Have I learnt anything about nature and the affect of time on my world? Sitting in front of my window as I have worked this past week I would have to say a categoric…yes. Nature changes all the time. Then I ask myself why are we so addicted to repetition, TV programmes, computer games, online gambling, online porn, sleep, work, fags, beer, order, more order, buying things we don’t need, driving cars that do 150mph that we never get past 90, buying convenience food, buying clothes that make us look like everyone else, what the hell has happened to the bloody warrior in us? He’s got too used to home comforts, sedated with prescription drugs for bad backs and stress, drugged by soap operas and reality TV, the news spews out horror stories that tell him how lucky he is not to be living there, he hears the same lies by politicians that don’t change his life a bit, but he can’t do a thing about it, and he’s worn out from making ridiculous HP payments for a lifestyle that has become a noose around his neck that is slowly dragging him under day by day. Simply put, the life they have sold the warrior happens to be the thing they control him by. A simple drive to work for most people has become a Mad Max type of existence where a beep of the horn can mean a week in jail and a thump in the face if you pull out accidentally in front of someone on their way to nowhere slowly.

The caveman has become a domesticated loafer, addicted to the valueless pursuit of an imagined better life that can only be bought with a credit card or hard cash he or she does not have. How many bikes do you have? Things have to change, we have to change time. How we use it, how we play with it. When it rains, go riding. When you’re pissed off, go riding. When you feel like it the least, go bloody riding. Go riding when you want, not when they want. Time is slipping away through our fingers, it’s being taken away by bloody bureaucrats, form filling in, speeding cameras, drug taking, binge drinking,
TV programmes designed to keep you in your home out of trouble, made by idiots that want us to work harder to make them more money. We need to ride more, not less, to ride more we need more time, make time, take time, steal it from something else that’s a waste of time, but bloody well ride. A road bike, a mountain bike, a BMX bike, any bike with two wheels. Don’t worry if you haven’t got suspension on it, or if you haven’t got the right clothing on, ride in a woolly jumper and jeans for gods sake, but ride in the winter, get a cold face, get wet all over, get cold and freezing legs and hands, wet feet and socks, get the miles in on the singletrack without a grands worth of kit on keeping your sorry ass all prim and proper on your EXTREME ride.

Don’t drive anywhere to go riding, ride everywhere, come back covered in mud and crap and get the kettle on have a bath and stick those filthy clothes in the wash, and remember what it was like to ride before all the new fangled ‘ultra refined total comfort lifestyle media buy this product’ bullshit invaded our lives and took away the freedom to just ride down the shops on our bikes with a pair of regular trousers on, a pair of trainers and a jumper. All that matters when it matters most seems to be to roll, all the time. That then must be our nature. The ever changing. Everything else a dressing–up of that purposeful interest in the bicycle, a true love that must not be lost to the stealers of our time and of our true nature. Those that deny us this freedom are the enemy and we then must be the warriors who must wake up from this winter slumber. Death to the lifestyle bullshit, death to comfort, bollocks to safety, bollocks to having the right bike and the right gear, ride hard ride free, make your own path through time. Following sucks. Get that bike out the shed and ride it to your local bike shop instead of saving £3.50 on the internet from a bloke you’ve never met, interact and bollox to the cycling revolution. Just rebel, way more personal and way more fun. – Tim March