How can a consummate bike rider like Wiggins be involved in such an accident and what hope for the rest of us who are, or are considering, taking up cycling.
My background is one of many miles spent on a bike with only one accident when, like a fool I cut a corner whilst racing a friend down a narrow road. A car coming the other way with no where to go dealt me an object lesson I never forgot.
My teenager years, often astride a bike were truly wonderful, spent outdoors, in and amongst the Yorkshire Dales either cycling, walking, rock climbing or tentatively, pot holing, for which I never truly enjoyed, being marginally effected by claustrophobia, not a weakness to endear one to a tight squeeze through a dark underground passage hundreds of feet underground !!
To meet ones cycling friends on a Sunday morning outside the Lister Park Gates in Bradford, 20 of us, two abreast we set off winding through the small satellite towns to Skipton and the open country beyond. The chatter between us, the fresh air, the exhilaration of feeling fit and alive, on top of our game not to make money, not to wish for fame and fortune but to acknowledge the youthful pleasure in being alive, free to go where I wished so long as I confined myself to what I could do given my own ability.
The roads were uncluttered, with few cars, the rocky outlets relatively free of people and of course "health and safety" was a personal concept which we termed, simply "common sense".
We acknowledge the importance of where and to whom we were born. The accident of birth is sufficient to provide us with (and this has a steep gradient depending to whom) a roof over our head, good food, a good education, job opportunities and so on. But what about the era into which you were born ?
I feel privileged to have lived and enjoyed my childhood years with parents who whilst having little material wealth gave me the wealth of a different kind. Music, literature and the space I needed to grow and develop my own character. All the risky endeavours, climbing, pot holing, climbing trees even the embryonic first night spent in a tent about 5 miles away from home, next to a pond in the corner of a farmers field when we were only 11/12 years old. My poor old Mom must have had kittens but with my Dads guidance, I was allowed to cope with what ever came my way.
How different the culture now with fear that things "might go wrong" predominating and colouring their ability to let go.
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