In praise of trains

by tillieandcoco

Dear Coco,

It’s cold here. Here is some frost to prove it!

I love that you sip tea while stopped at the lights, as if the street is just an extension of your lounge room – as it should be! I am wound up in a routine of hat hair (a seasonal change from helmet hair), only venturing outside to be inside again in the confines of a train. The weather has been so “inclement” (Transport for London loves saying “inclement”!) that I have fallen over twice at Wimbledon Station, which stupidly has the world’s smoothest, slipperiest floors that defy even the most sensibly-soled winter boot.

I have retired Blackie for the winter after nearly giving myself pneumonia attempting a leisure ride to Wimbledon Park last month, and now the train is my transport mode of choice. Viewed from the window of a train London still looks 100 years ago – all pointed rooftops and irregular chimney pots – and even though I only travel between zones 1 and 3, catching the train home makes me feel definitely that I am no longer at work. (Proust observed that the train makes “the difference between departure and arrival not as unnoticeable as possible, but as profound as possible”.* How true that is!)

Love Tillie

Wimbledon Station’s evil floors

*In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, trans. James Grieve (London: Allen Lane / The Penguin Press, 2002), 223-224. I never made it past the second book of In Search of Lost Time, in case you’re wondering.

Parts & Accessories

by tillieandcoco

Dear Tillie,

A problem you may not have encountered, seeing as your bike is so awesomely kitted out, is getting accessories to fit and match your bike. Now I love my Electra Amsterdam but I didn’t take into account the difficulty of acquiring parts and accessories when I bought her. See Electra is an American brand and they only make two shipments to Australia a year. That leaves one playing the waiting game and performing lots of weird finger crossing in the hope your local retailer will manage to get the part you’re after. That’s what has happened with my rear rack. Basically I can’t get it here. I tried, they tried, but it just didn’t happen. SO I’ve gone for the alternative- a basic Topeak rack that I am customising for my bike. The other accessory I very much wanted but couldn’t get here (they don’t import them) was skirt guards. I ended up buying them from the online Electra shop, but as they don’t ship to Australia or accept international credit cards I was forced to use a shipping forwarding company called Hop Shop Go. This meant I could get the product here to Sydney but the shipping costs were greater than the skirt guards themselves! And of course they only had them in black.

So that explains why today I spent the morning sanding off layers of paint from my rear rack and sanding on some ‘tooth’ on my plastic skirt guards in order to be spray painted to match my bike. After I had sanded, wiped down and dried my parts I tied them onto my clothesline, laid down a drop sheet and got painting! I used White Knight’s Rust Guard Epoxy Enamel in Cream. It offers ‘superior rust protection’ and is self-priming- very handy!

Now I just have to wait for the bloody things to dry so I can attach them to my bike (so impatient I know!). I was planing on stencilling something on the skirt guards (flowers, sugar skulls, pinup girls perhaps) but I couldn’t decide what and realised it simply meant more time watching paint dry (which is as boring as, well, watching paint dry) so for the moment they will remain plain old cream, but I’m going to keep my eye out for some stickers/decals. If I get inspired in the future I can simply take them off and paint again.

Anyway, what do you think so far?

Australia’s arts and culture scene has a bike helmet problem

by tillieandcoco

Dear Tillie,

Marcus Westbury has just uploaded a piece on his blog that identifies problems with over-regulation in both cycling and creative cultures. Have a read: Australia’s arts and culture scene has a bike helmet problem

Love Coco xx