. I mean, people do go around the world and all sorts of tiny things, but they don’t need to be reported as doing something wrong, you know. So these people are putting themselves out to sea in. What they are doing is something

are unsafe for themselves.

And so anyway, the first thing is, are they in danger.

So we spot one a little way off, we have the obligation to report it,

we might see people on it, we might not see people, any people on it depends how far away we are from it. And it can also be the case that the people have already been collected by the border agents, and the boat has actually been left in the water.

And I’ve had that now a couple of times that we’ve gone to investigate, and there’s been nobody on board, it’s just a drifting boat, no sign of anybody, they’ve probably been picked up. And actually, then if they if that is the case, then the border agents, mark the vessel, the votes were the number and

and that’s it, if there are people on board, then we have to think of our own safety first, were also quite a small vessel. And depending on how many they are, they can endanger our boat, if we somehow go to their rescue, and

we, you know, we can’t take an unlimited number of people on board, and that would endanger our own seaworthiness.

So we have to assess the situation, if there are people in the water, that’s a different issue, then, you know, everybody is obliged, under maritime law to go to the aid of people in distress. And that’s just what we have to do, regardless of who they are.

But we do have to be careful of our own safety, if there’s 50 people on board, we just cannot take all those people in the water, we can’t take them all on board. So but the you know, we’re in a very small, relatively small area of water. So if we report it, the the Coast Guard’s are going to be here, probably even almost just as quick as if we go to them. So we would stand by and make sure nobody is really suffering, and wait for them to arrive. And then we carry on. Okay.

And just to add to that, I don’t want to also in this whole SailLink thing I don’t want to,

I don’t want to make too much of it is it is a sorry, situation. And I would like to help their plight wherever I can

legally within what we’re permitted to do and

within the tolerance of the ports and the authorities that we’re working with. But

I also don’t want to make some sort of migrant safari out of this sailing issue that people come on board and are thinking they’re going to see migrants and have a look at it. It’s a big thing in the news. And

you know, we hear is reporting to hundreds of people arriving every day on attempting the crossing. What we don’t know is how many do set off?

Carlton Reid 17:45
And how long does it take you to get across with passengers? How long is this trip going to take?

Andrew Simons 17:52
Yeah, well, it depends on the winds today, we have good winds, we set off a little late for the title window that we have, but we should be fine. Now. We can always adjust our course to suit that.

So I think yeah, today we’re easily going to manage that five hour crossing

always takes a little time to leave the ports and to get into the other end. So between harbours Yeah, I think we have a for our Crossing, it’s at maximum, it’s going to be a nice, really nice crossing today. This is, as we’ve said, this boat that we’re using, now it’s a good boat, it’s commercially coated. On paper, it’s ideal, it’s all legal. For doing this in the future we need we need a bit of a faster boat, this has got a accommodation, you know, quite nice accommodation on board, all the facilities, we don’t need that.

We need a larger boat to get 12 people on and potentially their bikes, and to go faster.

A longer boat means going faster.

Carlton Reid 18:54
And then I mean those those big boats over there, they’re year round, you’re gonna be nowhere I can imagine at the moment doing something like from April to October, so Easter to sometime in the autumn.

Andrew Simons 19:09
Because, yeah, in winter, it’s when the big storms arrive. I don’t think many people are going to be wanting to come, we’re going to be setting off in dark in the darkness arriving in darkness.

It’s going to be a bit miserable, the boat will take a lot of beating. You know, it’ll take a lot of wear and tear in the winter. And I don’t think we’ll get much return for that and we need a time off. It’s going to be for the crew quite a demanding job. I hope it’s going to be really really rewarding and good job. But they need a time off in the winter. We need time to just get the boat back in shape for the next season. Make any improvements so no

additions, changes, all that sort of thing.

Carlton Reid 19:52
And how much is it gonna cost?

Andrew Simons 19:55
I don’t know. The moment we’ve got the prices that we’ve published.

And that’s simply based on

me putting that into my calculations, and together with sort of ideas on average passenger numbers and the number of days that we will be sailing, which are based on historical weather data.

But that can all be improved, with a better boat to have a better boat that can handle the conditions that meet, that we can go out in stronger conditions, but the cost the passengers remain comfortable and confident, then we can continue sailing longer, we’ll have clear cut off conditions where we simply say we can’t go out in that. But you know, with modern

today’s weather forecasting, we know about that at least two days in advance, so we can give our passengers prior warning and, and then the contingency plan is, if it’s still not too severe, then they can go on the normal ferry.

Or they can choose to alter the

travel and travel with us another time or they this is the thing I think with people travelling by bikes, and like brand is doing is pilgrimage. I think if people are already on this, they’re already out for some adventure, they have some flexibility with their bikes, I hope we can accommodate we can both work together to to, to build in this flexibility if needed,

without too much

discomfort to people’s plans.

So I think, you know, this sailing isn’t for everybody. I understand that fully. We don’t want everybody we have 12 places.

And but the people I think the people who will be appealing to

may be willing to also accept a little bit of flexibility. You’ve had to wait a little while on the quay till we got there today.

Yeah, but I think I think at the moment, that sort of special nature of the type of travel that it is, is, is okay. Yeah, we’re using natural conditions working with that. And I think I hope the passengers can accept that and tolerate that as well. And it’s also something novel for them, you know, not just to leave, according to a time a timetable

made according to I don’t know what, what, but we have our timetable is designed according to the tides, and that we can plan a year in advance, you know, the tides we know already next year, I don’t know if maybe we’re all

somewhere they’re known already many years in advance, but

so we can plan a year’s schedule. And then if we need to, we vary that a couple of days in advance. At the beginning or for the last year, let’s say we were thinking maybe we need to use have some different ports in mind. For example, on the French side, we have Calais, of course,

on the UK side we there’s not many honestly the either side of of Dover without going up to Ramsgate. There’s rye, which is not very usable for us. But maybe that could be our flexibility that we say okay, the winds are not very good that day, we’re gonna go to rye or we’re gonna go to Cali.

But I think now, it seems to be that by playing with the tides, we can actually

alter our course within this within the same overall course of trying to go between Milan and Dover for example that don’t belong we can we can alter our course

and tack and sail

and use the tides and the winds to still maintain that without I think that there’s more discomfort caused by a complete alteration the same we’re leaving from a different town or we’re going to a different town.

I want to try to avoid that if possible.

Carlton Reid 23:56
What’s your background? Andrew? Where do you come from? Why Why have you done this?

Andrew Simons 24:00
Yeah, well, this is sailing is the answer to my own.

Preferences to travel. I grew up in Yorkshire.

But for the last

quite a few years, I’ve lived in Switzerland.

Now I have a lovely family and home in Switzerland. So for several years now I’ve been travelling between Switzerland and the UK. And obviously, in the early years, I used the plane and I stopped doing that and use the Eurostar

done the ferries. My background is that I was I started off as a wooden boat builder,

working in various places, also went to Switzerland doing boat building actually, funnily enough with the opportunity to work in Bern in this capital city. I’d always worked on the peripheries of the coast. So that was quite an opportunity and then stayed in Switzerland and then I

Yeah,

I went retrained, studied environmental science and worked in the field of lifecycle assessment of transport and energy systems.

And so I guess what I’ve done is to combine all those sorts of things and the awareness through lifecycle assessment, and environmental impacts, human health impacts, all that sort of thing. And my own needs to get back and forth.

What I’ve also done in the last few years, is to revive my boatbuilding.

And to use that to help

cargo sailing

enterprises, there’s now been a resurgence that say of transporting products across the oceans, using sailing vessels. And that’s mainly Fairtrade organic, you know, nicely produced products such as coffee, cacao and rum.

And then selling in the markets in Europe. And they these ships, particularly the Tres Hombres, run by fairtransport, that goes back to Holland every year, after it’s done, its circuits. And then it has a big refit, like a renovation every year. And I go and help with that, because that has a wooden, they have wooden planks on steel frames. So I go and we there’s always a lot of work being done there. Lots of planks being done. So I go from Switzerland to Holland,

put in a load new planks and then go home again. And that’s my involvement there. And I’ve had the opportunity to sail with them. But it’s also inspired me to think, well, if this can work for cargo, then what about passengers.

So I’ve brought all of that together, the living in Switzerland, the being from the UK, the travelling experiences, the lifecycle assessment, all of that. Also, of course, I love sailing. And it actually started in the idea site in 2019. I went with my teenage daughter, from Cherbourg, in France, to Poole in Dorset to do a little bit of the southwest coast path. And so we were out for exactly for that for that a little bit of adventure. And we were thinking well, I was wondering, well, maybe one of the sail cargo ships just happens to be passing and they can take us across. And of course, they weren’t at that time. So we had to go with the big ferry.

And we arrived in Cherbourg by train. And then we walked to the ferry terminal. And in doing that, we passed the harbour with the yachts and small boats in two minutes down the road from the train station. And then we continue to walk for another hour and a half to get to the ferry terminal. And of course, in that time, we thought, Well, why do we need to go out to the ferry terminal? Sure, we can go on one of these boats. And that sparked the whole thing. And I started looking into it. And the thing is, I was thinking then to start up some sort of platform whereby all these boats that align in all these harbours can get used to take people across. But as soon as you start getting into commercial

exchanges,

then you need commercial certification of the vessel. The skipper needs to be commercially certified, and 99% of the boats out there do not have that. So

unless you’re having some sort of other exchange

is not permissible.

So that’s led it down this part of a boat specifically for this purpose with a professional crew

and operating on a very tight for shedule.

Carlton Reid 28:50
Can I ask about your wife?

Andrew Simons 28:53
my wife? Yeah.

Carlton Reid 28:54
Because your wife does bicycle infrastructure.

Getting people on bikes basically. Yeah, in a town or city in Switzerland.

Andrew Simons 29:06
That’s right. My wife runs the

is she’s she’s the head of the planning department for foot and for pedestrian and bicycle

planning for the city of Bern in Switzerland.

We were also very keen cyclists; we cycle as everyday cyclists.

But she does that professionally. Yeah. And of course in sailing, she’s a absolutely vital part of

this whole thing. I can’t do it without her, you know, she goes off to work.

And I get the the the possibility to develop this business.

And then from a professional point of view, yeah, she she’s

already involved in that and

I

very much helps to encourage and inform

the whole cycle the whole side of it with passengers with bicycles, yep.

Sailing, we’ve talked about the experiences of the sea and, and this is also a real a really serious sailing experience you’re sailing across international waters

on the open sea on a very tidally titled stretch of water. And you only really get to do this if you have connections with people with boats or you’re part of a club, it’s quite an exclusive thing. And so sailing is really a key part of it is to offer that just by buying a ticket for I think not that much

and gain that opportunity.

Also for children for groups for in the future also for people with wheelchairs, we want to be able to get bikes on and off easily but also people and people in wheelchairs. So

you know really open it up to to whoever wants to come.

Carlton Reid 31:04
And we’re arriving into Bolougne, fantastic voyage across, with the orange Harvest Moon. But now I’m going to hand over to David for a short break.

David Bernstein 31:16
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Carlton Reid 35:51
Thanks, David. And we are back and I’m back on the boat the ferry across and we’re leaving Boulogne now. And we are going to be about four or five hours before we’re in Dover. But we have a new passengers on board who are going to go all the way across to the UK.

Brandt Williamson 36:12
I am Brandt Williamson from Virginia in the United States.

Small town called Delaplane.

hadn’t been overseas in quite some time and very, very excited about this experience. So it’s already been quite an experience.

Carlton Reid 36:29
And what do you do when you’re in America? What do you do for a living for a profession?

Brandt Williamson 36:32
I’m a physician. I’m an emergency room doc.

Carlton Reid 36:35
And then if you hadn’t gone across the channel in a sailboat because the sail has now gone up a massive sail above our heads.

If you weren’t taking a sailboat across the channel, how would you have got across?

Brandt Williamson 36:47
Well, actually, this whole trip, my whole trip has kind of evolved. Originally, I was going to take the Chunnel across and then I realised well like that’s not going to be the most efficient way to do this. If I’m going to be going down to Dover walking,

because I don’t think you can get on to the channel there need to go back track to where you came from. So then I was just looking at going on one of these massive ferries that takes people across. But when I found out this was available, that was not that was not even a consideration anymore.

Carlton Reid 37:22
So eco we’re not burning any fuel here to get across is that was that part of the consideration?

Brandt Williamson 37:30
I think it’s part of the consideration. It’s also just the adventure of it all. This is just more adventurous than jumping on a car ferry.

Robert Tickner 37:39
I am Robert Tickner.

Carlton Reid 37:41
And Robert, what are you doing today? Why are you going across the channel in this eco friendly way? Or have I just preempted the question?

Robert Tickner 37:50
You have to a certain extent, yes. It’s it’s kind of a bucket list item.

You know,

I’ve always been looking for an opportunity to sell across the channel. And then I saw this this come up. I thought okay, that’s quite interesting.

Carlton Reid 38:06
How do you say where do you say it actually came up?

Robert Tickner 38:09
In a different publication with the independent Simon Calder. He’s he mentioned it and said that this was going to start, and I follow him on a regular basis. And I thought, yeah, that sounds great. Let’s do that.

Carlton Reid 38:21
And you’ve never been on a boat as small as this before always, maybe not across such a channel as La Manche?

Robert Tickner 38:30
Yeah, exactly. I mean, I’ve been on even smaller boats than this, but sitting not on a seagoing basis. So yeah, this is a bit of a new experience.

Carlton Reid 38:39
And what do you do for a living? Your Brussels based?

Robert Tickner 38:42
Yeah, I’m Brussels based. Yeah, indeed. So actually, I’m the head of PR for Toyota in Europe. So the other aspects of this is the sustainability angle, which, which has, you know, to Earth is very interested in that kind of activity. So looking at what’s happening here, I think aligns well with what I do on a daily basis.

Carlton Reid 39:01
And this has got some electric onboard

power certainly out of the harbour. Is that an interest of yours with Toyota?

Robert Tickner 39:12
Yes, indeed, we have a hydrogen fuel cell technology which

is also used for electric power. And we do have some, some prototype electric boats using hydrogen fuel cells

working on a on a transatlantic Trans Pacific bases. So I think it’s definitely something of the future and allied with sail. I think it can be a real boon.

Carlton Reid 39:38
So you’ve come across

from Brussels on the train. I presume?

Robert Tickner 39:43
I drove from Brussels to Calais.

Carlton Reid 39:45
You work for Toyota, of course you’ll drive, what a silly question? Okay, so,

okay, yes, a bit. Yeah. And you’ve parked up and you’ve you’ve got to here. What are you doing across there in Dover?

Robert Tickner 39:58
So I’m back I’m gonna get off this

Uh, I’m going to hop for it to the ferry terminal and go straight back to how you’re doing the full the full treatment and excursion. Yeah, I need to get back in, in Brussels for tomorrow morning.

Carlton Reid 40:12
What time is that? What time do you have to get to Dover?

Robert Tickner 40:17
Well, the ferry’s due leave at 10 to seven.

As well as a passenger, I need to be there about an hour and a half beforehand,

Carlton Reid 40:25
you should be fine. So because you were tracking the journey when you enter in vesselfinder last night.

Robert Tickner 40:30
I tracked it yesterday. And it took me six hours to get across. But I think if it’s six hours today, or less than I should be fine. You don’t have to run too fast to get to the ferry termina. It’s the hour and a half I have to be there beforehand, which is problematic.

Carlton Reid 40:48
And not every ferry company that goes from Dover will would accept you as a pedestrian or if you had a bike. So you basically they’re favouring car passengers,

Robert Tickner 40:58
They are there at the moment, which is a bit of a shame. I mean,

Unknown Speaker 41:00
the P&O are doing this, they’re not doing it for all of their crossings, just just a few . But the one that I’m targeting is the last one. So if I don’t make it then it’s gonna be a B&B in Dover.

Tom Treasure 41:15
I’m Tom treasure.

Caroline Tyndall 41:17
I am Caroline Tyndall.

Carlton Reid 41:19
Okay, and welcome on board. Why, why are you doing today’s trip?

Caroline Tyndall 41:25
Well, I saw the information about SailLink in a local newspaper.

Carlton Reid 41:35
French, expats or French, fully French.

Okay.

Caroline Tyndall 41:42
And I said to Tom, that sounds really interesting. And I’ve always wanted to sail across the channel. And as Boulogne is just down the coast from where we live, it couldn’t have been more convenient. And so we looked at the website and managed to secure two places for sailing today, which we’re very grateful.

Very easy for us to live we just drove down to Boulogne and parked very near the port. And the plan is to stay tonight in Dover.

and then come back to Calais tomorrow on P&O ferry, which is now allowing passengers after a long time.

So it’s a bit of a round trip.

Very enjoyable.

Carlton Reid 42:37
Yeah, well you’ve got some good weather. I was lucky yesterday.

Caroline Tyndall 42:41
A couple of days ago that was

sa y in French “souffle tempête”

Carlton Reid 42:48
That means a storm? Okay.

Caroline Tyndall 42:52
So Tom is a retired doctor

a rofessor cardiac surgery and so he’s still writing

papers for

medical journals.

Carlton Reid 43:09
So obviously this trip is attracting doctors

Tom Treasure 43:13
Yes, well

sailors

a lot of doctors go sailing it’s a favourite thing you know you have a boat keep boats on the channel Coast if any of my friends had boats but they might sell two weeks a year you know, but very busy. Yeah, and the channel is often inhospitable for the fun sailor.

But today it’s

always slightly envious but never really wanted to commit to a boat myself anymore because it doesn’t have to pass so she did have their time

Carlton Reid 43:51
and money

Tom Treasure 44:01
shred them under a shower.

Carlton Reid 44:02
That’s so this is this is poor man’s version of that so you’re you’re you’re going on a boat, but you’re not actually owning the boat and people are having to keep it exactly. You’re fostering this this ferry?

Tom Treasure 44:15
Yeah, well, it’s a very nice idea because crossing the Channel simply without having to take a car every time.

It’s something we lost for a while. I could do it again.

Wayne Godfrey 44:28
I am Wayne Godfrey.

Carlton Reid 44:29
Why are you doing this?

Wayne Godfrey 44:31
Making making the most of my time on the planet. I sort of read it in a local newspaper

and thought what a fab thing to do, combined with the opportunity to ride my bike, simple pleasures.

Carlton Reid 44:45
Wayne, what do you do for a living?

Wayne Godfrey 44:47
I am a removals man, which I find very enjoyable. It’s very physic, physical, physically active, physical when you’re part of people’s journey.

make people happy to bring calm to a situation.

Carlton Reid 45:03
So Wayne tell me your journey what when did you start and what have you been doing?

Wayne Godfrey 45:08
Started Friday morning, got the 9.15 ferry across in, arrived in Calais just before lunch, pedalled my bike down to Boulogne. Just do a record of where the sailing was from on Sunday.

Spent a pleasant evening in Boulogne. And then headed out

Saturday morning down past le Touquet into Berck. Again, some fantastic beaches, some fantastic cyclin. I can recommend France to everyone. And yeah, had a nice evening. Not too much to do there. But again, it’s what you make it and then headed out this morning bright and early. Watched the sunrise which again, I’d recommend everyone done now and again to make the most of every day. And yeah, cycled consistently 40 kilometres from Birck to Boulogne. Yeah, French road drivers are very considerare. And I had a wonderful time I’ve been on bike paths even on roads we’ve been on all mix yet.

The even in France, they accommodate bikes very well along. Most routes have a bike path. Again, it’s a road cycling again, the roadss in France are much more cycle friendly than in Britain. And yeah, the weather has been absolutely phenomenal. But again, it’s what you make it

as long as you’ve got warm clothing on top you

can generally tolerate most weathers. And I haven’t not worn shorts for five years because my skin is waterproof.

Yeah, I got soaked when I headed out from Margate on 6.30 Friday morning, but once I was when I was wet and I wasn’t cold. So yeah.

It was a very pleasant cycle as well.

Carlton Reid 47:06
So is this the kind of journey you would do

frequently?

Wayne Godfrey 47:11
It’s just I would say this

journey again and again. And again. Because it’s therapeutic. It’s environmentally friendly.

To spend your time, I find it’s always good to take time out for yourself, and do what makes you happy if something doesn’t make you happy.

Carlton Reid 47:30
Now when we get to the other side, how far you got to ride, what are you doing?

Wayne Godfrey 47:39
From Dover to my house is three hours cycling and it’s quite hilly and it’s about pushing yourself but there’s also within and making it enjoyable as well. So I’ll shift cycle to the train station and to get home and

Carlton Reid 47:58
where’s that where’s home?

Wayne Godfrey 47:59
home is sunny Margate, which I’ve been here for about 10 years now. And I used to live in the inner city. And it’s something so therapeutic about seeing the sea every day. And just being peaceful really.

The older I get, the more I try and deliver myself places under my own steam. Because I don’t find for most people it’s about the destination whereas myself, it’s part of the journey and the destination. I go to the Lake District, by train and by bicycle and a few times to come off the mountain. And I think I would like my car but once I start pedalling I’m free and I love it.

Carlton Reid 48:46
Thanks to Andrew Simons and SailLink’s first passengers for talking to me on what was a wonderful crossing between Dover and Boulogne and back again. Thanks also to you for listening to Episode 306 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. Show notes and more can be found as always on the-spokesman.com. The next episode is a chat with Cat who is a local organiser of a Kiddical Mass ride. That show will be out in a day or two. But meanwhile, get out there and ride …

10th August 2022

The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast

EPISODE 304: In conversation with e-bike guru Ed Benjamin

SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles

HOST: Carlton Reid

GUEST: Ed Benjamin

TOPICS: The growth of electric bikes since the 1990s and their future, with e-bike guru Ed Benjamin.

TRANSCRIPT

Carlton Reid 0:12
Welcome to Episode 304 of The Spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was published on Wednesday 10th of August 2022..

David Bernstein 0:23
The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Tern bicycles. The good people at Tern are committed to building bikes that are useful enough to ride every day, and dependable enough to carry the people you love. In other words, they make the kind of bikes that they want to ride. Tern has e bikes for every type of rider. Whether you’re commuting, taking your kids to school, or even caring another adult, visit www.tern bicycles.com. That’s t e r n bicycles.com to learn more.

Carlton Reid 1:03
Hey there I’m Carlton Reid and on today’s show I’m glad to welcome back e-bike guru Ed Benjamin. Veteran e-bike guru Ed Benjamin, the go-to guy for e-bike growth stats and also the go-to guy for bike industry folks who want to figure out a complex sourcing challenge. And I said “welcome back” because Ed has been on the show before, but not since 2009 and I can’t link to that episode because it was recorded at the Interbike trade show in Las Vegas and was streamed live to a TV audience of … well, a TV audience. We talked for a little under an hour and you’ll soon hear why I call him a guru.

You were basically

telling the global bike industry, there was an E bike boom coming back in the days even of lead acid batteries. So 2025, perhaps even more years ago. So are we at that future? That you said back then we should expect? No, I think we are the My understanding is that

Ed Benjamin 2:22
No, I think we are. My understanding is that Europe, European European market is going to be about 5 million units this year. The American market is not far from a million units. I’m predicting it at 700,000 for this year, 880,000 for last year, but things are cooled off a little bit here. The Chinese market is more than 30 million. And

hey, we’re there. This is we are a significant and important part of the transportation mix for most of the world.

Carlton Reid 2:54
So you were saying that before? Well, people are saying you’re crazy. When you were saying that 25 years ago? Probably I was saying you were crazy as well, Ed. And I have known you for an awfully long time. And you were saying those things and people were going yeah, that’s not going to happen. And absolutely, as you’ve just said that it’s absolutely happened in China. First, it absolutely happened in Europe. I mean, America has been a slower burn, hasn’t it?

Ed Benjamin 3:19
You know, adoption was very quick in Asia, partly because the vehicle was perfect for the dense Lee inhabited coastal cities of Asia. And because there was strong government encouragement that the Chinese governments in particular, recognise that the small vehicle was what their people were going to use and the small vehicles were emitting a lot of pollution and they’d better do something. And so they basically provided as they put it, strong encouragement for the electric bicycle by discouraging two stroke engines by discouraging mopeds, gasoline assisted bicycles, etc.

So they were fast, you know, from the time that the technologies that enable electric bicycles to be a commercial success were available, which I’ll suggest that they were available at the correct price starting in 1994.

From 1994 to the time the Chinese were reacting was two years to the time that the Chinese electric bicycle was all over the place in many hundreds of 1000s less than 10 years. And today, there’s probably more than or something very close to 300 million electric bikes used in China, everything that acid may still lead acid mainly. Well, yeah, lead acid is still a major, major energy storage device. There’s a lot of the wire lithium is the primary battery metallurgy for the Western market. Lead Acid is still the

Primary metallurgy for most of the Asian markets with lithium making some grounds make gaining ground I should say. So yeah, and that’s been an issue, you know, lead acid batteries, they for heavy daily use, they typically last about a year, and now they need to be recycled. And, and most of the cities of Asia now have vigorous lead acid recycling,

where in the West, we are using a lot of lithium batteries. And we don’t really have a way of dealing with the old lithium batteries yet. Because in the EU that just brought in a new rule that you’re going to have to recycle those. So you say manufacturers and suppliers are going to have to do something with their then EMI and batteries.

Well, and they would say we are doing something.

And maybe a more honest thing would be for them to say, we’re in the process of figuring out what’s the best thing to do with it. An awful lot of lithium battery recycling today is shred it and put it in a landfill. But I’d like to personally, I believe that it won’t be very much longer before some of these outfits will succeed in commercially viable recovery of the lithium materials, which have a significant value.

Carlton Reid 6:19
We got somebody but you got companies like Redwood materials who are doing it for cars. So that was that was a former

executive from Tesla who realised that this is gonna be a big thing. So presumably of if Tesla can do it for a company that sprang from Tesla can do it for for cars, bikes can surely do it?

Ed Benjamin 6:38
Oh, yeah. And I think that we’re in the process of getting there. Keep in mind that the battery package for car which can be 1000s of cells, and the battery package for bike, which might be 40, maybe 60 cells, different, different size of scale. But if we look at lead acid battery recycling, which is something the western economies do very well, if I have a lead acid battery, whether it comes from a car or an electric bike, I think there are four or five places that will accept it for recycling within one mile of my home. And we’ll see the same thing happen with lithium. In the end, we’ll see the lithium recaptured lithium metal, the lithium salts have a value that are going to have more and more value as we build more and more electric vehicles that use lithium for energy storage. So we’ll get there and there’s probably some lithium guy that will be listening to this and going hey, wait a minute my company’s blah blah, blah. Yeah, we’re making progress.

Carlton Reid 7:43
Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe you’re speaking to us here from Fort Myers in Florida from Fort Myers, Florida that’s in the news at the moment is Florida I know you’re about 125 miles away from completely opposite from from the building that’s in the news at the moment but you’re in your you’re in Florida.

Ed Benjamin 8:01
I’m in Florida and we are often in the news.

Carlton Reid 8:04
Now the reason I bring up Florida because it’s I’ve never been there in the in that have never been ever but I know that in the summer. It’s meant to be incredibly brutal to live in Florida. Now. Know what correct is that?

Ed Benjamin 8:20
Oh, no. I’ve been reading about the temperatures in the UK recently. You guys have a tougher than we do. We have a lot of air conditioning you don’t.

So you know, yeah. It’s warm here in the summertime.

Carlton Reid 8:34
And that’s a different sound. Where I was going with that was just is that not just somewhere perfect for an ebike because you don’t want to sweat you don’t want to you know go on your your standard bike and ride around but you might within a bike is that well, it’s a good place for e-bikes.

Ed Benjamin 8:52
There’s a couple of markets that really stand out for the electric bike. One of the markets is the older person who wants to ride his electric bike around often in the evening, often staying in the neighbourhood and chatting with his neighbours or her neighbours. Often couples riding together and we have a lot of that in Florida we have a lot of retirees that live in areas that are quite pleasant to go for a casual ride. And they’re finding that electric bike is something that they enjoy riding, it’s easier to ride and it’s something to talk about when they when they visit with their neighbours. I look at my new electric bike. So there’s been a lot of that that market is very strong in Florida. Another. Market builders very strong is dense urban environments, cities where parking your car is a major expense or a major inconvenience. places like Boston, San Francisco, New York City, South Miami. These are all places where they have owning a car is just a pain in the butt. And in Florida we do have

have year round cycling weather, although we also have some very serious rains that visit us most afternoons in the summertime.

But that’s manageable. So yeah, so the electric bicycle in the cities of Florida, it’s a natural, but the electric bicycle in the cities of the world is unnatural. If we look at where our electric bicycles used most, the most, I would say it’s flat coastal cities all over the world.

Carlton Reid 10:27
You mentioned the oldest demographic. And of course, that’s that’s what the industry was very frightened of promoting to, and they very much wanted younger people to get into into E bikes, it took an awfully long time of marketing to that demographic. Do you think the bike industry has succeeded? Is the bike a young person’s product?

Ed Benjamin 10:47
Well, one aspect of it is yes.

There are two things that have happened. One of them is the young people, I’m talking about the United States. But I think there’s a lot of overlap here with Western Europe. The young people of America are broke, they’ve got school debt, they’ve got challenging in income issues for most of them. And owning a car is expensive. So riding a bicycle. And remember, these are young folks are still perfectly capable of riding a bicycle. But the electric bicycle means they can go farther, they can live farther away from the work or farther away from the metro station. It means that they get to work without being without perspiring without needing a shower. So we have young people turning to this as a mode of transportation that suits today’s reality. We also have them turning to it for recreation in the United States of bicycles have been sport, fitness and recreation, that we even though there’s always been a relatively small percentage of our bicycle riders that have used them for transportation, we don’t think of them as transportation now and in Asia, the first thought you have is that’s a way to get to work or that’s a way to get to the metro station or the store. And you almost see that attitude. You see it in some Western European cultures to a greater or lesser extent of bicycles transportation, of course, in America that there’s no of course, a bicycle sport, fitness and recreation but but but but but mountain bikes, ah, mountain bikes, we love go mountain biking, we love to ride off the road, and somebody has been turning gravity up every year of my life. And as they turn gravity up, I find an electric bicycle allows me to continue riding in the mountains that allows me to continue having a totally enjoyable afternoon and rather than the embarrassment of walking up the hill, the so the electric mountain bike fit very neatly into American ideas about what the bicycle should be. It’s fun. It’s it’s fitness is recreation. And it was like somebody threw opened a couple of huge doors into the electric mountain bike world and said, Come on in here. It’s fun. And I think I’m quoting Gary Fisher correctly, Gary Fisher, of course, is a an institution, a legend in the mountain bike world. And Gary said at one of the trade shows that the electric mountain bike adds 15 years to your mountain biking season.

Carlton Reid 13:21
So that worked out there. Also, there was friction there with with with getting it on to certain mountains and in certain

national year properties where the Rangers didn’t want mountain bikes to be electrified. And they didn’t even like mountain bikes if if truth be told. So there was not much in there to

know there.

Ed Benjamin 13:43
Yes, there’s, of course there’s friction there. And

but I would suggest it’s really more from other users. A few years ago, actually, a couple of decades ago, I was doing an internship in Boulder, Colorado, and I was fascinated. They have a wonderful bicycle path that goes up the mountain stream. And I was fascinated by all of the friction, I guess would be the way to put it. The dog walkers hated everybody. The roller skaters hated everybody the bicycle riders are going this is our bike path. You dog walkers and rollerbladers need to get out of our way. And then there’s the skateboarders. And then there’s mom with us baby stroller. And all of these groups were trying to share the same piece of asphalt and none of them were happy with the presence of the others. What this taught me was people are a messy bunch. I don’t care what it is how far from the road it is, or how sensible it is. Somebody is going to bitch about it. And by the way, let’s not forget the horseback riders on the mountain trails in the back country. They don’t like bicycle riders, they also don’t like walkers. So are human beings going to just instantly say, Hey, this is great. Let’s share

not my experience. So I don’t you know Yes, I observed that there is this kind of conflict I observed that P

Pull for bikes and some of the other organisations have done an awful lot of good work to try to formalise the where you can and where you shouldn’t and to negotiate peaceful coexistence as best they can. I’m really impressed with the work they’ve done. But human beings are a messy bunch. They’re gonna grow up in each other.

Carlton Reid 15:21
Tell me how you got into the bike industry. And that’s before the ebike stuff. And before you owned a bunch of bike shops in Florida, so how did you originally get into bikes?

Ed Benjamin 15:34
Alright, my first bicycle shop job was in 1969. But before that, I was working at a McDonald’s as a teenager. And there was this nutcase guy there that had this incredibly expensive bicycle, I think he paid more than $200 for it back in back in the 1960s $200, paid for a bicycle was mind bending. And this guy was a big, strong, good looking guy. He was also working in McDonald’s. And I was fascinated by his bicycle. And I said, What is this all about? This is this is a racing bicycle. It’s a real racing bicycle. And I thought that was just the coolest thing. I just was absolutely fascinated with the bike, I was fascinated with the idea of racing bicycles. And I got started racing bicycles as a result of Bob Easton and his Raleigh professional that he rode, rode to McDonald’s as his way to get to work. So I followed along behind Bob Easton, learned to be a bicycle racer, won a few races last a lot of races, wound up working in bicycle shops, as many bicycle racers do. And so I was a skinny teenager on a crappy bicycle, who rode so much that he won races and that allowed him to buy a better bicycle. And that’s how I got started.

Carlton Reid 16:48
So that was your archetypal bike, boom. 70s bike boom person in 1969, you know, 70

That’s, that’s when the, you know, the National Geographic is covering it and saying there’s a boom in bikes happening. So you’re that guy?

Ed Benjamin 17:04
Well, if you look at the movie, Breaking Away, some of the people that were extras in that movie were the people that I rode with, and, and that movie resonated with us. That was us.

Even down to the very ugly shorts that caused every girl that saw us and them to go, ooh.

Carlton Reid 17:25
Okay, and you’ve segued from that into owning bike shops. How did that happen?

Ed Benjamin 17:33
Oh, I Well, I worked at bicycle shops assembling bicycles. I later wound up managing bike shops. And then, you know, I went to the University learn to went and got a degree that would not allow me to make a living, got out of the university and said, Well, one thing I do know how to do is work in a bicycle shop. And my father and I identified Fort Myers, Florida as a promising market. We bought a bicycle shop that existed in Fort Myers and we started operating that store and we kept we expanded it into four stores. And then to, to, to beat you to the next question in the in the 1990s. My father passed away from cancer my, what my chief financial officer who was my wife, decided she didn’t want to be married to me. So she became an ex wife, my store manager, my brother got hit and killed in a car bicycle accident, and I’m going I don’t want to be in the bicycle shop anymore.

I’d been good at it, but I didn’t want to do it anymore. But I was totally fascinated with this new thing called electric bicycles. And that’s how I got interested in started chasing electric bicycles

Carlton Reid 18:45
that kind of Lee Iacocca kind of period?

Ed Benjamin 18:52
Lee Iacocca was talking about electric bicycles very close to the same time. And I frankly, I found his vision or the things that he said I found him inspiring,

Carlton Reid 19:03
describe, describe who he is, an executive from the motor trade basically?

Ed Benjamin 19:09
Yeah, here’s an executive who had had been involved at the Ford Motor Company and and Chrysler Motor Company, highly articulate, very good crews, charismatic.

You know, and here was a guy who was famous for bringing the Ford Mustang into existence. He had been involved in every aspect of the automobile industry, and he was an icon of the automobile industry in a very, very big deal. And here, he was fooling around with electric bicycles, really. And but what that gave me was validation. Not only was he articulate and and charismatic, and he was saying things that really resonated with me. But here he was making this stepping from the automobile industry, which in American minds is the main event, stepping from the automobile industry into the electric bike business.

Now it turns out that Lee was not very good at the electric bike business. But he definitely shaped a lot of my early interest. And unfortunately, Time magazine asked me, I think it was a 1997. Time magazine asked me for a quote about how do you think Lee Iacocca is going to do and I said, Well, he’s not going to sell 50,000 bikes in his first year. And leave parently took personal offence to that, and my chances of becoming least buddy died in that statement.

Carlton Reid 20:36
But did he? Did he not sell that? Were you right?

Yeah, no, his his his business success with EV global motors. There wasn’t any business success.

Ed Benjamin 20:45
You know, it was inspirational. But he, the market was not ready to buy an EV until he wasn’t ready to buy electric bikes, the United States and it wasn’t ready to buy the global motors bike. And Lee, who apparently was quite brilliant in the world of automobile companies appeared to be not very good at a small company, small startup company.

Carlton Reid 21:12
That wasn’t a pedal assist bike that was almost a electric motorbike.

Ed Benjamin 21:16
Yeah, yeah, that’s what we call a class two bike.

Carlton Reid 21:19
Now it was controlled by a throttle, but they did open a lot of people’s eyes, including yours by the sound of it to their sector. And then other people came along and started doing stuff. So what what were you doing in E bikes at this time? What are you physically? How are you connected to the industry?

Ed Benjamin 21:34
Well, in 1996, I decided that I was going to focus my attention on the electric bicycle world or electric bicycle industry. Now keep in mind that electric bicycle had really become a commercial success starting in 1994 in Japan, and there was we were in 1996, we’re reading about oil to Europe, the Chinese government is banning mopeds and encouraging electric bikes and so on. And, and I was

had, we had a customer in the bike shop, a guy named Dr. Frank Jamison, and Dr. Jamison had been investigating and researching the electric bicycle business since 1993 94. And Dr. Jamison got to know him because he’d bring these electric bikes in and he would need them fixed. Most of the problems were bicycle problems, by the way. So we took his bikes for him. And I got to know Dr. Jamison, and then Dr. Jamison, who was not a young man asked me to go to China for him and visit a trade show. And, of course, I was strongly interested in doing that. Although I was a boy from Kentucky who had never travelled, I’d never been out of the country, I’d never certainly never been to Asia. And here Dr. Jamison was sending me on this this fact finding or information gathering mission. And wow, that was such an eye opening thing is a result of Dr. Jamison’s introductions, I wound up going to a trade show in Germany, and then to a trade show in Shanghai. And by the time by 1997, 98, I was convinced that electric bicycles were going to be the main event for the bicycle industry, they were higher price they were they used up their battery, they they were going to be written more, they’re going to need more service.

This was going to be the moneymaker. I was absolutely convinced starting in 96, 97, that this is going to be the main moneymaker for the bicycle industry. While most the bicycle industry thought that was absurd. And I was reasonably well known in American bicycle industry, because I operated these bicycle shops and had operated them successfully. And I’d been around for a long time. And I had people telling me that you’re going to be broke forever, you’re never going to make this consulting company work. And, and there was a lot of doubt in my own mind. But

that relationship with Dr. Jamison, he is encouraging me to go out into Europe and Asia, and learn about it and, and make friends. And one of the things that happened quite a lot at that time was I would go to a factory, for example, TN di or Small Antelope in in Suzhou. And I would go to the factory to visit the factory and the people in the factory would say, what are you here to to buy? And I’m not here to buy anything. What are you here to sell? I’m not here to sell anything. Why are you here? I want to make friends. And that turned out to be a really good thing to really good approach to this. So I spent five or six years basically travelling around to the electric bike events and electric bike factories, electric bike component makers, battery makers, motor makers, etc. And my only intention was simply to develop a network to make friends to get to learn from these folks. And that worked. And the result was that I was early in and and

got around a bit. And that created the the foundation for a future consulting business and the foundation for what would become the Light Electric Vehicle Association.

Carlton Reid 25:11
Lever. Lava. How would you pronounce that?

Ed Benjamin 25:14
Well, I usually say l e v a. But we have other folks that say laver. Yeah, you know, I think doesn’t matter. Because

Carlton Reid 25:23
obviously, so that’s vehicle. So that’s not just, you know, e bikes. So what classify what that what that encompasses?

Ed Benjamin 25:34
Well, a vehicle, there’s a device that carries somebody from A to B. And, you know, we could say that, automobiles, buses, trains, aeroplanes, skateboards, the list is a long of the devices that human beings used to get from A to B. And when we, when we named the Electric Vehicle Association, we had thought about calling it the electric cycle Association. But the problem was that, or the challenge that we saw was that we were going to see a lot of, of categories of electric powered micro mobility vehicles that have that are not electric bicycles. They were going to be, we didn’t know exactly what they were going to be. But we could see these electric mini scooters that people stand up on, we could see

a lot of innovative electric vehicles coming out of Europe, such as the trike.

And since then, we’ve seen continued to see a very interesting innovation in micro mobility vehicles. So is the electric bicycle, the ultimate ultimate micro mobility vehicle. It’s a very good one, and it’s working really well and it’s selling really well. But isn’t the ultimate one. I don’t know. I kind of doubt it. I suspect that we’re kind of, you know, if you think about the automobile industry in its early days, 1906 1910. They call them horseless carriages. And we if we saw horseless carriage today, we would chuckle and say, Boy, they’ve certainly evolved. I think we’re going to see similar evolvement from the electric bicycle. My grandkids may be looking at electric bicycle and chuckling and saying, Well, that’s not what we use today.

Carlton Reid 27:19
Is your dog okay by the way, is it like panting to see you or?

Ed Benjamin 27:24
No, there’s some landscapers that have arrived. And even with the door closed, she feels that she has a secure security duty to inform the landscapers that she’s got her eye on them. I apologise.

Carlton Reid 27:37
What kind of dog have you got there, Ed?

Ed Benjamin 27:39
She’s a Labrador.

Carlton Reid 27:41
Okay. Labradors are not normally that barky. I was thinking of a different breed to that, but okay.

Ed Benjamin 27:47
Now she’s a four year old Labrador who takes if if we let her outside, she would run up to each one landscapers and greet them enthusiastically, and then come back inside and be quiet.

Carlton Reid 27:59
Yeah. No, I’m with you there. So going back to

vehicles, electric vehicles. I do see I did a story a while ago, two years ago now. Time flies, but on the the Canyon kind of electric car. So

you know, the Canyon than the mountain bike and the road bike people clearly think there’s a potential future there for an electric vehicle,

basically, but they were very adamant that they were in fact, when I mentioned the Sinclair C5 to them, they kind of knew exactly what I meant. And they knew that’s what they had to not do. Does that Sinclair C5, you know, not hold that category back?

Ed Benjamin 28:46
You know, I have to confess that I don’t pay a lot of attention to

anything more than three wheels. And so I would suggest that

the human race is going to by are going to start using a wide variety of vehicles that

have many sizes and many characteristics, but

I have reasonably informed opinions about ones that have two or maybe three wheels, and anything more than that. I can say I see it coming. But I don’t pay that much attention to it.

Carlton Reid 29:19
So your ltva Could one of the categories. There are the one of the kinds of . It’s not four wheels.

Ed Benjamin 29:27
Yeah.

I’m sorry, I must have missed something there. Maybe I am not familiar with the Canyon vehicle.

Carlton Reid 29:36
I think the Canyon is a trike it I’m pretty sure. I think on it certainly smart it was small enough to fit into, into into a bike lane. That’s where they that they’re, they’re pitching it.

Ed Benjamin 29:47
Alright, how are we spelling this?

Carlton Reid 29:52
Canyon, like the bicycle company, the bicycle company, it’s basically they’re doing a light electric vehicle as a concept vehicle

Yeah, which they did, basically electric, you know, they would they would have it was actually before they started doing electric bikes, but they knew they were gonna be doing this electric in effect small car. It’s not commercial yet, but just the fact that they were looking at this space, you know, for Canyon to do that was really interesting.

Ed Benjamin 30:18
Yeah, it’s been I found it it’s been around for about a year

the

this you know,

this kind of light electric car, I see it as a no brainer for

the dense urban environment that human beings are moving into more and more often.

Carlton Reid 30:38
But it’s also and we could probably build it using mostly electric bicycle monitoring. And I think that’s their idea. So this could be quite light, quite inexpensive and quite functional. But I’ve not been paying attention to this category. Because we do. I mean, if you go to the Netherlands and you go to Amsterdam, you see these kind of vehicles already dotting around that, you know that the bike paths of Amsterdam, you know this

Yeah, since at least 20 years they’ve been tottering around, but they haven’t taken off massively. So I’m just wondering what would it take to make them take off probably access to safe roadways, and of course the Dutch ride those things on the bicycle path.

Ed Benjamin 31:23
But again, it’s a simply a category that I have not been paying much attention to I recognise that exists. I probably would own one myself. If I were riding through the rainy days of Amsterdam, but I’m afraid that not my not my area of knowledge.

Carlton Reid 31:42
Okay, so um, wasn’t gonna go, I won’t go into like the villages type, you know, golf cart, electric car. That’s kind of not your territory. It’s got to go shape thing.

Ed Benjamin 31:54
The Villages using an electric golf cart. If they could buy one that had a diesel exhausted put up black smoke, that’s the one they would like better.

case you don’t know what the villages are a hotbed of everything that’s stupid about the baby boomer generation of which I’m a member. Yes, yes. But the villages are a concentration of conservative, upside down right wing. We don’t like anything that’s good for anybody else thinking. I’m sure somebody will hear this and say something nasty about me. Because that’s what they do in the villages.

Carlton Reid 32:30
I’ve done a few stories on it. So it’s an interesting place. So mid motor, hub motor, bolt on accessory to make your wheel go round. Do any of these things matter? Is it just the fact that you should be getting an electric bike? Or do you think there should be a form of technology here? That’s that’s better than the others?

Ed Benjamin 32:50
Well, they’re they’re different. They have different strengths. They have motor bike, the motor is inexpensive, it works really well. It’s almost absurdly reliable. It uses a space in the bike that nothing else does, you can bolt it into an ordinary bicycle frame. Wow, lots of advantages. Disadvantages, well, if you can’t use the bicycle, Trent, you can’t run the power of the motor through the bicycle transmission. And it’s, that’s what the great advantage of the mid motor bike where you’ve got the high torque motor of the human being, somebody called it the meat motor one time or the muscle motor, that’s a very high torque motor, and you add to it and an electric motor, and then you run it through the sophisticated and broad range of a bicycle transmission. And we have one impressive vehicle, we can climb mountains, we can go fast we can do we can wow, this is a great combo. The downside is that it’s more expensive, partly because there’s a lot more machined parts in there. And partly because it’s a generally speaking, it’s a more sophisticated and tightly integrated system. But the performance advantage is significant.

Other types of electric vehicle or electric bicycle propulsion, they’re very small by comparison, today, we’ve got a lot of motorbikes, they’re by far the unit, the dominant in Unit numbers. Motorbikes by far the dominant in terms of attention, because of their superior performance and higher higher prices. And because the people that saw them have got good marketing skills, the bikes that don’t fall into either those two categories, ones that might have a motor mounted outboard of the rear triangle or a motor that rubs the tire or some other innovative way, but for the most part, they’re really small at this time. Is there something lurking out there that’s just going to take over? Maybe? I don’t, I don’t, I don’t see it right now. Most of the other ideas are find that their useful niche or their commercially viable niche is as a DIY kit or an aftermarket kit, for example.

A unit that rubs the rear tire or uses a rear wheel as its gear reduction

is very inexpensive and very easy to instal. And that makes it a very attractive aftermarket kit, but it doesn’t climb hills worth anything and it you run it through what anything wet road or a puddle and doesn’t work at all. So the, you know, all of these systems have got their pros and their cons, but the dominant ones, the hub motor and the mid motor. Both of them have their particular strength, their particular application where they’re great.

Carlton Reid 35:37
Don’t be accessories, you know, those add ons, which there are, you know, any number on Kickstarter, anyone on Twitter, do you think that just basically shows you the interest in the concept, people might be frightened by the cost, so they kind of attach themselves to these lower cost options, but then eventually, they might buy that equipment and it to attach it to their existing bike. But at the end of the day, it’s been far better for them just to buy it in an electric bike, and then that’s what we end up doing.

Ed Benjamin 36:05
And that’s, that’s often their conclusion. In fact, earlier today, I was reading a interview from the guy that was running, super pedestrian, super pedestrian, commercialised the Copenhagen Wheel, which was an all in one wheel battery motor controller everything inside the rear wheel of the bicycle, very tidy. Got a tremendous amount of media attention got a tremendous amount of excitement. And I’m sorry that I don’t really remember a soft last name but a soft commented that one of the things they had learned as they sold the this all in one wheel was that an awful lot of their customers would come to the to decide that what they wanted was just a complete bike. You know, this business of installing a wheel fiddling with a wheel when you make a conversion like that. There’s no matter how skilled you are, or how good that kid is. There’s always a period of oh, I needed to adjust that or I needed to add this. And what what a soft says in his interview is they’re super peds.

Carlton Reid 37:05
Time challenge. Were the people who said I’m just gonna buy a complete bike. Oh, telling pedestrian, does that come in a bike, I’d buy the bike. I’m not interested in the wheel. Give me the bike.

Ed Benjamin 37:18
I’m sure they heard that a lot. Mm hmm.

Carlton Reid 37:22
At that junction, and I’d like to go across to my co host, David. And we’ll split for, in fact, an electric bike themed ad break.

David Bernstein 37:32
Hey everyone, this is David from the Fred cast and the spokesmen and I’m here once again, to tell you about our amazing sponsor Tern Bicycles at www.ternbicycles.com t e r n bicycles.com Tern are committed to building bikes that are useful enough to ride every day and dependable enough to carry the people you love. Speaking of being able to ride every day as a spokesmen listener, I’m going to bet that you are the go-to consultant for your friends who want to ride but are an enthusiast and need some advice on what to buy. In that case, you may have people in your life for whom you just haven’t been able to recommend just the right bike considering their stature, age mobility issues or just plain hesitant to get back on a bike. Finally, those family members and friends can experience a new bike day with the all new Turn NBD new bike day Nbd. Okay, the NBDd has been specifically designed to be confidently easy to handle and easy to ride even. Even for those folks who might be as Josh Hon, team captain of Tern Bicycle says are smaller in size and have a hard time finding a bike that fits or older riders who might not have ridden a bike in a while or riders who might have balance or physical issues or riders who are just intimidated by the sheer size and weight of the average ebike. As Josh goes on to say the NBD will be refreshingly easy to hop aboard and ride. Now how can Josh be so confident in that? Well, it’s simple. The NBD has the lowest longest step through opening of any premium ebike. So if you know someone with a knee or a hip injury or or somebody who just can’t lift their leg over the top tube of a regular bike, this alone could make all the difference plus the NBD is designed with an ultra low centre of gravity and a longer wheelbase. And what does that mean? Well, it means that it makes it easy to balance and handle. And with a lowered bottom bracket and motor the NBD is stable for all riders and particularly inspires confidence for shorter cyclists because they can easily get their feet on the ground when they come to a stop. But the NBD isn’t just for shorter riders. As a matter of fact, it adjusts in seconds. Without tools by the way to fit riders from four foot 10 to six foot three or 147 to 190 centimetres. The NBD is also super comfortable with its upright riding position, swept handlebar suspension seatpost and wide 20 inch balloon tires need to load the NBD into a car. No problem, it folds flat in seconds. How about getting into it into a smaller living space? No sweat. The NBD includes Tern’s vertical parking features, you can roll the bike into a small elevator and park it in a corner of your apartment. Now with a max gross vehicle weight of 140 kilos that’s 308 pounds, the NBD can easily carry an extra passenger and plenty of cargo with up to 27 kilos on the rear rack and up to 20 kilos on the front rack. And in fact, it works with a wide range of Tern accessories and with most child seats, as I’ve said before, and this is important to me really important safety is a core value at turn. And that’s why the NBD frame and fork have been rigorously tested by one of Europe’s leading bike test labs. That’s also why turn chooses to use the Bosch motor and battery system. It’s one of the few systems on the market that meets and passes the UL standard for battery and electronics safety read the news and you know how important that is. Now the NBD comes in two models with prices starting at $3,899 or 3999 euros and bikes are going to start arriving in stores in Q1 of 2023. For more information about the NBD or any of Turn’s wide range of bikes, just head on over to ternbicycles.com Again, t e r n bicycles.com. We thank Tern for their sponsorship of the spokesmen podcast and we thank you for your support of Tern. Once again, thanks for allowing me this brief introduction everybody. And now let’s get back to Carlton and the spokesmen.

Carlton Reid 42:07
And we are back Thank you, David we are back with with Ed Benjamin. And Ed

is I think it’s pretty safe to say is an ebike guru and is and has been talking about E bikes for longer than 27 years. Most people are 27 years old, Hannes Neupert is probably now harnessed Norbert was doing this since the 90s

Ed Benjamin 42:33
You know,Hannes was also an inspiration to me a young guy full of energy, he’s really smart.

You know, and immersed in the details of the early days of this business. And of course he had his partner

I don’t mean partner in that sense. I mean, his coworker Susanne Bruesch did a was really good at articulating ideas and spreading information. And so we had Hannes Neupert who was absolutely visionary and and Susanne Bruesch, who was absolutely a terrific communicator. And then they had this large group of smart young motivated people that would come and go you know, they would

sitting down to dinner with that group at a trade show was a cross cultural

extravaganza and quite an interesting bunch and and very very influential over the long haul about what happened with electric bikes in Europe.

Carlton Reid 43:38
You went consultancy they went a different way they kind of went into

letting people ride these things so taking them out on the road on like a road show Yes. The extra energy roadshow in effect so that was obviously you know, lots of trade shows would have them but they would go out to other places and just get people on because isn’t that the crux of this is whenever you get somebody on an electric bike it then clicks it’s like you’re gonna grill that’s what it does I like

mm hmm yeah, the kind of the the the tailwind affect you kind of give you a sense maybe not so much with a with a hub but centre where the mid motor it just you feel like Superman or Superwoman you know it’s you know, it’s right

so if that’s the case, why hasn’t it? Why did it take so long to take off in America because you’re talking about you know, America is big into into cars is that just the only reason that the the ebike took so long to?

Ed Benjamin 44:46
I alluded to it a little bit earlier.

The electric bicycle was presented to the entire world by s transportation. The Chinese developed a transportation vehicle and they were the main event for it.

reduction of product, the Germans and the French and the Italians that were involved in the earliest days of electric bicycles also thought of them as transportation and presented them as transportation. Honest. And Susie presented this as transportation. And in America, bicycle is not transportation, a bicycle if a bicycle is being used for transportation, in the 1990s, early 2000s, that’s because you’re poor, it’s because you can’t afford anything else. And bicycles are for sport, fitness and recreation. And the electric bicycle of those days was

not very interesting for Sport, Fitness or recreation. So what happened in America, I think, was a simply a cultural phenomenon. We were shown this interesting transportation vehicle, and he said, No, we used cars for that. And it took a couple decades before the American public woke up to the advantages are the benefits that an electric bicycle could bring to them?

Carlton Reid 45:58
You also like I mean, our Europeans like this as well, of course, but

more power, more torque, and specifically a throttle. So in the US, UK, and in the EU, we generally don’t have the throttle.

Ed Benjamin 46:11
Yes, US has got on one class of bike has got the throttle. What’s the sales differentiation between those which which is bigger in the US? How are those sectors doing? Well, the unit volume is heavily in favour of the throttle. But one of the things that I’ve learned is this, the majority of the people united states don’t ride bicycles, they may have written a bicycle for a while as a child. But they’re not bicycle has not been for most people, like maybe all but one or 2% of our population. A bicycle has not been a major part of their life than one or 2% of our population that has been very interested in bicycles. They’re used to buying nice bicycles at the bicycle shop. And they’re used to controlling the speed of the bicycle with their feet, the harder they push, the faster they go, that’s to them. That makes all kinds of sense. But the vast majority of our population did not grasp that idea. As an intuitive, this is the way a bicycle should be. So they were presented with an electric powered two wheeler, and told this is an electric bicycle. And you have to pedal it for the motor to run and they’re like what, but when they were presented with this, and you said here, twist this throttle, they got that they understood it, it was intuitive, and it’s also easy. So in the United States, the class to bike is the unit volume leader. Now the bicycle industry has a hard time with that because the bicycle industry, the wreath at every level in the United States, is people who like to ride bicycles, or they are maybe often former competitors. So your BMX bike race or your next BMX or x triathlete, I shouldn’t say x, you’re you have this background and you’re working in a bicycle shop. Of course, you think that controlling the bicycle by how hard you pedal is totally the the correct way to do it. But the people that come in to talk to you about buying a bicycle may not see it that way. In fact, the people that come into your the most of the people, most of the American population will not go into a bicycle shop because they that’s not where they buy bicycles, they buy bicycles at Walmart.

And at Walmart, they read the cardboard card that’s hanging on the front of the display, and choose which bike they’re going to buy with very little in the way of expert input. And the that’s our normal American bicycle buyer. And the bicycle industry doesn’t like to confront that because, frankly, it represents a gigantic failure. We have not connected with most of our population. But most of our population does understand what a bicycle can do for them. The United States typically by something in the neighbourhood of 15 million bicycles every year, that’s a lot. And do we ride them a lot? Then? No, most of our bicycles stay in the garage with the been working as a laundry rack.

And if we look where do people use bicycles for transportation? You know, I used to tell people who want to see electric bikes, you go look at the back door of restaurants, the back door of hospitals, the back door, where people are who are working for low wage rate jobs, need to have transportation to get to work and there you will find a cluster of bicycles, or including some electric bikes. So that stigma, I don’t want to people think I’m poor. I’m not going to have a bicycle that I use for transportation. What really helped us with that problem with that with helped us with that cultural disconnect was when the electric mountain bike became a thing. Because when the electric mountain bike became a thing, it became absolutely culturally acceptable for you to be interested in electric bikes and to go out and get one and guess what they’re fun. One of one

No, my good friends is Estelle Gray and Estelle Gray and her partner, Sally? Are they sell the Edward Selia words as a former, I guess, not former, she’s still doing triathlons.

There, she’s a prominent person in the triathlon world, and still is one of the holders of the women’s trans continental tandem record. And I’ve known Estelle for decades, and we have discussed electric bikes off and on over the years. And she was, she would put up she’s a strong, sturdy girl, and she doesn’t need no stinking motor. And then she got an electric bike. And I think she got the electric bike because there was a mountain in between her and work. And she wanted to pull I remember the story, and I may have it wrong. She wanted to pull a trailer with a dog. That was a dog that works with kids. She wanted to pull a trailer with the dog over the mountain. And so she decided to give electric bikes a try. Last time I talked to Estelle, which was a couple of weeks ago, I think she told me that they now had four or five electric bikes, her and Sally. So wow, that’s actually not a bad synopsis of what’s been happening in the bicycle world, with a undercurrent that is really important, and it goes like this, we don’t make much money in the bicycle business, we don’t make much money on bicycles, we’ve managed to create the razor thin margins to the point where it’s almost a waste of time to try to sell a bicycle. And then electric bikes came along. And electric bikes were bigger ticket, a bigger margin, need more service, wow, we can make money with these. And so what we’ve seen in every market is the bicycles, companies and distributors have embraced the idea that with electric bicycle, they can make money. With a normal bicycle. It’s very tough with electric bicycle, not so bad. So all over the world electric bikes are the main moneymaker of the of the bicycle industry. And that means that’s the main attention focus of the bicycle industry.

Carlton Reid 52:03
So Hannes has famously, he’s rowed back from this a bit subsequently, but he famously said, and he said it in in various symposium or what have you in various shows over the years, that the mechanical bicycle is dead, it’s gonna go the way of the mangle

of the mechanical typewriter.

What you’re just saying there was almost going towards that. So is that something that you also see happening that just at some point in the near future, or maybe the far future, the mechanical bicycle is going to be the dodo?

Ed Benjamin 52:40
I think that the typewriter is a good analogy. I’m old enough that I learned to type on a mechanical typewriter, and I used to be able to type on a mechanical typewriter. But the electric typewriter was so much easier. And then the computer came along and we stopped even talking about it.

And I think we’re gonna see the same thing happen to electric bikes, I think we are in the process of seeing

an electric component to the bicycle transmission, we’re going to see that become almost ubiquitous, it’s going to become almost universal. And the result is going to be bicycles are much easier to ride and we might not even be completely aware of why

Carlton Reid 53:18
Is DI2 almost a stealth way of bringing, you know, electrification of the bike into a mechanical bike. So you’ve got the Shimano electronic gears, and you have a battery on on your frame, and you recharge it every every now and again. But it’s still a mechanical bike. But it’s not too much of a leap to think will, you would just have a smaller battery than a slightly bigger bed, but inside the frame, you wouldn’t see it. And that just becomes the form factor for the bicycle.

Ed Benjamin 53:48
Every bicycle will be electrified in some way, shape or form in the future.

Carlton Reid 53:53
Thanks so can you can you hear the gasps of horror? A? That that that that that? Just your acceptance of that, that the gas is horror from the global fan.

Ed Benjamin 54:07
I’ve been hearing it shouted into my ears for as long as I’ve been doing this and and you know what? I’m a bike guy. I grew up working in bicycle shops, I raced bicycles. I’ve competed in triathlons. I rode long distance bike rides, I commuted on a bicycle most most of the time when I’ve gone somewhere in my life. I’ve gone by bicycle more often than any other vehicle. I’m a bike guy. I’ve got big thighs.

And I get it. I understand it. It’s not. It doesn’t fit into our paradigm. And you know what, I also am willing to embrace change. And I understand that most human beings have difficulty with change. It’s not one of our skill sets of embracing change. But guess what? It’s going to happen. Change does happen. It always happens. Doesn’t matter whether you participate or not. So guess

What bike industry bike guys everywhere, electric bikes are coming, I shouldn’t say are coming, they’re here. And we, it’s in one respect, it is a terrific, wonderful, upbeat, bright future that we face. And yeah, if you’re the kind of guy that deliberately types on a manual typewriter, because that’s what you think is cool. You may have difficulty with this.

Carlton Reid 55:30
So you’ve got a consultancy, as you’ve said,

Tell me the name that consultancy, what’s

Ed Benjamin 55:36
Ecycleelectric and we provide research, we monitor imports, mostly to the United States, we were networkers, if if somebody wants to know, just you take out an example, if somebody said, which, which Chinese motor factory is the one that I should be talking to about this requirement, we probably know and we probably know approximately what the price should be. And we can probably introduce that client to the bosses at that factory, save them a lot of time and say and usually save them a lot of money.

And I would say that the that’s basic premise carries over to batteries, controllers, complete vehicles. So we we leverage our connections and our history, to help people that are new to the industry or need this kind of help.

That’s our primary function in the consulting business that and tracking and reporting on the industry now focusing almost exclusively on America, for tracking and reporting. We used to try to cover the entire world, but it’s gotten way too big. And then we have the light Electric Vehicle Association, which is perhaps a more important activity. As my wife put it, she says he’s like electric just makes money. That’s all it does. Light Electric Vehicle Association helps expand the utility of the electric bicycle or electric two wheeler. And that was the electric two wheeler and electric bicycle electric motor scooter, is improving life or offering options to hundreds of millions of people. That’s an important thing. And like Electric Vehicle Association has played a very small part in that. I’d like to point out harnesses played a much bigger part in that, but we’re all going in the same direction.

Carlton Reid 57:23
So my wife, you’re describing my wife there as well, actually, because we’ve got an electric car of hers that sitting on the drive doesn’t doesn’t move much. And she just rides to work. She’s, she’s a hospital doctor, and she she works at the top of the hill. So she goes on her electric bike pretty much every single day. What you’re saying there about, you know, improving people’s lives? Well, I would say if I had to ask her why did you go on your bike? She would say because it’s good for her mental health. It’s certainly good for exercise, because you know, you have got to pedal the bikes in the UK.

She just likes, likes, likes doing it. So this is this is a product that improves her life. Yes.

Ed Benjamin 58:02
Getting out and riding your bicycle, whether it’s an electric bike or a manually powered bike, or just getting out and walking to work or walking to your grocery store, is I think it’s something that resonates inside the human spirit. We get out, we move ourselves under our own power. It’s a glorious thing that we get to do. And bicycles. You know, you and I have had the same experience. bicycles have been a very important part of our lives. And they are an invigorating moment in every day.

Carlton Reid 58:33
Thanks to Ed Benjamin ofecycleelectric there and thanks to you for listening to episode 304 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. Show notes and more can be found on the-spokesmen.com. The next episode will be out at the end of the month but meanwhile get out there and ride.

18th July 2022

The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast

EPISODE 302: Three ultracyclists explain how and why

SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles

HOST: Carlton Reid

GUESTS: Kabir Rachure, Josh Reid, Ruth Sutherland

TOPICS: Kabir Rachure was the first Asian to podium at the Race Across America, or RAAM, which finished a couple of weeks back. Ruth Sutherland was a rookie rider at this year’s 620 mile All Points North race in northern England. Josh Reid also rode All Points North but in preparation for the Transcontinental, a 2500 mile unsupported race across Europe from the cobbles of Flanders to the shores of the Black Sea.

LINKS:

Kabir’s RAAM podium result

Ultrahuman

All Points North

Transcontinental

Giant Revolt

Luchos Dillitos banana leaves wrapped energy food (use code “JR25” for 25% discount)

Specialized Ruby

Arkel bags

76 Projects 3D-printed Garmin mount

Hutchinson tyres

Robens mountain bivvy

Stages computer

Exposure lights

TRANSCRIPT

Carlton Reid 0:13
Welcome to Episode 302 of the spokesmen cycling podcast. This show is published on Monday 18th July 2022.

David Bernstein 0:28
The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Tern bicycles. The good people at Tern are committed to building bikes that are useful enough to ride every day, and dependable enough to carry the people you love. In other words, they make the kind of bikes that they want to ride. Tern has e bikes for every type of rider. Whether you’re commuting, taking your kids to school, or even caring another adult, visit www.tern bicycles.com. That’s t e r n bicycles.com to learn more.

Carlton Reid 1:02
Pain, sleep deprivation, hallucinations, why to ultra distance cyclists do it. I’m Carlton Reid. And on this episode of The spokesmen, I talked to three ultra cyclists including my son, Josh, he’s preparing for the transContinental, a 2500 mile unsupported race across Europe from the cobbles of Flanders to the shores of the Black Sea. I talk with Josh, along with Ruth Sutherland, both of them were first timers on last month’s 620 mile all points north race in northern England. But I start with a conversation I had with Indian lawyer Kabir Rachure, who recently came third in the solo men’s category at the Race Across America, making Kabir the first Asian to podium at RAAM. Well done on on your achievement at the race across America RAM.

Carlton Reid 2:11
This isn’t wasn’t your first attempt, was it? This was your second ride.

Kabir Rachure 2:15
This was my second this was my second.

Carlton Reid 2:17
So the obvious question is gonna be why?

Kabir Rachure 2:21
Yeah, because I was not satisfied with my 2019 attempt. Because I knew I can do better. I was trained properly, to do it and good timing. But you know, there are always mistakes when you do it for the first time. And you learn from those mistakes. So the first thing that I was not satisfied with my own performance. And the same day when I finished the RAAM, I told officials that I’m gonna come next year, but the next year was COVID. Then thereafter things were a bit dicey. So we went for 2020 to attempt

Carlton Reid 3:07
And tell me how long does it take? I’ve got here written how long it’s taken you but tell tell the listeners how long it took you to ride across.

Kabir Rachure 3:18
So it took 11 days 20 hours 43 minutes. And the cutoff time is exactly 12 days. So when when when I 15 minutes before the cutoff time.

Carlton Reid 3:33
My question before was was when I said why it wasn’t so much why’d you come back and do it again a second time. Although that was that was a good answer. It was why do these events anyway. So why can you Why are you a long distance endurance cyclist? Why are you doing that? Why are you pushing yourself like this?

Kabir Rachure 3:53
Maybe this is kind of an addiction. When we get a chance to test our own limits, that how much we can push as a human body. Okay? Normally, we are not going to stay awake for the entire day and do cycling without any event. So these events are a platform for us to test our own limits. It’s like someone is doing F1 The goal is to test their speeds test their equipment is the science behind all the machines and all. So it is platform for endurance cyclists to test ourself and to try to do better and always try to unlock ourself when we do it for the next time.

Carlton Reid 4:41
There are many ways of doing Race Across America. So you can do it in a pair. You can do it in a team, you take it in turns and somebody slips how were you doing it?

Kabir Rachure 4:51
I was doing in solo, so I was riding solo. So yeah, I feel the solo. attempt is the most difficult one, because the clock is still ticking when you are, you’re taking a sleeve break, or you’re taking some short break or something like that. So the in pair, somebody is on the bike when some other guys taking some break. But in solo attempts, your clock is not going to stop for you

Carlton Reid 5:23
and tell me your sleep strategy, because 11 days, how much sleep were you getting? And what were you? What were you getting?

Kabir Rachure 5:32
So last in my last attempt, I was suffering with a lot of sleep deprivation issues a lot of hallucinations. So this year, my main motto was to take ample sleep from day one. So I used to sleep after every 24 hours of riding for around two eyes. And thereafter, I used to guide for like 24 to 23 to maximum 27 hours until I feel tired and until I feel sleepy. So that was the strategy to guide 24 hours and to sleep for two hours and

Carlton Reid 6:11
tell me the navigation did because in many ultra endurance events, you can choose your route. But I’m presuming in the race across America, you’re not choosing your route. You’re you’re following a route.

Kabir Rachure 6:24
Yeah, exactly. So we get the proper route book before the gays it has like two months back the case, we get GPX files, that is also beautiful task for this case, because your team has to be super accurate with the navigation. Okay, you miss a turn and you go off Route for like entire 1520 kilometres maybe, and you lose time. So the route is planned route is fixed, and we have to follow that exact route. And then maybe we get some D detours in between if there is a flood or they get some construction going, or they get some forest fire or something like that. So we get detours. But yeah, it is pretty planned.

Carlton Reid 7:13
So whereabouts are you in India right now?

Kabir Rachure 7:18
So I’m from Mumbai.

Carlton Reid 7:19
And basically you ride like events in India? So you’re doing long distance events there too? How are you? How are you training for this?

Kabir Rachure 7:29
So yeah, you mostly I do entertaining because traffic in India, not that cycling friendly. Okay, so I can’t do vo to max session, so maybe sweet spot sessions on the road, because that becomes difficult or maybe dangerous. So I do most of the training indoors. And we do attempt a lot of endurance races down here. Because the crew needs that the touch, I need that pressure of racing, and we need that practice sessions. So we do attempt a lot of cases here.

Carlton Reid 8:08
And that’s, that’s, I’m kind of like sitting here thinking that’s amazing. So you’re doing an awful lot of the training for this indoors on a static bike. Yeah.

Kabir Rachure 8:21
That’s yeah, yeah. So 95% of the time.

Carlton Reid 8:26
When in previous, you know, Paris-Roubaix riders aren’t, you know, famously, you know, just come into the race and I’ve just done indoor training, but what you’re doing is endurance. How long are you spending on a bike indoors if you’re training for this?

Kabir Rachure 8:43
so usually, I train for 10 to 12 hours a week. One of out of that when riders endurance ride like four guys for maybe three hours on weekends. And most of the sessions are pretty planned like some of them are sweetspot sessions. Some of them are highly paid some of them are vo two Max maybe twice a month I go outdoors to keep my bike reflexes alive. I go downhill practice I do downhill practice I go some climbing practice. So that is how I do it.

Carlton Reid 9:26
That is so amazing. They are doing quite so much indoors. So it was quite a shock to be paid you riding outdoors for so long.

Kabir Rachure 9:37
Yeah, so I have done 24 times while also indoors and which I covered accounts 762 kilometres and I was off the bike for around eight minutes out of 24 hours. So yeah, I do like to ride indoors because there is always some entertainment in front of me like I can watch. Net lakes, I can watch some motivational series or maybe some movie, I can regulate the temperature. So body’s less fatigued because I do train in AC. So yeah, that that becomes easy to recover for the next session when I do training.

Carlton Reid 10:18
Now I’ve interviewed Mark Beaumont, who he’s told me about, he’s using glucose monitoring, to. So this is normally diabetes control, normally, but now athletes are using glucose monitoring. So I believe you’re using glucose monitoring, in the same way that Mark is used for performance.

Kabir Rachure 10:43
Yeah, of course. So we have seen lots of athletes like Jan Frodeno, you know, or maybe a lot of triathletes who use glucose monitors to get some gain in their performance. So I use it to keep my glucose levels and proper numbers so that I can perform well. I can recover well. And and, and I find I take care that I’m not training when I’m not fueled myself, well. Okay, so I use it to perform better and to recover properly overnight. So that is that has become super important gadget for my training. So yeah, I have been using it from last seven months,

Carlton Reid 11:35
I guess. So you didn’t use it in your first attempt, but you have used it in this attempt. So what is the diff differences? That is? Because you’re using ultrahuman? Yes.

Kabir Rachure 11:47
Yeah, yeah, I’m using Ultrahuman. And so on my first attempt, I was like a raw rider. I didn’t pay attention on these micro gains, like to be aerodynamic or to, to pay attention on your weaker. We saw on this attempt, I was pretty much technical about these things. So I used it in this attempt. And I can say that I was very much I had a very strong finish. Maybe I was the the winner of the guider who was vague if looking very fresh at the finish line, even after guiding 5000 kilometres. That was because I was fueling myself properly. I never under fueled myself, we were keeping tabs on our glucose level. When I was on higher range we used to take off for an hour, I used to concentrate on my hydration. So that was a big difference compared to 2019.

Carlton Reid 12:54
So you’re saying “we” there? So you obviously have a support team? And they’re helping you with a navigation and that they’re helping you with the glucose monitoring? Are they like, are they looking at your statistics as you’re riding along?

Kabir Rachure 13:07
Yeah, exactly. So that sensor is connected via Bluetooth on the mobile. So somebody from the following cycle. So there is always 24/7 Follow a call which follows me to keep me secure. And we are always connected with the Bluetooth system. So there used to be someone who used to check my glucose levels every arc to see how my body is doing with the nutrition. And they used to do all micro corrections when according to the heat, according to the cold weather. So yeah.

Carlton Reid 13:47
So in my wife’s a diabetes specialist, she’s a hospital paediatrician so I actually quite know quite a bit about diabetes, just from picking it up from her. So So an awful lot of the modern ways of of monitoring and coping with diabetes is there are pumps on your body that that feed you the insulin when you need it. So the equipment that you’re talking about here doesn’t do that. It just monitors how much you need and then you’ve got to physically put in the right amount of food is that right?

Kabir Rachure 14:20
Exactly. So how it works is there is a small carbon needle which goes into your skin and it gives you real time glucose levels, okay. So you have to train with it. You have to know your accurate levels. If I feel strong in 120 to 140 MG DL that that is not same with some other person. Okay, you have to know your own graph. Okay, sometimes I feel that I am pretty I’m riding strong when I’m my glucose is above 120 So I used to keep my glucose levels above 120 When I’m writing in RAM, okay, so we have to train with it, and we have to know our body. And thereafter we can do all these changes.

Carlton Reid 15:16
Do you find that using this in your everyday life as well? Or is this purely performance?

Kabir Rachure 15:22
No, actually, I use it in my everyday life, because as an athlete, and when you’re planning to do RAAM and all, you have to be fit 24/7. So I used to the habit 24/7, I used to monitor my glucose level, because I always do gym, yoga, even I’m working as a lawyer. So I have to pay attention to these glucose levels. So yeah, 24/7, I used to use it.

Carlton Reid 15:57
So you mentioned that you’re a lawyer that says an advocate in India. So I’m assuming your training has got to fit in with what I presume is a very, very busy job. And your training, there’s got to be quality, not always quantity, would that be right?

Kabir Rachure 16:15
Exactly. So a lot of people have understanding that. If you want to do RAM, you have to train for like 25 hours a week, or maybe 30 hours a week. But I always felt that it is always quality, what matters, not the quantity, because when you train more, you have to pay attention on your recovery. And if you don’t recover, well, then you’re going to damage your body. So I used to pay attention or my quality of the training.

Carlton Reid 16:50
So let’s hope for all of us we can ran just by running an hour,

Kabir Rachure 16:54
actually, because I just think that you have to do some long races, some good experience with it. And at the end of the day, Ram is all about your mental strength, and how do you cope up with your sleep? And how do you train because if you have good FTP, if you have good experience with the ultra day events, then your body knows how to survive with it.

Carlton Reid 17:22
Because it’s got to be you’re right about the mental stuff. And this is this is what I’m imagining is physical is one thing, but it’s it’s I’m just thinking of these hugely long roads in the Midwest, where they go on forever. They’re very straight, and it must be incredibly boring. So how do you how do you get past the stretches of America that are incredibly boring, long, long, neverending stretches.

Kabir Rachure 17:49
So I just wanted to share a very good incident what I encountered this time. So Arizona was pretty hot and 2019. So the temperature was about 55 degrees centigrade. And this year, I was mentally prepared for it. But this time I was on I was pretty pleasant like it went till 41 degrees Celsius maximum. And I knew in a long race like cram, nothing is going to be permanent. So if I’m getting a favourable condition at the start, there is something will go wrong on later part or maybe in mid part, and we finally got super strong crosswind in Kansas, and those patches are pretty straight. If it’s a crosswind, then it’s gonna be a crosswind for like 400 kilometres or maybe 200 kilometres and the crosswind was so strong, I was not able to guide beyond 1718 km pH on a flat route that is gradually down actually. So, so mentally I was prepared that it is going to happen and it is all about hanging there. So I knew that this is not even this is again not like permanent, okay, it is going to be changed the text will change and all but you have to train your mind accordingly that this is just going to be a face and it is going to pass. So yeah, this all is about keeping your head strong. And pushing till the finish line.

Carlton Reid 19:26
And hallucinations. You had no hallucinations this time compared to the first

Kabir Rachure 19:30
time exactly this time. I didn’t have any hallucinations. I was sleeping well. The feeling was proper. I was hydrating properly. I took proper sleep. And last times attempt in 2019 I literally forgot how to cycle and last 200 kilometres because you develop your mental fatigue and my who used to tell me that you have to pedal down and pedal you have To keep your balance, so it goes to that extent. And what you will do when you forget how to cycle in a bicycle guys, so that was pretty awkward. And luckily, I got my senses back when it was just 70 kilometres from the finish line. And I did my best average for that last 70 kilometre patch.

Carlton Reid 20:28
And tell me because the when there’s long stretches of nothing in Arizona, that 55 degree heat is like, it sounds incredible. But there’s no real huge worries about other vehicles and anybody running you off the road. But when you’re coming through cities, and you say the beginning and the end, I guess you’re then having to go through through traffic. So so how are you coping with that?

Kabir Rachure 20:57
There are a few states who are not cycle friendly. I think and the rest of the states are pretty helpful. I experienced a lot of vehicles were guiding, driving behind me and diving, diving for like 1010 minutes to get a sick, safe pass. Okay, so luckily, I get friendly people around me work not that the only trouble what we face is riding through the city in a daytime, you have to encounter a lot of traffic signals. So that breaks your momentum because you have to stop and you have to start again. And it is not something a training right? When we are bodies superfresh it is like you are guiding from last 10 days you are feeling sleepy, you don’t want to get out of your bike because your body will go go into rest mode. So that is the most irritating part. What I feel that encountering a lot of traffic signals.

Carlton Reid 22:09
Contrast as well. Because if you’ve if you’ve come from Arizona, and you’ve come through Kansas, where there’s just as long roads, and then you’ve suddenly got quite busy stuff, so you’re seeing literally the whole of America in one trip. So it must be a culture shock for anybody, not the fact that you come from India, but anybody would find that to be quite a big culture shock.

Kabir Rachure 22:33
Exactly. So I was even reading about the USA, and any US citizen visits 11 state states in his entire life average 11 states, and we crossed 13 states when we do RAM. So we actually cross more states than any US citizen. So that is huge. And as you said that the culture, of course that you can say it like Arizona that is entirely looks empty, like there are no homes for like 100 100 kilometres, everything is isolated, then you goes to Utah. That is pretty beautiful. It has some historical values. Then we entered into Colorado’s that is pretty cold. I climbed Wolf Creek pass and rain full time rain. So it was pretty enjoyable for me. Because riding in cold weather, I always enjoy it because I can push my body to some extent. And I don’t develop that fatigue. So I was enjoying that. And again, we enter into cancers and also everything changes like the landscape, the people. So yeah,

Carlton Reid 23:59
so tell me what are your plans? What are your next events? And are you going to be doing RAM again,

Kabir Rachure 24:04
of course, I’m going to do RAAM again in 2024 I’m planning to do it because this time I saw want to win it. And I can see that that is possible after doing for two times I know my negative points where I can improve where team can improve. And I have a lot of time and in 2023 I’m planning to do Race Around Austria, because that is very good guys. If we see at its climbing graph, so I still want to do the Race around Austria and 2023 and then RAAM in 2024

Carlton Reid 24:53
Thanks to Kabir Rachure there and now before I introduce Ruth Sutherland and my son Josh Here’s my co host David, with a message from our sponsor.

David Bernstein 25:05
Hey everyone, this is David from the Fred cast and the spokesmen and I’m here once again, to tell you about our amazing sponsor Tern Bicycles at www.ternbicycles.com t e r n bicycles.com Tern are committed to building bikes that are useful enough to ride every day and dependable enough to carry the people you love. Speaking of being able to ride every day as a spokesmen listener, I’m going to bet that you are the go-to consultant for your friends who want to ride but are an enthusiast and need some advice on what to buy. In that case, you may have people in your life for whom you just haven’t been able to recommend just the right bike considering their stature, age mobility issues or just plain hesitant to get back on a bike. Finally, those family members and friends can experience a new bike day with the all new Turn NBD new bike day Nbd. Okay, the NBDd has been specifically designed to be confidently easy to handle and easy to ride even. Even for those folks who might be as Josh Hon, team captain of Tern Bicycle says are smaller in size and have a hard time finding a bike that fits or older riders who might not have ridden a bike in a while or riders who might have balance or physical issues or riders who are just intimidated by the sheer size and weight of the average ebike. As Josh goes on to say the NBD will be refreshingly easy to hop aboard and ride. Now how can Josh be so confident in that? Well, it’s simple. The NBD has the lowest longest step through opening of any premium ebike. So if you know someone with a knee or a hip injury or or somebody who just can’t lift their leg over the top tube of a regular bike, this alone could make all the difference plus the NBD is designed with an ultra low centre of gravity and a longer wheelbase. And what does that mean? Well, it means that it makes it easy to balance and handle. And with a lowered bottom bracket and motor the NBD is stable for all riders and particularly inspires confidence for shorter cyclists because they can easily get their feet on the ground when they come to a stop. But the NBD isn’t just for shorter riders. As a matter of fact, it adjusts in seconds. Without tools by the way to fit riders from four foot 10 to six foot three or 147 to 190 centimetres. The NBD is also super comfortable with its upright riding position, swept handlebar suspension seatpost and wide 20 inch balloon tires need to load the NBD into a car. No problem, it folds flat in seconds. How about getting into it into a smaller living space? No sweat. The NBD includes Tern’s vertical parking features, you can roll the bike into a small elevator and park it in a corner of your apartment. Now with a max gross vehicle weight of 140 kilos that’s 308 pounds, the NBD can easily carry an extra passenger and plenty of cargo with up to 27 kilos on the rear rack and up to 20 kilos on the front rack. And in fact, it works with a wide range of Tern accessories and with most child seats, as I’ve said before, and this is important to me really important safety is a core value at turn. And that’s why the NBD frame and fork have been rigorously tested by one of Europe’s leading bike test labs. That’s also why turn chooses to use the Bosch motor and battery system. It’s one of the few systems on the market that meets and passes the UL standard for battery and electronics safety read the news and you know how important that is. Now the NBD comes in two models with prices starting at $3,899 or 3999 euros and bikes are going to start arriving in stores in Q1 of 2023. For more information about the NBD or any of Turn’s wide range of bikes, just head on over to ternbicycles.com Again, t e r n bicycles.com. We thank Tern for their sponsorship of the spokesmen podcast and we thank you for your support of Tern. Once again, thanks for allowing me this brief introduction everybody. And now let’s get back to Carlton and the spokesmen.

Carlton Reid 29:40
Thanks, David. And now over to Ruth Sutherland and Josh Reid.

Ruth Sutherland 29:47
Okay, it would it would it be possible to kind of have just a little three way warm up chat. So because you you might know a bit about me, but I don’t know anything at all about you Josh, apart from the fact that you’re a civil engineer but not for much longer and you like riding your bike? Yeah, just just so so so that we can feel comfortable with chatting instead of going in cold. Would that be okay? Yeah, of course.

Carlton Reid 30:11
Well, let’s let’s, let’s let’s go for that we can we can do that for everybody here, Ruth. So So Josh, tell us about yourself then.

Josh Reid 30:19
Well, I’ve ridden my bike almost all my life pretty much as I could walk I was I was put on a bike on my dad. And then we’ve been on the cycling holidays as kids and started racing, did a lot of racing when I was a kid, what kinda did a lot of road racing, as I was moving through the youth, and then the junior ranks, did some of the national series. And then after my A levels, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. So I left the country and I went on a working holiday visa in Canada for two years, planted trees in the summer and was a ski instructor in the winter. And that, like allowed me to, like with a tree planting anyway, the ski instructing didn’t make any money. But the tree planting allowed me to save a bit of money. So I was able to travel afterwards did a bit of bike touring, and then went on a on a big trip from with some friends around Southeast Asia and but my plan was to cycle home. So everything with me that I needed to, to ride a bike back from Asia. With me, it’s all upon us. Almost I can get all my tools, everything on my back. So I was like a turtle?

Ruth Sutherland 31:39
Did you take spare tires?

Josh Reid 31:41
Not spare tires. Pretty much everything else I’d need.

Carlton Reid 31:47
And what sort of price point you didn’t have a bike at this point did you, Josh?

Josh Reid 31:50
I didn’t know where I was getting from. Then, like I was gonna think in Cambodia, but the brands out there don’t really take products off the product line all the time. They’re not they’re like more batches. So I got in contact with Giant and they helped me out massively and went to their factory in Shanghai and cycled home from Shanghai.

Ruth Sutherland 32:14
Wow.

Carlton Reid 32:18
And then you’ve got a very, very popular video of that trip. Haven’t you? A YouTube video?

Josh Reid 32:24
Yeah, it’s doing doing very well. Over 2 million now.

Ruth Sutherland 32:28
Wow.

Josh Reid 32:30
So yeah, then want to try and make that a thing and do more trips and see if I can fund myself by by going on these trips.

Carlton Reid 32:42
So Ruth, same same questions to you then. Pub chat. Who are you? What do you do? And how do you get into cycling?

Ruth Sutherland 32:50
I’m just searching for Josh’s video. So I’m I’m at the opposite end of my of my career, I suppose Josh, because I I’ve got four grown up children who will be your sort of age, who started to do exactly the sort of things you were doing and going across the world having adventures that hadn’t really been an option for me when I was their age. And so I became quite envious. And my husband took early retirement. And it seemed a bit silly for me to be going out to work every day while he was home. And we both wanted to ride our bikes. So I took a gap year later in my life. And that was the start of over long periods of riding bikes. We we went off travelling we did we hadn’t been riding bikes, we’ve always I’ve always written a bike, but like you I kind of grew up with a bike. But I never did any competitive cycling or any sort of really serious cycling and I just had a functional bike and never really a bike was a bike to me in the in the old days. And now I have a shed full of bikes for every purpose as you probably identify with that my husband’s always been very competitive and he got into cyclocross racing. And after a couple of seasons pitting for him, I thought, Well, I’m here every weekend, I might as well ride. I might as well race myself, I might as well do this. And it wasn’t really for me about racing. It was just about having a having a workout, having a bit of fun having a ride of my bike instead of hanging around all day. But then I sort of got the bug and started, you know, seriously being interested in the race because I was in the veteran women’s category. So I found as I moved into a new age category, I was actually quite competitive in my in my category. So cyclocross kind of was something I did for a couple of years before locked down, but I wouldn’t say that it was a love of mine and I’m not really a competitive person in the same way you sound to be Josh. I I’m more sort of interested in competing with myself or challenging myself. I was never any good at sport when I was at school. And I used to always be the last one to be picked for teams and I was really slow runner. And so I’ve always had this sort of perception of myself as not really being an athlete. And these things, these things live with you. Anyway, we joined the gap year went off to New Zealand and we cycled an event called the TA which starts at the north tip of New Zealand and goes down to the southern South tip of New Zealand, it’s a brevet. And when it was the first time we’ve really done any serious bike packing, with some borrowed and some bought equipment, it was very much a sort of try it out and work out how it works. And that was so enjoyable and so successful that we came back to the UK and I decided to take another gap year or just to extend my gap year. And to cut a long story short, I’ve never actually been back to full time paid works. Just cycling is taking over my life. So I became I became a cycling coach. We both started doing some ride leading for British Cycling in the days when they had sky rides, and then Leps rides. And we joined a cycling club. And we I became, we both became mountain bike leaders and to take people out sort of on more wilderness trips. And we took part in quite a lot of organised by holidays and bike trips, we went to Chile, we went to Nepal. And then we went back to New Zealand and we did another long brevet, which was an inaugural event from east to west cape of the North Island. And then then, we ended up in Tasmania, just before lockdown, we went there for a race, a mountain bike race, a three day race called the dragon race. And as we landed, we were told the race was cancelled. And there was a global pandemic. And we’ve kind of been in the, in the back of beyond and hadn’t really been aware of the World News at that point. And that was the start of the of the COVID pandemic. So we eventually made our way back to the UK. And during locked down, we got involved with local cycling, we set up a community cycling group we opened a pop up bike shed my husband’s a good mechanic. And we’ve been sort of cycling from home with our local immediate community ever since then.

Carlton Reid 37:26
You’re both living the dream, but from different. You’re different ages. So you kind of like you’re gonna meet in the middle at some point. You’re both living the dream?

Ruth Sutherland 37:36
Yeah. Precisely.

Carlton Reid 37:41
Based on that, and the dream, there are better clarify that is lots and lots of cycling, because you’re clearly both doing tonnes and tonnes of cycling.

Ruth Sutherland 37:49
Yeah, indeed. Yes. The

Carlton Reid 37:51
So that kind of brings me into and the reason why we’re talking today apart from that sounds fascinating. That bit of all that background, I know that. But because you’re you’re a rookie, in a race that both of you did so. So All Points North, so just tell me what All Points North is.

Josh Reid 38:12
Ultra distance bike packing race. We all start in Sheffield. And there’s 10 checkpoints, you need to get to all over the north of England. And you’ve got them all on a Brevet card. And then you you go to all these checkpoints, take a timestamp photo, and then make your way back to Sheffield. And this is the first first one back wins, or? Well, it’s not always a race. But that’s pretty much the gist of the event.

Carlton Reid 38:43
So how long did it take basically

Josh Reid 38:47
took me 70 hours, I believe.

Carlton Reid 38:50
With you not sleeping much.

Josh Reid 38:52
I slept for an hour in total to half an hour now. But then, in my time was about 56 hours. So it’s it’s crazy how much time you you stop and don’t realise you’re stopping.

Carlton Reid 39:07
And now I’m going to ask you your route in a second. I’ll go back to Ruth first. So Ruth, how long did it take you? And did you have that same amount of sleep deprivation? Or were you a bit more sensible?

Ruth Sutherland 39:17
Well, I for me it was sleep deprivation. But compared with Josh, it was it was a lot more sensible. I’d worked on the principle that I would need about five or six hours off every 24 hours. For me it was a it was a case of entering the all points north being on the start line and then getting to the finish line. And it was going to take me as long as it took me I had no illusions that I was racing or anything and for me it was just a personal challenge to to get to all the points in the shortest possible time and to and to make it over the finishing line. So I suppose I set off with slightly different no ambition to Josh. I was I would think I was back in about 102 hours. So substantially longer, you know, like, like a whole day longer than Josh.

Carlton Reid 40:14
But I’m guessing here that the fact you finished means you’re still way up ahead of how many people actually started because an enormous amount of people, I’m guessing here, just don’t finish these events.

Ruth Sutherland 40:24
Yes to that there were there were I think there were 29 rookies, rookie riders of the people who’ve never done an event like this before. And we applied for sort of special dispensation that there were 30 places available to people who were given an eight hour start Headstart. Our our time was still measured in real time. So my, my 102 hours started eight hours before Josh’s 52 hours. I think that’s how it worked. But I got an eight hour head start, essentially. And off those people that started with me, two of us were were vying for the finish. And we came back within about four minutes of each other, but the other rider beat me into fifth place. So I was the sixth finisher, in the rookies. And I was very happy about that.

Carlton Reid 41:14
I bet. Yeah. So just tell me about your route, and why you chose that route. And then route, I’m gonna ask you exactly the same question. And let’s see where you differ here, just in not in time. But in routes.

Josh Reid 41:29
Well, at the start line, a lot of people were thinking about going towards the Lake District first to get all the hills out of the way. And I was thinking of going that way. And then I looked at the weather forecast, and it was tipping down with rain. So I changed my route last minute. And when I went to the East Coast, first up to Horney Mare, Mere, and headed towards Bamburgh Castle, and I didn’t have a drop of rain until the last two hours in the race. And a lot of people dropped out with hypothermia from going the wrong way. I think. So.

Carlton Reid 42:07
So that was a choice you’ve made and you’re happy with that choice? Yeah. Yeah,

Josh Reid 42:11
very, very happy. Even though the climbing was very back ended, that meant I wasn’t like suffering from hypothermia or struggling with a lot of rain.

Carlton Reid 42:22
As you can imagine doing those because they’re massive, massive hills in the Lake District doing that after 60 hours,

Josh Reid 42:29
I’d rather be dry.

Ruth Sutherland 42:31
Josh, I think that’s really interesting. And I think, as a rookie, I have been writing up my experience, and it’s just a whole series of rookie errors. And I think possibly my first rookie error was choosing to go round the course the opposite way to you. So I went clockwise, I headed off into the Yorkshire Dales into the storm didn’t pay the price, I suppose, because I was actually able to find somewhere to sleep. I carried the the gear and I didn’t use it on the whole race. But it was a huge comfort to me, as I was sort of pedalling into the unknown and not having any idea where I was going to finish each day, it was a huge comfort to know that I did have a very good bit of a setup that I could use if I needed to. However, the rain was a huge problem. And the wind was unfortunate, because I had a very, very strong headwind as I went from west to east across the northern hills. I think I had no flexibility on that start line because my was, was rehearsed and embedded and imprinted in my mind. And it had never crossed my mind to veer from that. And it made me quite agitated at the start when I heard other riders talking about, oh, well, I might just tweak my route. I might just as thinking how can you possibly, you know, taking all my energy and emotions to hold myself together, knowing the route I’m going to do the thought of changing that at the 11th hour was was just, you know, unthinkable?

Carlton Reid 44:09
We might change. Sorry? So would you change that then in a any future race you would you be more flexible? Or do you think you would always want to have that route in your head?

Ruth Sutherland 44:19
No, I would definitely be more flexible. I you learn a whole lot of lessons when you do an event like this. And I’ve I was looking at Josh’s route. And the it doesn’t it isn’t clear from the map on the on the website, which way round Josh went and I haven’t looked at his splits. But I imagined that he’d gone the same way as me because he did the tech points in almost the exact same order, but in reverse. So yeah, I’d be interested Josh, did you did you plan and rehearse that route? Had you heard you were you wedded to it before you set off?

Josh Reid 44:56
Not completely, but then this would be my first one. Ultra distance bike back and races Well, I’ve never done one before. I’ve done a lot of bike touring. And a lot of racing I thought was like a happy medium between the two. And then I’d booked onto the transcontinental, like three years ago for all the lock downs, but it’s been cancelled three years on the trot. So I thought I needed to do something like old points north or an event like this prior to the transcontinental. So I make all the mistakes in this one. And then I’m got more of an idea for the transcontinental which is my main goal for the season.

Carlton Reid 45:31
What mistakes did you make Josh? Well, we’ll describe what the transcontinental is in a second, What mistakes did you make you change,

Josh Reid 45:39
I would look at my route a lot more. Like I looked at it. The first bit was was okay. But then the back end of it, like, I basically just pick the shortest route possible. And what I didn’t realise is Halifax has some incredibly steep 30% climbs. And instead of just going on, on the main road, and relatively flat, I’d chosen the shortest route, which happened to go up every 30% climbing in Halifax, and with 600 miles in the legs that kind of kills you. But then there’s this climbs in the Lake District way, you’re gonna have to go over anyway, like rhinos, and no matter when, whether you do that first or last, it’s always gonna be a grind, and it’s always gonna hurt. So I didn’t really think that was a didn’t really matter when I did it, it’s always gonna be

Carlton Reid 46:31
about equipment choice, because gloves would have helped wouldn’t a big gel gloves. So tell us about that.

Josh Reid 46:37
So like, even like two weeks later, my hands still vibrating a little bit from not wearing any gloves and just the vibrations from the road. And so some of the shortcuts I took on that, that route, were a bit sketchy. So I’d go on like bridleways and trying to cut off little sections of road shortcuts, what weren’t always shortcuts, having to fall through rivers and stuff. Yeah, definitely a lot more route planning as needed for future events.

Carlton Reid 47:10
So Ruth, same same question to you, and especially about equipment, would you would you change equipment in future, right?

Ruth Sutherland 47:19
The only elements of my equipment that was worrying and and unsettling was a rim mounted Dynamo that I had been given as a present. And I had used it on training rides, and was confident with how it functioned. And that I knew, you know, I knew what to do with it. But my mistake was that I hadn’t really used in anger, I hadn’t gotten to the point where all of my power packs were empty, and all of my devices had lost charge. And I needed to get power from my Dynamo as my only option. And when I got to that point, partway around the ride in a really remote place, I discovered that the Dynamo had significant limitations in its ability to or my ability to pedal to make it generate power, because it only generates power above a certain speed, and it needs a certain distance at that speed to activate the the internal generator. So at a certain speed, I had to go two or three kilometres before anything happened. And then as soon as I hit a hill and my speed reduced, I lost that power. And I also lost the internal sort of generator power. And so on hilly terrain, my Dynamo really did not work to do what I needed it to do. It did work on long flat sections laterally in the ride, but at the time that I needed it, it was a real crisis. And so I had basically my my message here as to myself is that I needed to have pre tested my equipment better. But in terms of the equipment, I carried personal equipment, I was really well equipped. I had some really good lightweight kits used every single thing that I took with the exception of my bivvy bag or my bivvy gear which stayed packed in the bottom of my rear carrier bag for the entire trip but I wouldn’t have gone without it. And I was going to say to you Josh, what did you carry? Did you did if you intended not to sleep? Did you take anything for for an emergency or were you just relying on the foil blanket that they issued on the start line?

Josh Reid 49:41
Well, I definitely on the start line I was second guessing myself and thinking do I take my baby do I take my sleeping bag because that just looking at other people’s bikes you kind of second guess yourself and yeah, I did take my baby and took a sleeping bag and I’m very glad for it was a 30 hour 30 minute Kip In a bus stop, and a 30 minute kid on a park bench. So I rode through the first night, the whole way through and then the second and the third night had half an hour Kip in each one. And it’s like it without those sleeps I would have been struggling on the downhills just to stay upright, really, I needed I needed to get my head down for just those half an hour and helps massively.

Carlton Reid 50:21
And you set an alarm on your watch or something or you did say wake me up in half an hour.

Josh Reid 50:28
I did. But I tended to wake up before the alarm, you’ve just got so much adrenaline pumping through you and thinking I need to keep on writing that you just wake up anyway.

Ruth Sutherland 50:39
I’ve heard other people say that Josh, about the transcontinental and another really long races that actually you become able to just lie down in a ditch and take a power nap for 30 minutes and then get back on your bike. And I found even though I was I was sleeping for two hours, maybe once I slept for three hours. But I always set an alarm. And I always woke up before my alarm. And I was back on my bike before, you know before I’d planned to be back on it. So it is it’s amazing what your body can do. And it’s amazing how how that sleep wait pattern?

Josh Reid 51:15
Yeah, I feel like it’s very, very different in a race stitching up scenario where you think you need to keep on going. Yeah. But before before I did this event, and thinking of the trans content over here, and like you have three, four hours of sleep at night. I was like, wow, that’s that’s not very much and then doing this and only having half an hour in the second or third night, then it’s like opened my eyes as I realise this is this is okay, this is this is doable.

Carlton Reid 51:44
I did this go back, sorry, go back to light just because Ruth was talking about having dynamo, you didn’t go down that route. I know you’ve thought about that route. But did tell me about the power options you have.

Josh Reid 51:59
I’m using Exposure lights so that they last a long, long time. So my rear lasts 40 hours, and then the front lasts for 36. And then I’ve got a battery pack for the front as well. And Exposure one. And I didn’t like with that short amount of race, you’re not going to be riding for long enough that those would run out. So I just think by using a dynamo and it costing you some of your power. It’s just it’s not worth it. And then for stuff like the transcontinental I think you’re going to be going in hotels and being able to charge so I just think I’ve gone for the no Dynamo option.

Carlton Reid 52:41
And that same for your electronics, your charging from a removable Power Pack.

Josh Reid 52:46
Yeah, so yeah, just got two power packs and charge on my phone and the white computer with with those.

Carlton Reid 52:56
So tell me now, right. Yep, just about the trend. We’ve mentioned this a few times. What is the transcontinental? Where does it start? Where does it finish? How long will it take?

Josh Reid 53:04
So it starts in Belgium up the up the famous climbing in tour Flanders. it wiggles its way all the way to to Bulgaria, on the Black Sea coast through like four checkpoints. I think 2500 Miles should take 10 days to two weeks. But we’ll see. Got that in a month’s time.

Carlton Reid 53:36
That’s July. So that’s probably one of your it will be with the heat wave. And Ruth, what have you got planned next? Have you got any more now that you’ve done this and you’ve you’re the rookie rider, financing and really good place there? What’s your what’s your your your next potential event?

Ruth Sutherland 53:57
Well, when I got off my bike, first thing my husband said to me was, I hope you’re not going to acquire a taste for these events. And my reply was, I am doubting whether I’m ever going to get on a bike and then less than bone do another event. But that was that was two weeks ago now. And it’s funny, isn’t it? How? How your point of view changes. And I kind of feel it’s it’s my time because I’m not getting any younger. And I’m not going to you know, I haven’t I can’t put these things off and think oh, I might I might do that in five years time, because I might be in a bath chair in five years time. So I think I probably have to start thinking about what I might do next. But I haven’t actually started about that. I’m still a little bit like you Josh. I did wear gloves and I too have got really numb fingertips particularly on my right hand. And I still feel I’m feeling the effects and I think that’s possibly to do with being a bit older and probably to do with having been less fit than you to start with. But yeah, my legs stopped aching and my bodies sort of coming around. But I feel that the four days took a real toll on my on me physically. So I’ve not thought about what’s next. I don’t know if you’ve got any suggestions, Josh?

Josh Reid 55:24
Not sure, I’m pretty … there’s a lot of a lot of events like coming out the interesting ones but not really thought about anything after the Transcontinental I’ve just been so focused on that for the last three years basically.

Ruth Sutherland 55:38
Did you ever need to did you read Ian Walker’s endless perfect circles? No, he describes the Transcontinental race, it’s an extremely good read, I really strongly recommend it. And that was, that was one of the things that inspired me to do the all points north.

Carlton Reid 55:56
It’s been on the show. He’s a he’s a good friend of the show in his he’s a fabulous athlete as well, again, another person who just sleeps for half an hour in a bus stop. Yes, and and then gets back back on his bike.

Ruth Sutherland 56:10
And in his book, he describes the the, the process of becoming, sort of refining his technique of going from being a rookie himself, being a beginner and making all the mistakes and learning from them and doing it differently next time. So he described a series of different races. And it’s very, very readable. And yeah, I’d love to meet him, huh?

Carlton Reid 56:34
Yes. Ian’s a nice guy, and a fabulous athlete, and a great psychologist as well, of course. So you don’t know exactly what you’re going to be doing next, Ruth, but you haven’t dragged your husband into doing one of these events. He’s definitely not going to , by the sound of it, he’s not going to join you.

Ruth Sutherland 56:53
He’s, he’s fond of his sleep. And the thoughts that we’ve in the past done, we’ve done 24 hour races together like the the mountain mayhem, and he’s hated every every lap that he’s had to drag himself out of bed to ride in the middle of the night. Still written really well. But I think I think I think it’s unlikely that I’ll persuade him. Who knows?

Carlton Reid 57:19
See, I’ve done the mountain mayhem. And I’ve done the 24 hour events and my logic there. This is what I told Josh, when he was doing this event that you’ve you’ve both done is just finish, that’s got to be your goal. Just finish. Because when you’re doing a long distance event, and I found this with the 24 hour mountain bike event is if you finish you basically place because so many people just overcook. You know, they they you can see they’re so the adrenaline kicks in, you go faster, you try and keep up with people. And it’s like, Be not really racing against other people. In many respects, you are just trying to just finish the event. And that that, to me was always the goal. And I always found that actually came up relatively high in the rankings, just because so many people just overcook themselves. So that must be an incredible temptation, you must but the question to both of you, you must have to really bring back your competitive spirit. Because you can’t be chasing after people who, for instance, in a 24 hour mountain bike event, it could be a team for so it can be one person who’s actually relatively fresh, and it’s not a solo rider. So you mustn’t go chasing after people is what I’m trying to say. Is that something that you physically have to stop yourself doing, Ruth and then just the same question.

Ruth Sutherland 58:41
It is, but the All Points North is quite a lonely event. Because I don’t know about you, Josh, but I didn’t really encounter many other riders. And although I was very keen to be dot watching to see what was going on in the overall event and around me, I became very anxious about the amount of power that I had left. So I spent a lot of time with my devices all switched off, because I wanted to preserve what power I had. So I wasn’t really able to watch what other people were doing. The times that I was aware that the only time really that I was aware that I was neck and neck with someone was as I was coming into the finish for the last for the last sort of five hours. There was somebody who had been riding overnight and was closing in on me a much younger, faster seeming rider. And that did really spur me on because I think I would have I think I would have been like a snail otherwise getting back from home and the mere. It’s the most tedious straight section of writing that you could possibly imagine. And my legs were were finished and I was very hungry. I was exhausted. I fell off my bike at Horsey Mere just turning round an 880 degree turn from the control I just literally fell off and I couldn’t unclip and I just burst into tears and thought I’m never going to finish this race. And then it was the knowledge that someone was worth close that made me think guesser get back on your bike, you can do it, you can do it. And so yes, it is a motivating thing.

Carlton Reid 1:00:12
And Josh, what about you? Were you were you dot watching? Were you looking at other people when when you met them on the course? Maybe you met more than the room? Did you go faster? Do you always thinking No, I’ve got to stay with my own limits. Forget other people.

Josh Reid 1:00:25
Oh, no, I’m very bad at getting egged on by other people. The first like, it was so much fun. It was like an Alleycat race. The first little bit like people weaving in and out of different routes, you’d be riding on a road and then someone else’s swing onto your road. And you’d be egged on by them to carry on to try and chase them down. Yeah, it was so much fun that that first little bit. And then you just got to get your head down. And I would I would be watching the dots and seeing where other people were.

Carlton Reid 1:00:58
But would you then go faster to try and catch up? Or would that demotivate you what was the dot watching doing to your head?

Josh Reid 1:01:06
Oh, it was definitely motivating to start with and then through the night, you’d see your red lights in the distance and you’d chase after those. Yeah, that really helped. And then then I started getting punctures on my on my rear tire and I couldn’t couldn’t see that with the, the sealant so I had to put a tube in, in my rear tire. But because I couldn’t resist the tubeless I couldn’t get the valve out of my wheel. So luckily a kind guy in a recumbent came past and lent me some tools to take off. But then

Carlton Reid 1:01:45
you disqualified yourself basically. Yeah. You’re not allowed to you’re not allowed to get help.

Josh Reid 1:01:50
No. So I rang the organisers and told them what happened basically disqualify myself. But I still wanted to finish the race and see what time I could get it all preparation for the transcontinental ready

Carlton Reid 1:02:05
and let’s let’s talk about food. Because you mentioned a walker before and the conversation I had with him he he’s said on on his his long distance rides. He’s done the one from Norway as well. He just went into and this turns out a lot of riders were doing it they would go into the service stations and buy these crappy crappy croissants filled with with gloop. And he said he would never eat this normally, but they’re incredibly calorific. And he would just eat you know, loads of them and read them sickened himself by these these these horrible, horrible Garriage kuasa croissants? Are there any food options? Because obviously you join one, obviously, but Josh, you’re vegan. So you’re kind of like giving yourself an extra bit of a hill to climb. They’re just on your food choices. So what did you eat? How did you eat? And would you change anything? And I’ll ask the same question in a second.

Josh Reid 1:03:04
I set off with a lot of food. So I had my pocket stuffed I’d like three bananas, two blocks and marzipan. A couple of saurians gels and these banana leaf wrapped energy products from Colombia called Lucho Dillitos those I think and yeah so you just open them just pack for the sugar and then you check the banana leaf because it’s biodegradable and then that lasted me pretty much through the first two days really well the night and then the whole first day and then got to Carlisle basically stopped at my first place to stock up got a McDonald’s which I wouldn’t usually get a the vegan new vegan burger and then pack myself with four vegan sausage rolls and just kept on kept on going but yeah, I carried a lot of food start with probably weighed myself down quite a bit. I only really need to stop to to get water

Carlton Reid 1:04:07
and where do you think your food choices through the ride? were the right ones you did okay on food or did you did you run out of energy?

Josh Reid 1:04:15
I never run out of energy. I was I was eating constantly. I knew I knew I had to keep on eating. And I also like before the event started I had a lot I don’t mess about like 500 grammes of pasta. So off off the start line how I felt really sick. Like almost as if I was going to throw up for the first like four, four or five hours partly because of nerves. But I think in the long run it did me really well because even though I was digesting for those first five hours, like it made the blood sugar and kept my energy going the whole way through.

Carlton Reid 1:04:50
And Ruth, what was your your food strategy?

Ruth Sutherland 1:04:54
Um, I think I’ve had a lot of experience of feeding myself on a Long Distance and endurance events. And I feel that that’s something that I’m very, very comfortable with. And I know what works for me. And I don’t like eating junk and I don’t like eating sugars and gels. So I try and get my nutrients from natural products. I, I also set off with bananas, and two substantial granary, cheese and tomato sandwiches, one for eating that day and one potentially for eating through the night or for breakfast the next day. And I’d eyeballed where, and at what times a day I would be able to stop to pick up food. And it worked pretty well. I did have one desperate moment where I hate to admit this because I’ve never been in before but I went into a Burger King, which was the only thing that was open. And what I suppose I really prayed with was a bag of chips, just something faulty and something hot and comforting and filling. But I made the mistake of buying what I thought was an Aberdeen Angus steak in abundance. I think it was it was some terrible it was terrible thing I had I was so guilty and so ashamed of myself, I had to WhatsApp my family and confess. And that was a mistake because that didn’t go down well or stay down very well. But the rest of my food I managed to have I managed to have some hot soup somewhere. I’ve managed to have some decent pick up some decent sandwiches on Route. I didn’t ever go into a supermarket I didn’t want to leave my bike. So I just literally picked up what I could I had a good feast at a station cafe in oxen home. I think from for me the the eating and the feeding. Went well I didn’t carry on like you Josh. I didn’t go out laden, I didn’t carry an excess of food. And I did have I did have my obligatory emergency rations stuffed down with my beefy gear and I didn’t break into those. So I always knew that if the worst came to the worst, I had enough calories there to keep me going for a few more hours.

Carlton Reid 1:07:09
And what are you riding? Ruth? What’s What’s the bike that you’re riding, the type and the brand.

Unknown Speaker 1:07:16
It’s a Specialized Ruby, which is I think it’s a women’s specific version of the Roubaix. It’s a beautiful lightweight road bike with some suspension in the in the front stem and in the seat post.

Carlton Reid 1:07:34
Because Josh you were running a gravel bike so so so Ruth why are you riding a road bike? Do you have a gravel bike, do most people doing this on road k? What were people riding when you were starting on the start line?

Ruth Sutherland 1:07:49
I think there was a there was a complete mixture. Josh, would you agree with that? There was there was a really a really wide range of different bikes. I was surprised.

Josh Reid 1:07:57
Yeah, as people on really fast road bikes and people are on more of a touring setup.

Ruth Sutherland 1:08:03
And I saw one woman riding on a mountain bike.

Josh Reid 1:08:08
Oh, wow. That would have been tough.

Ruth Sutherland 1:08:09
Yes, it would have been tough. So I put I put tougher tires and higher volume tires on my road bike, the largest that would be accommodated by that by the fall. I have got two cyclocross bikes. I haven’t got a gravel bike. And my cyclocross bikes are not as comfortable to ride in this bike. I was really happy and I also had tri-bars. And that was one of the things that I don’t know whether I would do again, I didn’t really use them in anger until the very last day when I had that very long straight stretch. You can’t benefit I don’t think very much from resting on tri-bars when you’re in very hilly terrain. And it does put maybe 1.2 kilo kilos on the the weight of the bike I think so. It’s always a bit of a trade off isn’t it?

Carlton Reid 1:09:02
So just what are you riding and you were riding with tri-bar so describe how how much you use them?

Josh Reid 1:09:08
I use them quite a lot. I try and get into them as much as possible and more to just change the position and get the weight off the hands than anything. Yeah, I’m running a giant revolt. Gravel bikers just the same not the same bike but the same type of bike that I rode back from China and I’ve had great experiences with it. I’ve never really had any issues. And then I took the gravel tires off and put some Hutchinson sector road tires on so just the email. Still pretty wide but smooth to lower the rolling resistance and then running Arkel bags and so add a seat Packer on frame bag and then a top to your bag but that was pretty much it and stuff to Robens mountain bivvy with a sleeping bag and then your tri bars with the Exposure light and Giant computer Stages computer mountain to the top onto the tri bars using a I think it’s 76 Projects like 3d printed thing that goes on to the dry bars and you’re able to fit the exposure like on the computer onto onto one thing.

Ruth Sutherland 1:10:32
Oh, that’s really neat.

Carlton Reid 1:10:35
Thanks to Kabir Rachure, Josh Reid and Ruth Sutherland for joining me. And thanks to you for listening to episode 302 of the spokesmen cycling podcast, show notes and more can be found on the-spokesmen.com. The next episode is a chat with American urbanists Sara Studdard and Zoe Kircos, meanwhile get out there and ride.

18th June 2022

The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast

EPISODE 300: Chef’s Bike Tour of Sardinia

SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles

HOST: Carlton Reid

GUESTS: Tourissimo guides, tour guests and US chef Mary Sue Milliken

TOPICS: 38-minute travelogue of the Chef’s Bike Tour of Sardinia by Tourissimo. Sardinia’s so-called Blue Zone has many locals living robustly into their nineties and beyond, with a much higher than normal concentration of centenarians including Uncle Julio who was still cycling at 104. Show — topped and tailed with Cantu a tenore folk singing — also includes some chomping of Sardinia’s banned-in-the-EU mountain cheese riddled with live maggots.

LINKS:

Tourissimo’s Chef’s Bike Tour of Sardinia

Cantu a tenore folk singing

Maggot-riddled cheese

TRANSCRIPT:

Carlton Reid 0:10
Welcome to Episode 300 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was published on Saturday 18th of June 2022.

David Bernstein 0:24
The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Tern bicycles. The good people at Tern are committed to building bikes that are useful enough to ride every day, and dependable enough to carry the people you love. In other words, they make the kind of bikes that they want to ride. Tern has e bikes for every type of rider. Whether you’re commuting, taking your kids to school, or even caring another adult, visit www.tern bicycles.com. That’s t e r n bicycles.com to learn more.

Carlton Reid 1:04
Hey there, I’m Carlton Reid and along with my fellow podcasting dinosaur David Bernstein we’ve been bringing you this Spokesmen cycling podcast since 2006. Episode 200 in September 2018 had clips from 12 years of narrowcasting and now that we’ve reached the giddy heights of 300 episodes over 16 years it’s time for another diversion from our usual format. So, instead of a guest interview or a roundtable chat recorded over Zoom this episode was recorded in situ, in Sardinia, and it’s all about good food, cycling and living longer. It’s a travelogue of my recent trip to the Italian island, where it was discovered that the diet, daily exercise, and communal conviviality in Sardinia’s so-called Blue Zone contributed to many locals living robustly into their nineties and beyond, with a much higher than normal concentration of folks blowing out 100 or more candles on their birthday cakes. You’ll hear about Uncle Julio, still cycling at 104, and you’ll maybe recoil in horror as I chomp down on some specially-procured, banned-in-the-EU mountain cheese riddled with live maggots. Back in the day, mountain shepherds had to eat some pretty ripe old stuff. I was on a Chef’s bike tour, a foodie special from Italian cycle travel company Tourissmo. This was the company’s fifth such tour, but the first in Sardinia. We were accompanied by American chef Mary Sue Millican who I interviewed as we cycled uphill so, yes, there will be some panting in this show. And, as you may have already gathered, this isn’t our usual theme music. Instead, it’s a traditional Sardinian folk song and you can listen to a full and amazing seven minutes of another traditional song from an all-male quartet at the end of the show. Meanwhile, here’s my from-the-saddle intro as I pedal away from the Su Gogolone hotel, trying to catch up with the 12 guests and three guides also on this Chef’s tour of Sardinia …

Well, welcome to episode 300 of the spokesmen cycling podcast. On a Tourissmo holiday, bike holiday, chef’s bike tour in Sardinia. I got here by Tern folding like, two ferries and five trains and I’m now on a climb, beautiful asphalt road, that’s been resurfaced.

There’s the odd car coming past; the scenery is stunning; which you kind of get expect I guess when you’re coming to Sardinia but we are on the borders of the Blue Zone and the Blue Zone is that area that was kind of discovered 30, 40 years ago where there’s a bunch of people living here they realise in this tiny geographical area in the mountains of Sardinia are living longer than most of the people around the world. So, the highest concentration of centenarians, the highest concentration of people who are 100 years old and plus,

Renato Matta 5:06
We are now in the core of the Blue Zone. We are in the municipality of Baunei. And precisely this is called the plateau of the Colgo, which is a limestone plateau about 700 metres on the sea level, the macro region is the Ogliastra is called, okay, the blue zone area is a small part of this small region.

Carlton Reid 5:29
That’s Renato Matta, a former accountant and one of our Sardinian tour guides. I asked him to tell me about Uncle Julio.

Renato Matta 5:40
Unfortunately, he died two years ago at the age of one hundred and five years old, so not that bad. But the beautiful thing is, he is my idol is my idol. Because every day I saw him cycling his bike till the age of 104. And what happened, happened that he fell off fell off the bike. So the ambulance arrived soon, he didn’t have any anything. But you know, considering the age, of course, they were worried. They called the daughter. And the daughter asked, please tell me what kind of medicine he is getting medicine. Nothing, he doesn’t need anything, he is perfect. And yeah, he was very healthy, no glasses. So absolutely no glasses, all the teeth in place. Unbelievable. And I remember this fantastic character. Because I remember one day I was waiting for the doctor and the doctor was late so I time to chat with him outside. And he was telling this you know, it was complaining about the song because the song is too lazy, he’s wasting his life watching TV all day long, sitting on the couch doing nothing. And a certain point I realised but, sorry uncle Julio, but how old is your son? He is 80!

Carlton Reid 7:02
If the secret to living longer is to be content with your lot then Renato is an example of how switching careers can boost happiness,

Renato Matta 7:12
This is what I call my second life. My first life after my secondary school, I went to university I have a degree in economics. So I started doing accountancy for about 10 years. In the meantime, I was doing tours for a British tour operator, but once a once a year, so a week here or two weeks a year, it was the here I start in the 1999 then the business start growing a lot. So in a certain point they told me okay you know what, we need a full time person here working with us because the business has grown a lot. You are the most expert now because you know we started with you. So if you like to change you know completely your your job we will appreciate that so I spoke with my wife about that time, she said well go for that go for that you won’t survive doing accountancy. We can have less money, no problem but a better life. And believe me that’s what I realised what I realised more quality my life less money a bit less. But definitely the quality. And I do what I like to do, you know.

Carlton Reid 8:33
And here comes more food.

Renato Matta 8:35
Oh my God. We are going now straight to the water fountain which is down the road on the right leaving the hotel on the right. Okay. The big cog in the front you mean the cog just push this to go down to the smallest one and you’re approaching the climb? Like this?

Yeah. Okay what what is it dropping? This it? Let me check No, no, no too much

Ay-yo is in Sardinia the probably the most used word, means let’s go. Aye-yo means what are you ****ing saying. The culture, it’s part of the culture. 14. One four. Kms. Less than 10 miles.

Massimo Carboni 9:47
Minor roads. Countryside roads. And we’re going to see also old Roman bridge

Carlton Reid 9:55
I rode to catch up with our embedded chef. According to Wikipedia, Mary Sue Milliken is an American chef restauranteur, cookbook author, and radio and TV personality. She’s also, and this is not in Wikipedia, she is also a strong rider opting for a carbon road bike rather than an electric flatbar bike. She cooked for us a couple of times on the tour. And she also decorated our tables with wildflowers picked from the roadside.

So as you’re riding along are you thinking menus? What are you thinking? Thinking? I want to pick that plant there. I’m going to put that in.

Mary Sue Milliken 10:35
Well, I do you have a wandering eye for plants?

Carlton Reid 10:39
I’ve seen I’ve noticed.

Mary Sue Milliken 10:40
Especially wildflowers.

Carlton Reid 10:41
Yeah, that’s also a good excuse to stop.

Mary Sue Milliken 10:44
Exactly.

Carlton Reid 10:46
Just happens to be a wildflower.

Mary Sue Milliken 10:48
Well, every day I pick a different colour. Yesterday was purple. Today I’m deciding between white and pink. Or maybe yellow. But I don’t usually collect until the second half of the ride. Which today is gonna be all downhill. I didn’t like to get too married to any one idea. Till I’ve seen the entire palette. Yeah, and then I can.

Carlton Reid 11:11
So I’m working here, but you’re working here too. So this evening, you’re going to be cooking for us?

Mary Sue Milliken 11:16
Oh, yeah.

But I’m not cooking the whole meal.

Carlton Reid 11:21
So you’re cooking like the signature sauce?

Mary Sue Milliken 11:24
No, I totally thought I was cooking but now okay, I’ve learned that I can do anything I want with the panna carasau.

Carlton Reid 11:32
So, incredibly fine. thin bread, right?

Mary Sue Milliken 11:37
They also call it carta de musica because you can read a piece of sheet music through the dough which is cool. So I could make a lasagna with that for example. Yeah. So who knows?

Carlton Reid 11:52
Maybe dips?

Mary Sue Milliken 11:53
Yep, maybe

dips. Although I didn’t see anything in the garden to

Carlton Reid 11:58
You’re gonna be looking in the garden in the hotel. I already Yeah,

Mary Sue Milliken 12:00
I already checked it out. tonnes of herbs, few tomatoes. Lots of fennel, eggplant’s not there yet just flowers. What else? Chard, a lot of swiss chard. Like I said it’s all in there percolating. And something will come out.

Carlton Reid 12:24
When not cooking, Mary Sue would learn some local culinary technique or other. On this particular evening she would be helping to make filendeu, or the wire of god, a very thin pasta that only a handful of people still know how to make. We were to get a demonstration from a pasta granny, and then follow Mary Sue by trying to make some. I failed, by the way.

Mary Sue Milliken 12:53
I want to learn how to make it. Okay, you can watch me learn but I’m dying to learn how to make the fin der lay you. How do you call it fin de lou?

Massimo Carboni 13:04
Prego?

Mary Sue Milliken 13:04
The pasta is called fin delay you?

Massimo Carboni 13:08
Filendeu.

Mary Sue Milliken 13:09
Filendeu.

Massimo Carboni 13:10
It means the Wire of God.

Mary Sue Milliken 13:12
the white?

Massimo Carboni 13:14
The wire of God

Mary Sue Milliken 13:16
the wire

Massimo Carboni 13:16
of God

Mary Sue Milliken 13:17
of God

Massimo Carboni 13:18
Finden lay you.

Fil is wire. Deu is God.

Mary Sue Milliken 13:19
Deu.

Filen … sorry, sorry.

Liz Cheshire 13:26
Fille is wire in Italian and then

Massimo Carboni 13:37
Si, filendeu in Sardinian.

Mary Sue Milliken 13:39
Filler day you. Filendeu. Wow.

Massimo Carboni 13:45
I think they’re ready. The lady’s coming by now to prepare the pasta.

the mother in law was the only one who could do this in the world. she passed the tradition to her so her mother in law taught to her and to the other daughter in law. Yeah. So at the end, the pasta will be cooked with the land meat soup and pecorino cheese. Pecorino cheese, and pecorino cheese a little bit acid.

Mary Sue Milliken 14:38
Old? Aged?

Beppe Salerno 14:49
Firmer and elastic.

Mary Sue Milliken 14:51
Firm and elastic. She makes it look so easy, mine just breaks. If I have just maybe a little more water

Carlton Reid 15:15
We didn’t just get demonstrations of how to make the local delicacies that have helped the locals live so long we also heard from experts, such as Spanish dietitian, Anna Maria Canelada who gained her PhD after studying Sardinian centenarians. Incidentally, she told me about her time sharing an apartment in Malaga with actor Antonio Banderas and film director Pedro Almodovar but I quizzed her first about the Blue Zone diet, especially the wonderful cheeses

Anna Maria Canelada 15:50
Casu Axedu cheese is like a yoghurt but this acidophilus is a type of yoghurt is not exactly as yoghurt said that different type of fermentation is very light it’s very fresh and it’s not salted does it have any salt except from the natural salt that the milk has a nice very protect[ive functions] because it has the whey and the whey is the most perfect protein and they will drink it together with a bread, the pistoccu. Pistoccu was a little bit thicker than the carta de musica and it will preserve even longer for more than six months and it’s very variable it’s very nutritious and it was made with barley, part wheat part barley, which barley has all these properties because it’s it’s very good for the microbiome is very good also for the glycemic index that doesn’t raise it so much as wheat and and together with the protein and also the cheese was full [fat] cheese, not ricotta. The Casu Axedu was complete fat so it was perfect for the morning. In the evening they will eat ricotta that which is deprived of fat and it’s lighter for the night or they will drink a glass of milk but they will always use sheep or goat milk. They didn’t … why the children in Sardinia are they are the healthiest in Italy with the the lower max index of all Italy. And because they follow the tradition they the families have the responsibility to explain they would have is not not only the way of living but also the way of eating so they learn how to cook with their grandmothers. They know how to do their …

Carlton Reid 17:49
And one of grandmother’s favourite cheeses might have been Casu Martzu. It’s a Sardinian exotic, exotic because the sale of it is banned by the EU. Guinness World Records says it’s the “world’s most dangerous cheese.” Why? Casu Martzu is riddled with live maggots, and we got to try some …

Village voices 18:19
Look, there are lots of worms inside. A lot a lot a lot. Look at this one. Maggots yeah ready yeah shame no just don’t have any flavour, maggots don’t have any flavour.

Carlton Reid 19:00
I’m getting a maggot.

Michael Dimaggio 19:06
Okay, get this.

Carlton Reid 19:07
It’s tasty!

Michael Dimaggio 19:16
Keep chewing, keep chewing.

David Bernstein 19:17
Hey, all you spokesmen listeners, I hope you’ll excuse the interruption. But this is David from the Fred cast and the spokesman. And I want to take a few minutes out of the show to talk to you about our sponsor Tern bicycles at www.tern bicycles.com. That’s t e r n, like the bird bicycles.com Tern are committed to building bikes that are useful enough to ride every day, and dependable enough to carry the people you love. Now, last time, I told you about Tern’s Quick haul ebike but today I want to talk to you about a sibling to the Quick haul. And that is the Short haul compact cargo bike. The Short haul is a practically priced wait till the end for the price. You’re gonna love it cargo bike that’s been designed to get a rider plus an extra passenger and cargo from home to work, to school, and everywhere in between. And I think that when you see a Short haul, you’ll realise that it may be unlike any cargo or city bike you’ve ever seen. That’s because most cargo bikes are big and unwieldy. And most city bikes while they’re easy enough to handle well, they’re just they’re just not able to carry much cargo. And that I think is why Tern designed the short haul. The Short haul is shorter than a regular city bike making it nimble and yeah fun to ride. But it was also designed with an extra long wheelbase and low centre of gravity then that gives you a stable ride even when you’re carrying heavy loads. In other words, the Short haul offers the best of both worlds packing a sturdy build and a hefty cargo capacity into a compact package that just simply rides better. With a mass Max gross vehicle weight of 140 kilos or just under 310 pounds. The short haul can easily carry an extra passenger and plenty of cargo. It’s got extra long extra strong rear rack and that is rated to carry a hefty 50 kilos or about 110 pounds. And it can be configured to carry a child and a child seat, an older kid, a small adult, maybe even a dog. In addition to its rear cargo capacity, it can also carry up to 20 kilos or about 44 pounds with an optional front mounted rack. Oh. And the Short haul accepts a wide range of Tern accessories, frankly to many dimension here, so that you can carry everything from a yoga mat to fishing poles to an ice chest or as I said before, even the family dog, and because of its size, you can easily manoeuvre in crowded or small places, including buses and trains plus like the quick haul, the short haul includes Tern’s vertical parking feature, so you can roll the bike into an elevator and park it in a corner of your apartment. Now, like I said before, safety is a core value at Tern. So that’s why the Short haul was designed and independently tested to ensure rider safety and that’s also why they use respected independent testing labs and why every turn bike undergoes rigorous testing to ensure that every bike meets or exceeds comprehensive safety standards. Oh and did I mention the price before we’ll get this at a suggested retail of $1,099 or 1249 euros. The Short haul is turned most affordable cargo bike yet. Bikes are scheduled to start arriving in stores in q3 of 2022. So start getting your orders in now. And for more information about the short haul or any of terms wide range of bikes, just head on over to tern bicycles.com That’s t e r n bicycles.com We thank turned for their sponsorship of the spokesmen podcast. And we thank you for your support of Tern. Also, thanks for allowing this brief interruption, everyone. And now back to Carlton and the spokesmen.

Carlton Reid 23:20
Thanks David, and yes, before the break, that was me eating maggoty cheese. The trick was to chew the cheese really well so no maggots got swallowed live. You can imagine the results if some survive. Now, we weren’t just being treated to some unique foodie experiences we were also staying in some spectacular hotels en route. Here’s Tourismo’s co-founder Beppe Salerno descrbing one of our stopovers …

Beppe Salerno 23:51
We are in resort. It’s called Su Gogolone. Su Gogolone is the name of the river down in this valley and this is a beautiful hotel, which was started by a lady who had this vision to to to run the first hotel that delivers experiences and not only offers rooms, quite unique when when she when she started over 30 years ago. Beautiful setting. You will see how beautifully decorated the rooms are and their reception is really unique.

Trevor Ward 24:30
Shows the, er …

Massimo Carboni 24:31
The profile, so 56 kilometre, that means about 32 miles 1000 metre of total ascent mainly in the morning before lunch. This means 3000 feet is correct.

Trevor Ward 24:43
How many metres?

Massimo Carboni 24:44
1000,

Trevor Ward 24:45
1000 metres

Massimo Carboni 24:46
Total ascent.

Carlton Reid 24:47
That’s Cycling Weekly’s Trevor Ward asking guide Massimo Carboni what’s coming up on the ride.

Massimo Carboni 24:56
So as you can see, mainly up in the morning with I’m down here, countryside, no traffic. But the tarmac is not very good because it’s a countryside road. Sometimes there is gravel in the afternoon is mainly down. The tarmac is much better. Okay, but no traffic at all as well, with the village of Orgosolo is here on the top. We are having the workshop and the lunch here. And we are going to see the murals here.

Trevor Ward 25:20
Excellente!

Massimo Carboni 25:21
And we are supposed to be here about 3, 3.30. So you have time to enjoy the swimming pool.

Trevor Ward 25:26
Fantastic.

Carlton Reid 25:41
At the end of the trip I asked one of the guests for his thoughts. Michael DiMaggio — yes, he’s related to the baseball icon — had tested positive for covid the day before so we were masked up and muffled.

You’ve come down with Covid, right at the end. So your last final day, you haven’t been able to, to get up and ride with us. But the days when you were riding with us, what are your highlights? What’s what’s going to stick in the mind in the next 10 years?

Michael Dimaggio 26:16
I think the views, like, you know, coming into the small villages, being able to continue to finish a climb, and then be able to like just land these small little villages where you just don’t know what to expect. When

Carlton Reid 26:28
Did you come in here eyes wide open. Were you like have you trained for this was cycling is the distances what you’re expecting that kind of aspect of the trip?

Michael Dimaggio 26:38
Yeah, I think for the most part they were you know, nothing can prepare you for the and I think that was a little bit unexpected to be you know, that long. And I like you know, riding going uphill and then the heat, I think a little bit more surprising. I was expecting to deal with a cooler.

Carlton Reid 26:56
So were you coming on this for a cycling trip or a foodie trip?

Michael Dimaggio 26:59
I think it’s an active trip. I mean, I don’t like a combination of being able to do something, whatever vacation to do something active. So that you can add in food and wine and activities, I think is how I like to vacation.

Carlton Reid 27:11
And how did you actually find it in the first place? Had you done Tourissmo trips before?

Michael Dimaggio 27:17
Yeah, I did. I did one before my partner was hit by a car a few years ago. And to get her over to get her out. Again, we wanted to do something active to get her overcome that that hesitation that she had and being out in public again. And so we said hey, we found this trip and I was a chef to her and I come across Mary Sue Milliken being from California. So we should do that we should, you know train for that. And it gave us a goal and something to train for. And we went to Sicily back in 2018. And so that a lot, we got bikes for December and then rode all the way up until the trip, which allowed us to feel fairly prepared for the trip. The first trip with Tourissimo.

Carlton Reid 27:56
And you feeling strong now, like best part of a week of cycling, do you feel feel physically different or is all that food that we’ve been given that’s kind of countermanded what you’ve been doing on the bike?

Michael Dimaggio 28:08
Well, we did eat a lot. I mean, I don’t I don’t you know, I think we whatever we work off and riding we make up and eating and then some. So I did I extra it’s so hard to manage the intake. Because they just keep bringing the food. I think at toward the end of the trip, we learned to balance that better. Because they certainly don’t they just keep going Yeah,

Carlton Reid 28:33
yeah. And have you picked up any tips for like living longer because clearly we were in the blue zone, we were meeting experts on nutrition on the centenarians we’ve lived for 100 years plus here picked up anything that you think oh, I’ll take that through and try and live a bit longer?

Michael Dimaggio 28:51
I think moving more, you know, I’m you know, it’s so easy to be sedentary once you get back into your regular life. I think making time, commitment, to move. Community I think is a big thing. I mean, and then just putting yourself in a place where you’re surrounded by other people where you’re part of something

Carlton Reid 29:08
Amen to that, Michael. And that includes this trip, because we were part of something, for sure. Our small group really gelled and I was most taken by the three hour lunches where we learned a great deal about the Sardinia’s distinctive culture of community. We learned about the blue zone, ate some great food, and had a few bottles of local wine and let the conviviality wash over us. Now and again we also did a bit of cycling … The Chef’s Bike Tour of Sardinia is a seven-night trip and costs a touch under $5,000 per person, staying in boutique hotels with all food, drink and education included. Daily rides never exceed 50 or 60 kilometres but keenies can join the super-fit Massimo for an extra loop at the end of each day. More details on www.tourissimo.travel Thanks for listening to episode 300 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast and, as promised, we’ll end not with our normal theme tune but with a deeply resonant Sardinian folk song but first here’s Renato describing what you’re about to hear …

Renato Matta 30:32
Because, you know, it’s something very unique in Sardinia, and I think big parts of the world that you can find anything like this is a special kind of singing way of singing. It’s called cantu cappella, because they stay facing each other. And they are four singers with different voices, there is a storyteller, which is you know, the voice that start singing there is a bass which is really bass, but in a special way, I mean, is it’s not bass because it’s a natural bass voice, but it’s bass because it’s a technique developing the hears, you know, normally they start training to be based at the age of 12. So when you know, the hormones in the body they are growing so they can literally develop this kind of ability, which is just an ability, you know, a vibrational thing vibrational technique, so that the vibration can do this very bass and vibrating song sound. Then there is the what they call the half voice. Which is very important because it’s the voice that gets the rhythm to that the song, okay. Which is the other voice is big because it’s between the tenor and the bass. And then there is another voice which is same about a half tone, but they call it another way. Don’t remember now because it’s a Sardinian word. But is it Sardinian word from the centre of the island which is different from my studying and because I’m I’m from the south. Anyway, the beautiful thing is if you hear the voices okay one by one doesn’t sound so nice actually. But when they start singing together and melting the sounds together, there is an incredible melody which is unique.

28th May 2022

The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast

EPISODE 298: Why are Dutch children cycling less? Ask BYCS

SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles

HOST: Carlton Reid

GUESTS: Aya Achaboun, Simón Alvarez Belon, Lucas Boer and Maud de Vries

TOPICS: BYCS, bicycle mayors and why a Dutch NGO felt the need to create a program to stop the drop in child cyclist numbers in … the Netherlands.

OTHER LINKS: DFDS ferry. Eye Cafe, Amsterdam. Tourissmo’s Chef’s bike tour of Sardinia. World Bicycle Day, June 3rd. Are cyclist numbers dropping? These official stats say not; ANWB says yes.

TRANSCRIPT:

Carlton Reid 0:09
Welcome to Episode 298 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was released on Saturday 28th of May 2022.

David Bernstein 0:22
The Spokesman cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Tern Bicycles. The good people at Tern are committed to building bikes that are useful enough to ride every day and dependable enough to carry the people you love. In other words, they make the kind of bikes that they want to ride. Tern has e-bikes for every type of rider. Whether you’re commuting, taking your kids to school or even caring another adult, visit www.ternbicycles.com. That’s t e r n bicycles.com to learn more.

Carlton Reid 1:00
Thanks, David. I’m Carlton Reid and welcome to the Spokesmen. This episode is 40 minutes or so with Maud de Vries, the co founder of BYCS, the Dutch NGO that recognised cyclists numbers were dropping in the Netherlands so in 2016, it created the now global Bicycle Mayors programme. Now, if you follow me on Twitter, you’ll know I’m on the road at the moment travelling to Sardinia with the help of one Tern folding bike, two ferries and five trains. I’m now in Cagliari on Tourissmo’s Chef’s bike tour of Sardinia. But the day after leaving Newcastle on a DFDS ferry North Shields, I landed in Amsterdam and met with Maud along with the coordinator of the Bicycle Mauors programme and two of the junior Mayors we met for coffee, sparkling water and iced tea at a scenic cafe, where I asked Maud to describe what we were looking at across the river.

Maud de Vries 2:16
Right now we’re looking at Central Station at the at the shared space, which is an awesome area, I think in Amsterdam, where there’s also a lot of water, you have the [ferries] taking people from the centre of Amsterdam to north. And then yeah, there’s a shared space, which has been has been working perfectly for years now. And actually they’re building another shared space and a big a very large, cycle park under the water here. I’m going to show you around later, Carlton.

And then you said there’s also going to because we’re going to the ferries going to and fro you said there’s going to be a bridge a bicycle bridge. Is that going across here?

Yeah, the bridge over the Ij, as they call it. And it’s amazing. Because also you saw the cruise ships coming here. They’re quite large. And still, they will be able to go here. So I think there has been a fight over this for a long time. Some people thought the cyclists should go under the tunnels, and some other thought it would be good to have the [ferries] and not change anything or have like the cable. Had I heard it called Yeah, the cable the cable? Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Which would be fun, of course, as well. But now finally, they’ve taken the decision to upgrade is that gonna happen? I think he’s gonna happen in likely, let’s say three to six years, something like that.

There’s a hug amount of bicycle traffic. I mean, every single ferry is full and they go every few minutes.

Yeah, they do. And it’s an amazing ride. I liked that ride as well. But of course people just don’t want to wait. And I think that’s the reason for building that bridge. And it’s also a good connection to actually connect the North in which there they develop a lot of land right now and the city centre so I really also like the bridge a lot but but you know as it is right now it’s very enjoyable tour to go from the city centre to north.

So now tell me because we’re not here alone, but we should say where we are actually. What’s What’s this place this this beautiful little cafe we’re big a cafe, not a little cafe, big cafe,

very big cafe and it’s beautiful. It’s called the Eye film theatre. And basically it’s yeah, it’s an arthouse movie centre setup basically by the by the city of Amsterdam,

But we’re not here just me and you, Maud. So introduce around the tables, we have some bicycle mayirs here we do we do we have a course of the bikes programme but first let’s go to the bicycle mayors. So who have we got here, Maud?

we get the first bicycle mayor or junior bicycle mayor, not the first actually I have to say but Lucas, you’re the first older Junior bicycle mayor in Amsterdam because actually, we had two before Lucas already and they were a bit younger, but then we felt like it would be really good to have During your bicycle mayor that will be a bit older to also get around a bit more easy and also to be able to put a to put the kids voice on the table a bit better, you know, so and I think Lucas is doing a really great job. You have been around for for almost a year. Have you?

Lucas Boer 5:17
Yeah, a little bit more than a year now, I think since November 2020, 2020, 2020. Yeah, one and a half near years now. Yeah. Something like that. Yeah.

Maud de Vries 5:27
Yeah. And it’s been really great. So Lucas was able to work also with adults. Adults, you know, you’re another year so now almost.

Lucas Boer 5:36
January, I’m 18. So I’m okay.

Maud de Vries 5:38
I’m officially you’re an adult now

You’ll be chucked out. You’ll be you’ll be thrown out programme. To Junior.

Yeah, so definitely, we’re going to find a new No, not yet.

We have in the in the right?

and we have Aya on the right hand side. You’re pretty fresh, because I think it’s three months now that you have to do new bicycle mayor for the Hague. And I think that’s pretty amazing as well. We have a new bike mayor in The Hague, as well. And at the same moment, if you got elected as the junior bicycle, Mayor of The Hague,

so I what do you what do you do compared to what the the adult bicycle mayor does? What what are the differences?

Aya Achaboun 6:23
It’s my job to look at what the kids want and need. And I think the seniors look more at the whole picture. And I narrowed it down to just what kids want.

Maud de Vries 6:34
What do what did kids need? Generally?

Aya Achaboun 6:37
I think in my opinion, kids need free bikes, because a lot of my friends, I know they don’t go to school with a bike because they don’t have one, or there’s is broken. So I think they need bikes and safer roads, to schools.

Maud de Vries 6:56
So even here, even in this country, where you are so many light years ahead of virtually everywhere else, you’ve still got to have a junior bicycle mayor telling people, kids need these things. Why do you need this in this country?

Aya Achaboun 7:15
Well, that’s a good question I think every country has has its imperfections. And we can always move things we should always try to set.

Maud de Vries 7:28
So perfection, perfect perfection. Because we I come across here, and I’ve got to come up with a boat. And I’ve just been straight onto amazing wide bike paths. And then to think that you’re gonna be trying to improve us how can you improve that?

Well, actually, something really bad is happening in the Netherlands right now. And, and we have to talk about this. And it’s happening to the children. Because years and years now less children are getting on bikes in the Netherlands. And that’s a big problem, because we’re actually losing the cycling culture that we

Is that they’re going into scooters instead, or they’re going in cars, where were they going?

Yeah, it’s like when they’re really young, you know, the parents feel like it’s less safe for a kid to be on the bike, which is not true, but they feel like that. So that is a big problem, I think. And the second thing is also cargo bikes. So lots of parents travelling, getting cargo bikes, and they then are a bit older, when they get to learn how to ride themselves, which is maybe not a good thing. And then also still to a lot of kids, especially in the retail, parents, especially reason taking the kids to school by car, which is a problem. So we have this fight for school streets, as well as other countries. But I think in the Netherlands, it’s like in Amsterdam, 25% of the kids can’t even bike and in the Netherlands as a whole a third of all children is not cycling

So for the future that’s bad. That’s

Exactly, it’s a whole generation had that’s not cycling, and if it’s declining, yet then we’re stuck because it will if all the people then like in 10 years or 15 years from now are gonna go to work by car then what do we do? It’s not possible. So then what’s happening next week on World Bicycle Day that were with all the bicycle mayors to junior bicycle mayors, but also the Dutch bicycle mayors are going to be offering a manifesto to the ministers in the Netherlands saying you know, this has to stop because we’re really worried and so are also a lot of organisations in the Netherlands that we have been talking to about this. So it’s important I think what I as opposed to saying is to put kids voice on the table as well you know, because so many ideas on how to improve things and and maybe Aya you can talk for example about your own idea. You know, I about like kids, the so in the Netherlands we teach the kids in school, how to ride a bike, but we don’t really do that because schools don’t have the time you know, and I think that lessons we learned and now are not the most the nicest lessons. And that’s the idea that you sort of that struck us when he went to become a junior bicycle, maybe maybe you can elaborate a little bit more on that.

Aya Achaboun 10:13
So we spend a lot of our day at or at schools. And afterwards, we don’t really have enough time, or our parents don’t have enough time to teach us how to ride a bike. Correct. So I thought, why aren’t we thought this ad was cool, because we have gymnastics, physical education. But learning how to bike is a class that has given given inside of gymnastics, but it should,

Maud de Vries 10:41
is that not also because it’s expected that you’re going to be you’re gonna be a cyclist here. Because you know, the old adage of it’s, like Dutch people’s DNA. I know, it’s not quite like that. But is that the reason? It’s just so normal here? In why would we have it in school? And you’re kind of like telling them something that’s, they find? Well, why would we do that? Is that is that the reaction you get?

Aya Achaboun 11:04
Yeah, I get that. But we’re now seeing that it’s declining. So there, it should be. There should be more focused on it. Now. Because we have like modes we have already we have had this bicycle culture for so many years. But now it’s declining. And it’s a problem that is really being ignored.

Maud de Vries 11:25
And we haven’t introduced somebody here, who is at the table and is listening intently here. So you do the kind of the bikes programme you can get onto the bike system. In fact, from instead of asking mode, what were the the bikes programme is, you can tell me who you are and what the bikes programme is, and we’re gonna say it BYCS, yes. So tell me what, who are you? And what is the bike programme?

Simón Alvarez Belon 11:45
So my name is Simón, and I’m the bicycle network coordinator. So I get to coordinate and manage this really inspiring and energetic network of cycling leaders that we have now in 138. cities more or less. And also, of course, the the network of junior bicycle mayors, which is really great. It’s a network goes, yeah, a lot of people trying to bring change in the cities and make the cities healthier and more sustainable through the bicycle. But I think what’s really unique is that because we value kind of the local knowledge and their voice, they’re very, they offer solutions that are tailored to their city. And those can be shared across the network, which is Yeah, it’s really inspiring to see and, and not only are our lessons shared, but also I think there’s a really strong sense of solidarity among the the networking that keeps everyone inspired and keeps everyone working towards the same goal of 50 by 30.

Maud de Vries 12:38
And do you meet up? I mean, how do you inspire each other? How are you? Is it like a WhatsApp group? Where you’re all in? What how do you how do you talk to each other?

Simón Alvarez Belon 12:46
Yeah, well, there’s a lot of things we definitely have communication platforms on WhatsApp, where people share what they’re doing, or a lot of people ask for resources or hey, you know, Does, does anyone know how to best implement a bike share system or how to best introduce bicycle parking, for example. But also, we have regional calls, which are really, really powerful where bicycle Mayor’s, for example, in Europe or in North America will meet up and discuss maybe an initiative that they want to tackle or they just share what they’ve been working on in the last three months and lessons that they’ve learned in Latin America. For example, last year, we had a regional call where everyone there, the angle Latin America is really focused on the climate crisis, and making raising awareness about how the bicycle is zero emission transport. And so for Earth Day, through that regional call all the bicycle ministers together organised an awareness campaign. Where, yeah, on Twitter on Earth Day, they all share, you know, what a united message of why we need to hop on bikes, to save the planet. And now we have the juniors as well which, which are doing the same thing.

Maud de Vries 13:52
Perfect. And Maud, tell me where this started. Because I mean, it did start from just you know, the odd wasn’t the Dutch it was. I mean, I was there when you Yes. When you when you were appointed? I sort of asked me back, Well, you tell me when, when what I remember this, when you tell me when was this? And what was the idea behind it? Yeah, and how has it gone? How is it as a how has it worked?

So it’s 2016, I believe, when we were starting this organisation called BYCS, an NGO. And we wanted, we wanted to transform cities, and we were thinking, you know, you could do that in different ways. And one way is to sort of leverage the voice of, of the changemakers that are already there in cities, you know, and also see the effect of benefits, the benefits between global and local, so have people being there in the city 24/7 knowing everything that’s going on, you know, and then for them, being able to raise their voice in that city. You know, we thought that might be a good idea. So then we started with one bicycle mayor in Amsterdam, which was at that time, and Anna Luten

And Anna worked for Giant?

Yeah. And then eventually she moved to New York as well. But it was great. She worked for Giant, but it had nothing to do with the work for Giant because basically she started because she had a fall on her bike a couple years before she became a bicycle mayor. And by then she realised, you know, instead of, you know, thinking about never going to be I’m gonna have a good fall. Yeah, somebody’s dropping. Yeah, it’s not Anna. I’m happy to say she saved. But you know, and then it wasn’t about that. But it was basically about she said, The bicycle is changing my life and actually want to do something with it to make Amsterdam, you know, fun and better, again, using the bicycle. But then yeah, some things happen in life, you know. So she moved, and then Katelijne Boerma came on in Amsterdam. And she really saw the transformation happening where she saw a lot of kids with obesity, still in Amsterdam, that road cycling, and then that was also related to the work she’s doing. So she was talking about how can we be seated and invites people and children to cycle more, you know, or to exercise more. It’s not only about cycling as an end goal, it’s a means to this end goal. And then, you know, building on that, I think in a year time, we had 11 Bicycle mayors, we organised the summit in Mexico City. And it was really awesome, because by then we start, we started to see the first results of that. And right now, the Mexican bicycle Mayor Areli Carreón, she was there at the beginning, she’s still with us. She’s transferring her role to somebody else as well. But what they have been doing is amazing, because right now, they changed a big law in Mexico, around safety, which was a big fight against the car industry as well. And finally, after years of fighting, they’ve won that. And this is something they this is a good example for multiple cities in Latin America. And they’re trying to spread that and the second thing she and her group at Decker’s and also lots of other groups are working on as well is to inspire single moms to have a bicycle, they have bicycles, electric bikes, they share with these moms, they can use that they are trained to use it for years, so they can feed the kids, they can take them to school, they can find a job somewhere and come out of poverty and also depression most of the time. So we have so many inspiring stories. For example, Satya in Bangalore, we have had a crazy explosion in India as well, where we now have I think, Simon, 47, bicycle mayor, something like that. It’s amazing. I’ll be going to India again in a week time, because it’s like, it’s really hard. What happens in India right now is that there’s a lot of air pollution, Delhi is a good example 50% of of the air pollution is caused by road transportation in Delhi, you know, what if we can take at least half of the trips, and get people out of the car. So onto the bicycles. So you know, and Satya, for example, is a good example. He inspired other bicycle mayors in India during COVID with relief riders, so what they did was use the bikes to bring goods and medication to people. And then other bicycle mayors took that on and then there was, there were a lot of volunteers working with them as well. So that’s some of the stories we get from the bicycle meyors. We’ve grown from 11 cities to 100. And what do you say? 38. Now, almost 150 Yeah, so sometimes it goes up a bit, and then it

Is the bicycle mayor programme the biggest part of BYCS?. And you won’t really do what else do you do?

Yeah. So we’re, after the success of the bicycle Mayor network, we also thought this is so strong, you know, building these movements. So we have started the citizens network last year. And that is really successful as well. What else we do is also we help organisations consulting, for example, we work with the UN and we are helping the World Bank in Latin America, set up a platform which is called PLAMOBI. That is a really good thing as well. We help we are helping organisations in India. So what we do is sort of build coalitions as well, organisations and policy institutes, companies, etc. To to go and bring the change. That’s basically what we want to be doing.

And have you found something that fit BYCS yet or is it still bikes doesn’t mean anything. It just means

it just mean but have mean? Means bikes, too, as simple as that. Yeah.

You’ve got to come up with something No, bicycles give you.

Yeah, I bet it was actually. It was a bit men by because we started off as cycle space. It was by cycle space. And then it also said BYCS, so we thought, This is really good. And it’s so short. So yeah. overdue. yours have really, I really felt like, this is so good. I really liked this. But yeah, you can say whatever you want?

And how is it funded?

Basically, we’re self funded until now, let’s say and so now we’re trying to get in a bit more partners that can also help in a different way. So now, for example, we got a nice grant to build on the junior bicycle mayor network. And I think that is really good. So in the, in the past, the work that we have been doing in consultancy, and lab stuff in the Netherlands has, you know, it really helped us enough to COVID that stop because we couldn’t organise any events, we couldn’t do that. So then it all dried up. Because the money we that comes into our house, we just spent that on the networks and all the other things. So we were a bit like, Okay, well, what are we going to do, so we had to shift the model. And now that really helped us to work and collaborate with all the amazing organisations had, like I was just talking about. So now for example, UMI which is the Rockefeller Foundation, for example, is helping us building on with a junior bicycle mayor network who doesn’t only mean they fund us, but it also means that they help us with other organisations that have done this, you know, how do you how do you do that? So we’re a small organisation, and we have we need help as well. And this is I think, the perfect way forward.

David Bernstein 21:28
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Carlton Reid 24:53
Wherever you come from so 2016 When the bicycle mayor programme started, when was BYCS founded on where How’d you get into this space? Of course, you’re Dutch. So you’re in this space naturally. But where did you come from?

Maud de Vries 25:07
Yeah, basically, it was just so I have another co founder, and he’s from Canada. And when he came here to live in Amsterdam with his family, it was basically because Amsterdam and the bike culture that we have, you know, said, I wanted to live in a city that is silence that is clean, and it’s nice and social, and people feel healthy. And he was like, Amsterdam is the perfect start. And when I met him, he was like, you know, we have to give this presents to other cities as well. And that’s basically I think that was the basic thought behind what we wanted to do. We just wanted to share the gift that Amsterdam has to give, but in a different way. We don’t think every city or every country should be like Amsterdam, or the Netherlands, you know, but there are so many opportunities. So that’s why we started off actually with the bicycle mayor, network. And you know, start it started off being a Knowledge Centre for international organisations that wanted to know more about how do I do this? What can we do? And then we started to work with other organisations as well. That’s basically where we came from. Yeah.

Carlton Reid 26:14
It’s obvious that you’re gonna go to things like Velo-city. So I’ve definitely been have interviewed you before. Yeah. And the Dublin Velo-City, in fact, and then previous bike shows. But then, of course, you also go into things like COP. So yeah, I’ve been Glasgow and the COP that’s coming up in Egypt, we are perhaps you’re going to that. So how is fitting into into a climate change agenda?

Maud de Vries 26:38
Yeah, it’s like, I think mobility is actually the largest thing we can, you know, influence on to get to the targets as quick as possible. And like in COP last year, we were talking about, you know, maybe how we should change the cars and get a battery in there. But if we talk about active transportation, I think that has that would have the the largest effect on on climate change. And it’s hard for people to see it, you know, so it’s the solution that’s already in the shed that say, you know, you can write it today. So we don’t need, we can transform all the cars that are in the world right now. And put a lithium battery inside, you know, we can’t do that. It’s just impossible, not only for climate, but also because it’s just not feasible. And this is such a feasible and human solution. We have to, we don’t have to, we should not focus on technology, we should not focus on all these other. That’s not the future. We have the future already here.

Talk about the future. We have some young people. Yeah. We’re not the future. We are the way apparently, yeah. So we are here sitting with us, I’ll come to you. How much of what you’re doing. And what you’re doing with that, with the programme has been inspired. And I’m gonna ask, the same question has been inspired by climate change, or how much of it is it’s why I like it. I like cycling, I think other people should be, you know, like cycling too. So. So try and split that into percentage terms, even

Lucas Boer 28:11
in the moment are in the past one and a half years, I didn’t really have the climates aspect as one of my points to focus on. I mean, true. It’s a very important aspect. I mean, we have a future and I want the livable world in 10, 20 years, where I can

Carlton Reid 28:29
Maud, we will still be there 10, 20 years.

Maud de Vries 28:36
We will do our best.

Lucas Boer 28:36
I don’t know. That will be strange. Yeah, I want

to wake with my bike to somewhere in a nice world that I’m in I think gets with this my primary targets. The first thing gets, I mean, it gets a toddler of five years or three years, it’s not the first thing without further think about is the climate, you know, so then it’s important to fix it.

Carlton Reid 29:03
And same question for you, Aya, but also, maybe because because because it was talked about like young kids there. When you’re talking to maybe teams, is the climate aspect, much more important to them? Is it part of what you’re talking to them about? Or again, is it is it you’ve got to keep it fun? Because the kids don’t want politics. They don’t want the future? They just want they just want fun. So how much are they again, same question, but just maybe slightly older kids?

Aya Achaboun 29:30
Well, I wasn’t really focused on the climate part either. When I saw the numbers, I was shocked because of how many kids don’t use the bike to go to school anymore and don’t use it at all. I was shocked because for me going to school with a bike changed my ability to concentrate on my work, and it just made me feel better and less tired than if I went with the trim or the bus. So I wanted to focus on that if you go with a bike, you might think oh Oh no, it takes, it takes a lot of effort and I will get tired. But at the end of the day, it makes you feel better than if you were to go with the bus or the train to school. That was what I wanted.

Carlton Reid 30:10
How old are you, Aya?

Aya Achaboun 30:11
I’m 17.

Carlton Reid 30:15
Does this programme that you’re doing? And many of them? Does it take some of the time away from your schoolwork? Or how do you how do you marry those two things, and maybe what your parents think why you’re doing this?

Aya Achaboun 30:28
Well, I was used to finding what I do. Because I have been volunteering for quite some time now. But what I really liked about bikes is any we can choose ourselves what we do when we do it, and how much time we put into it. So when I’m busy with school, I obviously don’t do a lot. I don’t think about a lot of ideas, I just focus on ways. And when I have free time, I can decide, okay, now I want I know I have time for bikes now I tried to, you know, get some ideas and make some plans. And my parents, they, they really loved it that I did this, how do I say?

Maud de Vries 31:11
You became a junior [mayor].

Aya Achaboun 31:12
Yeah, I became a junior Because they all see how important it is for us to use bikes more regularly.

Simón Alvarez Belon 31:19
It’s ust so important that they are doing the work that they’re doing to influence their peers at a young age and, you know, get cyclists that are teenagers. And I also think it’s amazing, right? We have this focus on climates. And I think a lot of teenagers do as well. But we also seen in Aya and Lucas, they have you know, very specific examples of why they want to get more people on on bikes. Aya wants to focus more on maybe, you know, this is a perspective that I would have never really come up with. So it’s wonderful to have their voices on the table to be able to learn why and how we can get people there on two wheels.

Maud de Vries 31:52
Totally. Yeah. And I think also Lucas would you came up with in so we have a green deals fiets, means cycling. And so basically, what you came up with was this timeline between for kids between zero and 20 or so when they get off on the bike and off a bike and how we could come up with interventions, you know, for that to see, you know, when you learn so what we see in the pilot that Lucas was referring to, so the two to four years old, it was it’s really funny, because they’re teaching each other actually. So instead of the parents like pushing them, I’ve been pushing my kids, you know, for half a year, I think before they could fit away themselves. But what happens in the in here is that if one kids starts to pedal, then the other ones do it as well, you know, so and I think if we were able to sort of do this in every leg, this experience is an experience for life. And I think both of you are also referring to the fact that it’s maybe not climate change or health or another angle, we’re not You’re not thinking about angles maybe all the time, or you’re just thinking about the fun or the the nice things cycling can bring to you. And I think that’s also a really good thing about cycling.

Carlton Reid 33:02
So I think people listening to this will be quite shocked. Because if they’re say listening to this in America, they would say, Well, of course that’s you’re describing our society, of course, people aren’t getting on bikes, we need to encourage them on bikes. And cars. Look at the Netherlands that everybody’s on bikes, and what you’re saying and what Lucas says it’s going to those experiences. No, even in the Netherlands, you have to encourage people, you don’t have to encourage people in cars now but go in cars. You’ve got to encourage people even in and I’m not going to bang the table here. Even in the Netherlands, you have to encourage people out, does that not say that’s an inherent weakness of the mode that you are promoting that you have to encourage them you do not have to encourage your fellow 17 year olds to get in a car they probably want to get in a car and fellow 18 year olds they probably want to get in a car because it’s I mean air quotes here the adult thing to do. So my point here is just well my jaw is on the floor. Basically that’s like I am in the Netherlands and you are telling me how difficult it is to get people on bikes and it’s like metaphorical head banging on on table that’s really shocking.

Maud de Vries 34:21
No, but it is all about the car. I have to say you know if we keep on pushing people into the cars, so what we’re doing is subsidising fuel, what we’re doing is subsidising the space where we people are parking the cars, all these things. If we keep on doing that we’re basically pushing them into a car and then being aware of like, oh, people are stuck at the highways, we need to build my highways. What is the future we want? You know, so I think the government’s are they need to make this change, you know, and that’s why it’s still hard for us to get the kids on the bike. But it should be the other way around in the Netherlands right now. They put two point Have a billion euros into this tax law helping the people that already maybe even have the money to drive a car, even if it’s expensive to still drive the car. They give them money. Why? You know, what did they do that they need this money? I’m shocked by that if we spent that two point a billion, it would mean 2800 euros per kid in the Netherlands, which is like a million kids that are not cycling. If we spend that only on kids, to give them a bike to make sure they have safe roads to handle that, then we would build on a generation, you know, that doesn’t need the car anymore, then we would build on a good city with a high quality of life. It is so easy.

Carlton Reid 35:43
Let’s let’s come back to Lucas. Because when I said there about driving and your age, and I have the same, and you that was an ironic nod you gave me it was like Yeah, yeah. So is that a problem? So on your timeline, for instance, is the world that’s the age that you know, your kid is going to basically want to, if not drive, at least want to learn to drive and watch and learn to drive into our insurance, you suddenly become Oh, I’m gonna drive all of a sudden. So is that when you think you will lose people? So you’ve done all this fantastic programme? You can’t? How old? Is it yet? 17. When you can drive in the Netherlands?

Maud de Vries 36:20
17 you can start to learn.

Carlton Reid 36:23
Yeah, okay, so 17 in the UK, but 18 across here. So you could now drive you can’t drive yet. But you can now

Lucas Boer 36:29
drive when I have a licence with I don’t have a licence. So but

Carlton Reid 36:32
is that on your timeline? That’s like, okay, 18. And we’re gonna lose so many people at 18. Not.

Lucas Boer 36:39
I mean, for me, personally, I’m not thinking about getting a driver’s licence. But there are a lot of people who are, I mean, the first step is getting a scooter at the age of 16. No, then you can go with a scooter to school. And then that’s the first point where you lose some. And then when you get 17, or 18, they start driving lessons, I think all with a car, I can go to there and there. And when people get the car, then you lose a lot of people. It’s a lot of people also feel for Uber, a car is a little bit more expensive than I thought it thought it’s an insurance, gas and the car itself. It’s not cheap. So that’s also something that’s causes people that causes people to get back from the car with a lot of people. Yeah, we lose in the car. And I also think we did some, nothing my timeline anymore. I think later, some things, something later, you get back from the car. And I mean, some hope or I think at some point, people realise this owner of that car, I don’t want to drive the car, the rest of my life, I will go by bike to my work or something. I mean, my father, he could drive to work, but it’s an Amsterdam, and then he takes the bike. The car is standing still in front of the house. So I think there’s also a point in life where we get something to the effect but that’s not really my thing to focus on because he or not juniors anymore and do it are not it is not the my top guy and so yeah, but yeah.

Carlton Reid 38:12
Okay. And Aya same same question to you that really

are you in visiting when you become a driving age do you do do envisage getting a driver’s licence? Or your peers? Also thinking about getting driving licences? Do you think you’ll lose lots of people to driving when, when they get to that magic age of 18?

Aya Achaboun 38:35
Well, almost all my friends have either started their driving lessons or are going to in the near future, and everybody’s talking about it, like going with the car to school. It’s just cool, I guess you could say for that age. So I do think we’re going to do that now going to school with like growth with a car

Carlton Reid 38:56
and have it male female, is there more of your female friends thinking that way? And maybe the guys don’t? Do you? I mean, in the UK, there’s a huge drop off of teen girls. You know, teen girls is when you lose, you know, people, you know, you can you can very much have a girl cycling up to the age of 14, and then it becomes incredibly uncool. To start and I know that from having from from teen girls, they’d come back, but for a few years for good three, four years, it was very uncommon for them to to be on a bike. How do you find that in the Netherlands? Do you find that similar?

Aya Achaboun 39:35
I think so. Yeah. Because two years ago, we did research for a project. And we researched how many kids go to school with the bikes and with with the bike and we saw that all the boys in my year went to school with the bike. And with the girls that was like 50, 50. So that was an interesting, yeah.

Carlton Reid 39:55
So how old were they? What was that that the age group? That cohort It’s

Aya Achaboun 40:00
14 to 16.

Maud de Vries 40:03
It’s very interesting because something similar happened in your school remember, with the girls saying they felt safer. And around? Also same age, I think 14, 15 years of age.

Carlton Reid 40:13
Yeah. So that you’re you’re having the same problems that we have in the UK. So even having it in the network, again, I’m banging your head against the table, even having it in the Netherlands. That’s, that’s quite shocking. And I’m, it’s common to me, it’s like, of course that happens. But here’s like, it shouldn’t happen now, because you have all these bike paths. So how is that happening?

Maud de Vries 40:32
With the bike paths you mean? Well, yeah, we have bike paths.

Carlton Reid 40:36
you’ve got, you’ve deployed in other countries in America, in the UK, but you’ve got the things that we are clamouring for. And yet, you’re losing cyclists? How come?

Maud de Vries 40:47
I think the government is still pushing on the wrong things, you know, if we don’t make it safe for girls, let’s say 14, 15 years old, to go to, let’s say hockey or soccer at night, and come back home, you know, then they won’t cycle because the parents just tell them not to do it. For example, if they don’t learn the rules, for example, or if the car drivers don’t take notice, like what happened in your area, for example, then then people will, and girls especially they will feel afraid, and they will they will not be on the bike anymore. And that’s a terrible thing. I think. I think it’s very simple. Actually, you know, if we think about I’m not against the car, but but in a way I am against the car, because that is, you know, causing so many problems for people to get on the bike. So we should make it an easy job for people to get on the bikes. And, you know, by by designing more with the bicycle in mind, you know, that’s very important. I think.

Simón Alvarez Belon 41:44
So yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think it’s really interesting, because, you know, you’re seeing here in the Netherlands, you have all this incredible cycling infrastructure, which we do. But I think an interesting angle that bikes takes is human infrastructure. So we’ll talk about the importance of soft factors, which is kind of what Maud was just talking about, with her examples, teaching people how to ride bikes, like, like I had talked about, or, you know, giving people free bikes, when they don’t have access to other kinds of cultural aspects that bikes really works on that are crucial. So in many places, you know, you can implement great bicycle lanes, which is a very crucial first step. But you also have to build a second culture around that to make sure that those bike things get used property. And so I think it’s not that people don’t want to go on the bicycle, but we’re also counteracting forces, you know, like Maud said, thr government from the economy that that wants to get more people on cars, and creates a car culture, we also have to create a bicycle culture. That’s what

Maud de Vries 42:41
great addition, I think that’s very important. And I think eventually, you know, building the lanes is important having the bicycle city is important, but to get to this point where you know, where you can see more cycling is human infrastructure that’s making a difference.

Carlton Reid 42:57
So what you’re saying to me and it says come up very clear in this is that the the bicycle mayor or the junior bicycle mayors programme, is is a critical component. Totally so it’s not like a cutesy add on, you know, look, we’ve got we’ve got bike little what’s going on and of course, we’ve got Junior, it’s something that’s really really important to because you will lose so many people if we don’t have the programmes that you are you two, and your and your your fellow junior bicycle mayors are, are putting in place?

Maud de Vries 43:29
Totally, we were just talking about the impact that they have when they do something and I think that’s grounds you know, so it’s not only putting the kids voice on the table, but actually making a difference.

Carlton Reid 43:40
Thanks to Aya Achaboun, Simón Alvarez Belon, Lucas Boer and Maud de Vries. This has been episode 298 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast brought to you in association with Tern Bicycle. Thanks to you for listening and watch out for the next Dutch-themed episode popping up in your feed real soon … meanwhile, get out there and ride.