Greybeard!

So this morning I’m cruising along towards Putney Bridge on the Falcon fixie, feeling pretty good, doing a nice pace and feeling like I have plenty in reserve. I get to the red lights and wait at the line. Then some older solidly built bloke with a big bushy grey beard of about 50 pulls in in front of me on a hefty looking touring bike, panniers, big tyres, disc brakes, more mountain than road in style. A typical older bloke’s bike, dare I say it (at the youthful age of the wrong side of 40).

Due to the size of his bike, I thought he would be a challenge to get past when the lights went green. So, green light, off goes greybeard and off I go. He was pretty sprightly, to my surprise, up that hill onto the bridge. Being fixed and with toeclips I take off a bit slower, so I had to catch him up – I got past him near the crest of the bridge and thought nothing more of it.

Ten minutes later at Kings Road, near Edith Avenue, after a pretty speedy run, there is greybeard, having caught me again at the red lights. He did pretty well. Red light, about to change, so like a lot of twats he goes a few seconds ahead of the green. Green light, the rest of us take off, including quite a few speedy looking riders on decent road bikes. It’s level this time and greybeard is nailing it, leaving the rest of us behind. I am not having this, I thought, he’s making me look fat, slow and ridiculous on his massive tourer. So I nailed it too, passed him like a bat out of hell and half a mile later I damn near rear ended a van which stopped for a random pedestrian running through the traffic. At this point the greybeard catches me up again, doing a fair pace and not even pedalling!

Only then did I see his square electric battery pack. The bloody thing was electric.