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what on earth are you doing here?
for those who didn't know, or those who have forgotten, in september 2014, scotland held a national referendum to decide whether it remained a part of the united kingdom, or pulled up the drawbridge and declared independence from its westminster oppressors. despite that last jibe, you'll be happy to learn that i intend to abide by the unwritten rule that specifies conversations ought not to concern themselves with religion or politics, particularly when the writer is less than engaged with either.
however, though i did not vote for independence, you do have to worry about the definition of democracy when scotland finds itself at least partially ruled by a conservative government in westminster despite featuring only one affiliated mp throughout the land.
but that apparently iniquitous situation is not germain to that which follows. the estimated population of the land and its 790 islands as of 2014 was reckoned to be around five and one-third million persons, a few thousands more than the 2011 census. the bulk of that population resides in what is usually described as the central belt, effectively the urban and city regions between glasgow and edinburgh. the latter sits on the coast bordering the north sea on scotland's east coast, while glasgow, though more centrally situated is more or less the capital of the west coast, despite its location a tad inland on the river clyde.
those of us on the west coast, including islay, literally on very edge of the atlantic ocean, are pretty much beholden to glasgow. on reaching the kintyre peninsula by calmac ferry, the regular coach service terminates at buchanan bus station, right in the centre of the city. for those who have need of hospital or dental treatment, such is preceded by a thirty minute flybe flight to glasgow airport at abbotsinch near paisley. for the hebrideans, edinburgh scarcely features at all.
but glasgow is less than 50 miles from edinburgh with excellent road and rail links between the two. while sitting in buchanan bus station a few days ago, the citylink 900 coach service to edinburgh bus station (which seems remarkably small to serve a city with a population of near 500,000) arrives and departs every fifteen minutes throughout each day. twenty-two miles in the direction of glasgow, effectively half-way between the two cities, lies the town of livingston, home not only to endura cycle clothing, but also to shand cycles. prior to endura moving into their new custom built headquarters a few years back, the two were virtually neighbours in houston industrial estate.
circumstances have so far prevented me from visiting the folks at endura, but a couple of years ago, i did spend some time with steven, russell and the chaps at shand cycles. which, given our respective efforts on behalf of the cycling community north of the border, is pretty much as it should be.
as a student, i spent my summers working at prestwick airport which, at that time, was scotland's transatlantic gateway, halcyon days of yore that have seen it sadly diminish in importance since glasgow airport was handed the routes to north america. thousands of people worked in prestwick at that time: some in customs, some on the airport duty crew, some like me in the terminal building catering and several others catering each outbound aircraft. making mention of one's place of employ often led to "you must know so-and-so; he works at prestwick" a query akin to my expecting someone from pimlico to be well-acquainted with someone in kentish town.
always possible, but not a given.
however, if we place things into some form of perspective, london is home to just over eight and a half million people, all crammed into an area of 607 square miles. compare that with scotland's 5.3 million inhabitants occupying 30,000 square miles. if you were in the business of building bicycles for sale, to where would you travel to achieve the greatest bang for your buck? yes, so would i. and so would shand cycles, a very long digressive means of explaining why steven shand, russell stout and i tend to meet each other more frequently 400 miles south, despite living only 150 miles apart.
if you attended the recently ended london bike show, you will hopefully have come across russell, surrounded by several examples of livingston's finest and a smattering of tunnocks caramel wafers. though the road-going skinnymalinky was not in attendance, a bahookie, a tumshie and a stoater were fronted by the latest edition of the stooshie. i greatly admire their bicycle naming conventions; we all realise that those not privileged to live in scotland may find it all a tad obscure, but let's face it; who cares?
the original stooshie (generally defined as a row, a fracas or a big fuss) was to have been a bona-fide cyclocross bike with all that such entails. however, demand for such an idiosyncratic and clearly defined style of bicycle was not, as you might imagine, occupying a great many hours in the shand workshop, principally because their range of stoaters was a far better fit for "those who thought they wanted a cyclocross bike, but didn't really."
the stooshie, however, has been reborn in far more cutting edge and pragmatic style. featuring a carbon front fork as standard, an oversized head tube coupled with both a gates carbon belt-drive and a rohloff fourteen speed hub gear. i can see the more observant putting their hands up to let me know that i have already reviewed a stoater of remarkably similar spec. but the stooshie bears something of a twist that does away with any need to twist.
up until recently, the sole means of changing gear on a rohloff was by twist grip, usually sited adjacent to the stem on a drop-bar bicycle. not, i can attest, the ideal means of doing so. when we've all become so used to controlling everything from the brake/shift levers, it has always seemed something of a backward step to have need of removing the right hand to change gear on the rohloff. however, nothing stays the same forever.
the rohloff hub gear relies on two cables to push and pull the internal selecter for bigger or smaller gears, a system that has now been augmented on the stooshie by a small silver box attached to the left side dropout. this allows one cable to attach to a leftmost sram double-tap lever and the other to a right situated sram lever. one flips the gear up and the other shifts down, just like everyday bike riding.
i do hope to have one of these on review in the coming weeks, if all goes according to plan. possibly my only opportunity to be cutting-edge this year. and nor will the bike have to travel quite as far as russell and i did to bump into each other last week.
monday 15 february 2016
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