The start of another year is upon us and many of us are heading back to work feeling confused, jaded and probably a little bloated after a few weeks of mince pie abuse.
January is a time when many of us take a look in the mirror and set about a dramatic change, knowing from the start that we will revert to old habits before the first fortnight is out.
Small changes
We humans can do some wonderful things, but usually only when we want to do them. Big changes that you are unlikely to enjoy are not sustainable, so we fail. What we can do is make small changes that we can adjust to that may make a big difference to how we feel.
We’re not going to tell you to ride to work every day –even we have struggled to do that lately. Instead, why not try to ride to work once per week. Look at the weather forecast for the week ahead on Sunday night; pick the day that looks the least miserable and ride to work that day.
If you need some moral support or advice, come along to Julie Morgan AM’s cycling event on the 20th January in Whitchurch Rugby Club.
If you get to February and you are still riding to work once a week, you may want to try two, or even three days. You’ll hopefully start to lose a bit of weight, or feel stronger and fitter than you used to. If you get to May and are still going strong you’ll hopefully be willing to take part in the Car Free Day too, or try one of the new hire bikes.
Our changes
Even though we’ve said we would in the past, we never did get around to creating some off-road routes for you. This year we are definitely going to and have the first route in the bag, written up and scheduled to be published on Monday. We have some wider tires on order and will be exploring the woods on the outskirts of Cardiff trying to come up with routes for you to try. We may even invest in a mountain bike if we do get over-excited.
We’ve put a few feelers out and it seems there’s quite a few of you out there who like to take a ride on the rural side. We would love to hear any stories you have of rides & routes you have tried. Also, any veterans of Bike Park Wales, we’d love to hear from you too.
As we’ve got a few years worth of content on the site now, we’re going to try bundling some of our old posts into themed days and Monday will be cleverly titled Muddy Monday.
Tip Tuesday will provide a selection of helpful tips; Working Wednesday will be a day for commuters; Thoughtful Thursday for whimsy and naval-gazing; Epic Friday for those epic ride stories and Lazy Sunday for a bit of light reading or cycling related videos you may enjoy.
Also, starting from next Tuesday, as a way to bring some structure to proceedings I’m going to spend two evenings a week, probably Tuesdays and Thursdays at a coffee shop, writing and planning. This haphazard approach I’ve been taking isn’t working so well any more so I need to put some dedicated time aside to keep things going.
Of course, anything newsworthy will be shared throughout the week, most likely as a result of the evening sessions.
Here’s to the year ahead…
As we suggested in our pre-Christmas post 2018 is looking interesting, at least on paper. However, cycling in Cardiff is far more than a handful of bloggers filling your social media feeds. It’s about every single person in Cardiff who is willing to make a positive change to their lives, or put pen to paper and help to change the lives of everyone else.
As we’ve said time and time again, nothing happens in this city without Councillors voting through changes. If you live on dangerous or heavily polluted road, or feel as though it should be a 20mph zone, write to your Councillor. If you want to cycle to work but there is no safe cycle route, write to your Councillor. If you’ve just been on an amazing ride on the weekend and want to tell everyone about it, you can write to us!
Happy new year, all.
Cardiff By Bike 