Sunday 1st September 2013

*

Sunday 1st 58-62F, 14-17C, breezy, bright but becoming overcast. Rain forecast for all day and tomorrow. Still dry at 10am. Left after morning coffee. Caught in heavy rain. So I put the rain hat on the Brooks and dived into a supermarket for shelter. There seemed to be a meeting of mostly 1960-70s rally/racing cars of some sort. With noisy dinky toys covered in large numbers driving in convoy in the lanes. I checked online and it was a hillclimb based on Krengerup. Some of them did sound very crisp.

It soon stopped raining but was a bit blowy with sunny periods. I put on the Aldi jacket and TA cap. Some trees are beginning to shed their leaves already. My hip is is still improving. I wish I could say the same for my shoulder. It's fine until I try and lift something or reach up. I suppose it could be worse. My reduced  mileage seems to be helping. Though it could be just coincidence. I've run out of photos again. Normal service will be resumed ASAP. 14 miles.

Monday 2nd 56F, 13C, overcast and windy with the trees waving about. Continuous heavy drizzle. The forecast is rain all day (again). It really might be a good day for a rest. Yesterday's rain was short lived and fell as showers. Today's looks much more determined. Though rainfall on the DMI radar seems to be petering out. If I should decide to go out you will be the first to know. Probably before I do. ;-)

Well it never did give up raining properly so I took a rest day. While adhering to the speed limit (in the car) through a local village I was overtaken by a local builder on his way home from a hard day ripping off the naive and innocent. Then by a women rushing to pick the next generation of lawbreakers from school. There are 50kph lollipops every few hundred yards. Nul points, all round, I think.

I broke open (literally) the dead i-GotU GPS logger to see what was involved in a battery swap. Unfortunately it isn't quite as simple as  buying a new a watch type battery from the supermarket. It has a flat packed Lithium-Ion in a bag. Supposedly 10V maximum charge but reading only 3.38V now.  My guess is that the flat plate is the antenna. The multiple fingerprints are not mine!  

The battery fills most of the case above the electronics. When I entered the serial number of the battery into Google I had only two hits! So we aren't looking at ready availability and discounts.

Ample warning about buying anything hermetically sealed, I think. You are looking at guaranteed redundancy within a couple of years of purchase. Sorry about the poor photography. It was much too wet to work out of doors. Too overcast to try again today.

Tuesday 3rd 59F, 15C, light breeze at 8am, overcast. It is supposed to be dry but rather cloudy and gusting up to "only" 20mph later from the NW. I'm supposed to be heading that way for 20 miles. So it should be plain sailing coming back. I'd better remember my spinnaker. Hang on, though. It has just misted over and started drizzling! Surely the DMI knows I'm not very waterproof? Grrr? For some reason I decided to push my saddle back and it ended up very slightly nose down. This threw my weight onto my hands and wrists. I spent a lot of the time pushing myself backwards. I had left after coffee under a grey, folded sky but it stayed dry. Roads very muddy in places. Almost a tailwind coming home but I was so heavily laden it didn't make much difference. 42 miles.

Wednesday 4th 62F, 17C, light wind, overcast. I returned my saddle to its original position and level before leaving. It is comfortable again. To Assens shopping. Lots of road works and coarse gravel resurfacing. Another heavy load of shopping. 21 miles.

Thursday 5th 60-66F, 16-19C, light breeze, overcast. It turned bright, and sunny but very windy. A light day. Only 8 miles.

Friday 6th 60-73F, 16-23C, sunny and windy. It is supposed to reach 23C, 73F later. Spot on, but very windy. It was good fun coming home despite the weight of the shopping. 18 miles.

Saturday 7th 60-71F, 16-22C, bright, clear, quite windy. It became more cloudy and warmer. 20 miles.

Sunday 8th 62-68-72F, 17-20-22C, very windy, rather overcast. 13 miles. Going out again. Plus 8 more miles. Blowing harder than ever. Rain is forecast.

Monday 9th 55-51F, 13-11C, heavy overcast, still, raining. It is supposed to be much cooler and rain all day. It was and it did. So I didn't. Rest day.

Tuesday 10th 50F, 10C, still, misty start.  Doctors appointment then shopping in the car all day. The mist cleared early on and it became quite warm in town. Comfortable T-shirt weather. It started raining on the way home so no ride today. It seems I do not have arthritis of the hip according to the x-rays. Which should be good news for the cycling. I had a lot of blood tests for calcium and vitamin deficiencies and will know in a week or so if I'm likely to survive. We have a very sensible diet with lots of fish, organic veg, fruit, wholemeal bread,  and organic dairy products every day. Only a little organic meat but we take vitamins every day. So I've no idea why I'd be short of anything. Perhaps it's all the farm spraying? I was caught by spray drift more than half a dozen times while out of my trike earlier in the year.

I'm due for an ultrasound scan of my right shoulder in a week's time too. I can live with the hip but the shoulder is agony if I move my arm even slightly backwards or upwards. The odd thing is that I don't feel it in the shoulder. It feels as if I am literally tearing the muscles of my right, upper arm. I had RSI for years so it may be a recurrence of that. Though that felt like the joint rather than phantom pains I'm getting elsewhere. Getting in and out of the bath is very painful.

I shall be making an appointment with a physiotherapist for the first time in my life. A local clinic has specialists in sports injuries. So I'll see where that leads. Probably to more pain and abject poverty. I suppose it's normal to have to pay for a bit of S&M. After all, I've been paying (dearly) for my Brooks saddle fetish. Though at least I don't (yet) have a weakness for rubber. Whoops! A Brooks Cambium and well tightened toe straps, anybody?

I have sleepless nights worrying about the lack of ventilation holes in the Cambium. ;-) I'm presuming holes would lead to local weakening and eventual cracking despite the potential risk of severe sweating in the nether regions in untoward climes. Cracking with which the organic cotton reinforcement could not cope in the long term. This is the difficulty of centuries of selling the leather product with endless talk of the comfort offered by natural materials and healthy  breathability, etc. Change your basic material and you (basically) have to reinvent yourselves.

Perhaps they should have used Egyptian cotton? It was the stuff of legend in camping and climbing circles before trendy, new, polyurethane coated nylon came along. Then everything suddenly became totally unbreathable. Mobile sauna, survival threatening in the wilds, lots of kids dying on the British hills unbreathable. Soaking all their clothing to the skin unbreathable. Even in the bitter cold of a sudden winter blizzard unbreathable. All staggering along in single file in their newly fashionable, approved, knee length, guaranteed taped seams, wind flapping you right off the ridge, cagoules. AKA: Brightly coloured, airtight and sweat tight, stylish, imitation polythene, body/bin bags ready for the morgue.

I too was a sacrificial victim of Blacks of Greenock trendy coated nylon anoraks on the Welsh mountains in winter. And as my mobile sauna on my bike/trike year round. Once wet, how the hell do you dry out without central heating style, indoor warmth and a complete change of clothing and a hot shower or warming bath?

Answer: You don't if you are camping in the wilds. You suffer intensely and  miserably until you finally get home. Or die of hypothermia if you are really lucky. Fortunately, newly wealthy, outdoorsy mankind was saved by new technology like Gore-Tex. I've heard it said that it breathes through the noughts they added to the price of everything to which they apply their labels. Having never owned any of their garments I haven't checked to see if they are made by slave labour in Asia.

Chorus:
For he's a cynical barsteward.
For he's a cynical barsteward
For he's a cynical bar-steward  
And, so say all of us.

Wednesday 11th 52-59F, 11-15C, breezy, sunny periods but rather cloudy. Showers possible. Rode to Odense. It stayed dry but wasn't very warm. Particularly on the way with a light head wind. Going quite well after two rest days. Roads very muddy in places. 43 miles.

There is a move by politicians to put up speed cameras in Denmark. The idea is to clearly mark their position This will reduce income from fines but should have a greater effect on driving behaviour. The problem in the UK was that many drivers were convinced that the cameras were only there to make money. With almost no effect on speeding because only the locals would know where the cameras were sited. Signposting the cameras should avoid such accusations. Albeit that speeding anywhere is still breaking the law.

Unusually, for me,  I have been out in the car a bit more recently. I continue to be the slowest car on the road because I will not exceed the speed limit. Which makes me a minority of one in several million. Though I will happily drive at the speed limit when it is safe to do so. I quite often leave speeders well behind on the corners after they have usually travelled through a long village straight at 60mph to just to sit on my tail.

I was overtaken by several drivers today where they were travelling at over twice the speed limit for a built up area. One idiot started to overtook a lorry coming uphill towards me despite continuous double white lines and a blind brow to the hill. I flashed my headlights but he still insisted on overtaking which took him several hundred yards before he could return to his own lane. Forcing me to halve my own initial speed to avoid a certain  head-on collision.

Half an hour later, as I returned form the shops two cars were having a very high speed race up the same hill. They passed me at well over 80 mph throwing up clouds of dust. The national speed limit is 80kpgh/50mph in Denmark. Only a vanishingly small minority of drivers adhere to the speed limits.

They are finally fixing a severe chicane in a local village high street where the sped limit is 40kph/25mph. The vast majority, including buses, lorries, vans, taxis and council vehicles travel at 40mph despite the narrow high street being lined from top to bottom with busy shops on both sides of the road. With pedestrians old and young frequently wanting to cross. There are no road traffic accidents. There are only sociopaths making life difficult for everybody including themselves.

Thursday 11th 53F, 12C, overcast, still and misty start. One of those rare days when the windmills are all still. Shopping 22 miles.

It seems my words do hold some truth. A car was seen travelling at high speed on a road where every tree in the avenue of oaks has some damage near the base. It seems, yet again,  that the driver's ambitions greatly exceeded his skills. He hit three trees, on a long straight, before going into a spin, leaving the road and dying in the roadside ditch. Trees 3. Motorist 0? The speed limit on the entire road is 50kph or 31mph! With large, 50kph lollipops every few hundred yards.

I often travel this way and seriously doubt that one in 1000 drivers adheres to the speed limit. I ride this route regularly on my trike because I love the beauty of the canopy of trees and the scenery. Such long views are actually quite rare. I also enjoy climbing the long hill. It is also the only useful route going north which makes any sense for me. Though it often feels very unsafe and there are no marked cycle lanes. As usual, the double white lines in the centre of the road were often worn away completely before recent resurfacing and remarking.

Now all we need is a call from some do-gooder to have these beautiful old oaks cleared to stop them stepping out into the road in front of speeding and drunken motorists. Perhaps they should put up steel trash crash barriers along the entire length of the road? It's only taxpayer's money after all. The behaviour of the trees on the straights is obviously no more predictable than those on the corners! Where are you when you can't even trust the trees? They could have put down some speed bumps but this is a feeder road to the motorway at the top of the hill. So the emergency services are probably attending to motorway "accidents" via this route. Which rather limits the traffic calming possibilities.

I avoid using the motorway in the car because nobody remotely adheres to the speed limits whatever the weather or traffic conditions. From the bridge of the same motorway junction I watched as a young woman climbed out of half a car with a baby clutched in her arms. She had hit the central crash barriers and completely ripped off one side of her car. Not one single passing car slowed down from their illegal speeding as she stood there in shock in the overtaking lane wondering how to escape from her dilemma. Fortunately her car was neatly parked tight against the central reservation barriers. So no passing driver was even slightly inconvenienced by having to lift their foot off the speeding pedal.

Friday 13th 55F, 13C, are you feeling lucky, punks? :-) Overcast and very misty. Whoops! The garden is full of small birds again. All bombing around like lunatics. Perhaps they are drunk on the plums? The mist soon cleared and it became almost bright. I'd gone about two miles when my wife rang to say that I'd forgotten my bike lock keys. Back home again and then cover the same ground all over again. Why is it so boring to have to do that? Shopping for 18 miles.

Saturday 14th 65F, 18C, sunny and windy. Assens. A Morris Minor club was having an outing so I followed them down the high street to the harbour. While the cars were neatly arranged there were people all over the place.Which made it very difficult to get a clean shot of their cars. Rode home with a heavy 5' long parcel  tied across the back of the trike. 20 miles.

Sunday 15th 57F, 14C, breezy becoming windy, overcast with light showers. Late afternoon ride for 9 miles.

Click on any image for an enlargement.

* 

Bird's-eye views.

*

I constantly use Google Earth, Krak, Grundkort Fyn and other free mapping and aerial photography websites to see where I've been on my trike and where I really ought to go. My GPS logger draws and saves my routes in great detail so I wouldn't be without it now. I had two different GPS loggers but the sealed-in battery died on one of them. Thanks to the Internet I can always search online later for all the interesting things and places I passed or missed along the way.

Krak is an incredibly useful commercial "free" mapping service. Relying on subtle advertising and drawing my potential routes between chosen place names. It lists every turn, distance to be travelled, with all the road names and provides accurate overall distances and likely elapsed times.(By car!) Free to use and fully printable. It has filters to avoid motorways and ferries and allows multiple insertions of chosen place names on the route. With some very amusing errors possible if you choose badly from the drop down suggestion lists as you type badly! Duplication of village names is quite commonplace in Denmark.

Here is a link to a shortest route suggestion on Krak across the north of the island of Fyn:
Note the row of appearance change controls at the top of the map and filter options on the left.
(In Danish, of course)

http://map.krak.dk/m/nEkLY

Back click to return to the blog.

Google Earth is indispensable but do not fool yourself that it provides remotely up to date or even remotely sharp aerial images. A course screen has been deliberately applied to the so-called "Satellite" views. Which are often so dark and fuzzy over much of Denmark that they might as well not bother. Presumably this is to protect public privacy and/or to try and sell premium services. Luckily they are no longer alone in providing these useful services. So one imagines the desire to improve or further expand their Street View coverage of minor roads is now very low on their list of commercial priorities.

No doubt everybody has seen Google Earth and Street View so there is really no need to show examples of their services here. I wish Street View would work on all the yellow marked roads but there seems to be a massive backlog awaiting updating in Denmark. No doubt the privacy backlash from their illegal, rogue activities has put a severe damper on any updating in some parts of Europe. The cost to their bottom line from lost advertising opportunities must literally run into many billions! Don't get me started on the NSA/Snowdon fiasco! I'm paranoid enough already! ;ø)))

Meanwhile Grundkort Fyn's overhead aerial imagery is updated annually. Grundkort Fyn is owned by the "county" councils of Fyn and used in their daily activities in planning, taxing and regulation of the island. Their generosity in providing the service to the public offers a powerful and useful tool to every citizen.

Their aerial imagery is now so good you can see the colour of your car changing over the years and detail down to the fixing screws on barn roofs  in some cases. It is fascinating to click backwards and forwards through the years in succession to see how trees grew and disappeared. Their impact on the appearance of the landscape is impossible to ignore.

Lately the image quality has been improving steadily with each year's new release. Ironically some of the aerial imagery  from the 1970s-80s is very poor indeed! Grey cotton wool collages would be a good description. Nevertheless, Grundkort Fyn provides a huge range of free services to measure and display on top of the maps and its excellent aerial imagery. Including property boundaries and very clear elevation markings. All available at a click of the mouse and as easily removable again for clarity. Cross referencing to ownership, property values and highly detailed descriptions are only ever a  mouse click away.

Unfortunately I can't show images or even link to GrundkortFyn's excellent  imagery because it requires a Java download to one's own local PC to view it. Direct links to saved HTML webpages revert to maps rather than the high resolution imagery I had hoped to show. I could take a photo of my monitor screen but it doesn't do justice to the remarkable detail visible on the ground. All GrundkortFyn's maps and aerial images are plan views. i.e. Seen from vertically overhead.

Living in Denmark gives me generous access to all these free services. Including, much to our recent delight, a vast series of aerial photographs going back to well before the war in some cases. While it is interesting to see your own house in plan view over the decades, aerial pictures taken from an angle are infinitely more interesting! Add the historical element, going back for well over half a century, and you can follow the development of your own area. As it gains and loses buildings, railways, once common road furniture, roads, bypasses and motorways.

The sense of nostalgia for former times is absolutely incredible! They capture and gently hold a moment in time like nothing else. Small but recognisable figures looking up (and even waving) at the aeroplane. Seen from neat gardens and vast, perfectly arranged, vegetable plots in a landscape almost totally devoid of cars. This is as near as it gets to a true, virtual time machine. Visually, the 1950s seem to have been a comfortable high point in rural Denmark. Everything looks so incredibly neat and well to-do compared with the latest images of dreary untidiness, sprawling undergrowth, massive agricultural machinery damage, messy parking amid countless unsold and unkempt rural homes!

A view of a thatched cluster of farmhouses from 1955 on Fyns Hoved.
[Fyn's Head is a distinctive promontory at the top right NE of Fyn]

Image downloaded, rotated and cropped from: "Danmark Set Fra Luften."
"Denmark seen from the air."
A service of Det Kongelig Bibliotek.
The Danish Royal and Copenhagen University Libraries.

The biggest surprise is how many homes and farms were thatched until relatively recently. Then came the arrival of Eternit, corrugated, asbestos cement roofing sheets and its (almost) universal replacement of thatch. It provided a fairly lightweight, fairly inexpensive roof without the need for major roof reinforcement or modification. Usually the original roof timbers in the round could be retained. It just required a new set of roofing battens to match the exact new spacing needs of the Eternit fixing screws.

Moreover the new sheeting was much quieter in heavy rain and wind and longer lasting than thinner materials like corrugated iron. The farmers had been so busy draining the equally corrugated landscape that many of the marshes, [moser] typically found in place names, had long lost their last reeds. Eternit must have arrived in the nick of time for many properties. Thatching today is an incredibly expensive way of roofing one's home despite the reeds being imported from Eastern Europe. There are still quite a number of thatchers advertising their services.

Imagine discovering that not so very long ago one's present house was half the size, with gently sloping thatched hips and a central chimney! The garden a carefully laid out series of neatly planted, vegetable patches. One can spend many happy hours searching among these aerial images for different views of rather grander, local farmhouses. All in the hope of catching another glimpse of one's own little abode nestling softly amongst its ever changing trees and hedges somewhere in the background.

Unless you live in Denmark you will have no idea how many farms were and are still crammed into the landscape. Though many former farmhouses are now homes of character and no longer active as centres of agricultural production. The familiar squares of barns and outhouses set around enclosed yards are still very familiar in the villages and fields everywhere you go. Each farm yard offers shelter from the wind and weather,  privacy and all offer a real sense of mystery to the outsider.

I often catch glimpses of rural history through the entrances which pierce the many roadside barns. Sadly these low and narrow portals are often inadequate for the huge, modern tractors and their equally large machinery. So many active farmyards have lost one side of the square and ended up open to the road. The pressure for change has often meant that former farms are no longer remotely viable. The huge steel sheds and galvanised silos are a clear indicator of their time on the modern landscape. The ranges of machinery scattered amongst the buildings a clear sign of present activity.

Regardless of age, these aerial pictures are mostly of excellent quality and are published for free viewing online by the Danish Royal Library. Enlargement of images to full screen and the downloading and saving of the images is also allowed. I have posted a resized, random example above. Originally the pictures were taken by speculative, commercial flying services. They took aerial pictures of farms and houses in the hope of selling them for a profit. No doubt this need drove the pilots and operators to provide a high quality product.

I remember a similar system in the UK but the vendors were so incredibly greedy that most home owners must have have been put off! Literally hundreds of pounds for quite a small framed picture. In Denmark aerial images of farm buildings must have been rather more affordable and more popular. I often see them in flea markets and charity shops. Presumably the original buildings have changed hands, the family owners have died, or the buildings have even been demolished. Without a clear identity label they are usually impossible to reunite with their original location. Particularly with the far greater mobility of modern life.

Out of curiosity I have just tried to find a free, online, aerial image service in the UK. However, the similar sounding names seem unable to show a searchable countrywide map, or aerial plan view, with clear marker blobs. Where multiple images are available from the countless digitized images of the entire country. The ease with which one can find exactly the right location (in the Danish example) really ought to be a guide to anyone planning a similar service elsewhere.

A column of thumbnails and descriptions pops up automatically on the left side of the screen to show the images available in the selected geographical area on the screen. These images disappear as the ground area being covered is narrowed. Making it incredibly easy to exclude anything irrelevant to the local search. Zoom out again and a new set of images and blobs on the ground image are presented. A superbly friendly application of an amazing public service built from a unique resource. Now made freely available to all! Well done to all concerned!

What a way to inspire the young into understanding their own history. Every village with its own school, dairy, timber yard or carpentry workshop, butcher, cobbler, farmer's supplies and local greengrocery shop. (Often at the very least) Now most smaller villages are just empty dormitories totally devoid of local services. Children might as well not exist as far as the street scene is concerned these days. Blank shop windows stare out across the empty rural roads. Or blink to the thunder of speeding juggernauts. Endlessly dreaming of lost times never likely to return. The car and the supermarket chains have an awful lot to answer for!

If anyone had told me that all these online services would be possible, as I struggled with the awful keyboard of a Sinclair ZX81 in front of a tiny B&W TV, I would never have believed it! I can still remember the thrill of making letters appear on a TV screen where one had been a passive slave to monopoly broadcast TV for years. [Image of typical ZX81 set-up borrowed from Wiki]

They do say that the science of tomorrow is indistinguishable from magic. Those of us from the just-postwar generation have certainly seen our share of magic in our lifetimes. The near future of AI, genetic engineering, 3D printing, advanced materials and mass robotics promises to be even stranger. Provided we can survive the massive changes and challenges which society now faces.

Click on any image for an enlargement.

*

I Have a Dream!

*
I have a Dream! 

Mr T poses briefly on the narrow gauge, two way, puncture magnet fiasco at Korinth back in May 2013. Having had his picture taken we both beat a hasty retreat to the relative safety of the busy roads! 

The "horse riding sand" contains countless small, sharp flints. The animals kick the sand across the narrow strip  of cycling tarmac. The designer of this system was obviously not a cyclist. The path is far too narrow for two cyclists to pass safely in either direction without great care and some skill. Pushchairs, prams, wheelchairs and tricycles become an instant obstruction and a hazard for all other users!  

One particular pedant, whom I followed agonisingly slowly for several miles, would not move from the centre of the path. People of all ages, including small children and the very elderly were literally toppling into the rough grass and onto the sand just to avoid him! After repeatedly requesting him to pull to one side I was finally able to overtake. Only to puncture almost immediately afterwards. And then again not long after that. 

I met several elderly people pushing their bikes with punctured tyres. One lady stopped quite voluntarily, as I replaced my second inner tube, to complain that she and her husband had punctured every time they used the path! One very elderly gentleman with obvious joint infirmities had walked for literally miles while pushing his small wheeled shopper bike! Imagine if it had rained while he was miles from home, now on foot in his shirt sleeves, in the full expectation of a pleasant half hour ride! 

"Nobody knows the trouble I've seen." 

The route is superbly unspoilt, travels in a very useful direction, is devoid of  selfish and impatient drivers (whose needs are always greater than ours) and the tarmac is almost perfect. Except for the flinty sand and the width of course. Closure signs were visible as I passed several path entrances on a later ride in the area. No doubt the cost of removing the sand is completely prohibitive at Danish wage rates for contractor work. 

The cycle paths I used in the UK were often surfaced with a fine white, almost sandy gravel. Which bedded down to a fairly smooth, firm and long lasting surface. Albeit with more resistance to cycling quickly and a tendency to puddle and grow weeds. The paths I used usually ran along disused railway tracks. Their width was usually sufficient for safe passing and the tyre noise usually enough to warn others (who bothered to listen) of one's approach. The sun always shone, the birds always sang and one only had to avoid the huge piles of horse and dog droppings at intervals.

Families with inattentive children and dog walkers in particular could often be a major hindrance and serious hazard to a decent riding pace. Though this would obviously depend on the amount of foot traffic at the time. Hopefully those who used the cycle paths for regular commuting gave themselves plenty of time! I cannot imagine how they'd cope if cycling numbers have increased dramatically in the decades since I last rode in Britain. 

Cyclists and any other traffic do not mix well. For some reasons planning authorities seem blind to this simple fact. They see cyclists as being about 30" wide across the shoulder and assume that twice that is all that is necessary for a two way cycling "freeway." Whereas everything from a country lane to a full blown motorway automatically allows plenty of room for everybody. Totally regardless of cost! 

Even in so-called "bike friendly" Denmark the cycle paths are often ridiculously narrow. Not to mention rough, with constantly changing cambers, hazards and obstructions. While right alongside, unhindered by cost-cutting, the equivalent of four lanes width of perfect tarmac actively encourages drivers to travel in perfect comfort at any speed of their own choosing. Speed limits in Denmark remain a standing joke with a very large majority of all drivers constantly exceeding the speed limit. 

As an example; the police set up a speed camera at a roadworks where a bridge was being repaired. The camera caught 50% of vehicles passing where the speed limit had been reset to 50kph/30mph. This was to protect the workers where the road had been narrowed by bollards. 50% of all passing drivers were speeding. I'd have expected higher figures but those few actually adhering to the speed limit were probably baulking many others. 

Isn't it long overdue that the cyclist had their own Martin Luther King?  
There have been cycling martyrs enough already.