After the coldest winter for 30 years the UK’s roads are in a bit of a state. Frost has broken up the surface leading to some big potholes. This can be the result, my first ever broken spoke. I heard a slight metalic ‘clunk’ as my back wheel went through the hole but didn’t realise that this was the consequence so went on to ride another 9 miles or so. The rhythmic rubbing of the wheel rim against the brake block eventually gave the game away. I have been to the bike shop for some spares and now I am going to make my first wheel repair.

As part of my cycling life, I want to keep a note of how many miles I cycle, partly because I think it helps psychologically to note your achievements (no matter how ‘paltry’ in my case!), and I also think it will be useful to have a record on how much cycling has had an impact on my life and how much money I have saved.

I bought myself a cheap Halfords cycling computer (an excellent product at £10 by the way) that collects the data I need on each ride (distance, time taken, average speed, maximum speed) together with a running total of all the mileage clocked up since it was first calibrated.

I started by entering this info in a spreadsheet, but eventually decided there must be a better way of collecting and making sense of this information. As I already keep a blog about my cycling life, I thought it would be a good exercise to use Google Docs to collect, process and display the data right through my website, making it easier to log the information and display the results.

I have started off in a simple way by just displaying my mileage and time on the bike until I have decided exactly what data it is that I want to make use of. So, just to give you an overview of the input process, I do the following:

1. Finish my ride
2. Go to my website and click on the ‘ride log’ page
3. Enter the password (no, I don’t want anyone else adding their own data or corrupting mine!)
4. Fill in the form data

From there, the data automatically gets logged onto a spreadsheet that acts as a database for the entries. The spreadsheet has a second page that works out any processing I want on the original data. The processed data is then published on a separate page of the website. The great strength about this is that it is totally flexible: you can collect whatever data you want, process it any way you want and display it in either numerical or graphical representations.

I strongly recommend that you get yourself a Google Mail/Docs account and a WordPress blog (either self-hosted or on WordPress.com) if you want to start with any web publishing project. Drop me an email if you want any advice.

I will start this tutorial from the assumption that you have Google Docs and a blog; if you don’t, please carry on reading because once you get a feel for the type of things you can achieve with these free tools, I am sure you will want them.

These techniques are ideal for creating enquiry forms, online polls, surveys etc. You will be emailed whenever someone completes a form and you will have a permanent record of the data collected all in a handy spreadsheet.

So let’s start with a new form in Google Docs.

You will end up with a blank form that you can start to fill in. The first thing to do is to name the form e.g. My Cycling Log, then save it. This will become the name of the data spreadsheet that you will later refer to.

Now start to formulate your questions: there are options for the format of the answer you want, ranging from simple text entries to paragraph text, ‘choose from a list’, multiple choice answers and tick boxes. These can be amended and edited as you see fit at any time.

You also have the option to make the questions mandatory so that the form will not be accepted unless the question has been answered. Here is a ‘checkbox’ question that I put together about ride weather conditions:

You can add themes to the form and then preview the results by going to the published version of the form via the URL at the bottom of the screen.

When you have built your form, close it down then go back to your document list. You may need to refresh your browser screen if the list hasn’t updated (F5 for PC, Command+r for Mac). The form will appear as a spreadsheet, which you can now open.

Here is my spreadsheet with some entries: the first column has a date stamp logging when the entry was made – a handy feature. Then, going left to right, there is a column for each of the questions on the form with the relevant data from that form. See below:

If you want to edit the form further, you can go to the form menu and enter the edit mode from there.

I named this sheet ‘Form Gathered Data’ in the bottom left hand corner of the spreadsheet.

When you are ready to publish your data collection form, select the ‘Embed Form’ item from the Form menu. See below:

You can copy the iframe HTML code necessary by holding and dragging your cursor over the embed code and then pasting the code into your new WordPress page.

If the WordPress page you are working is open in another tab on your browser, select that; if, however, you are working in two separate browsers like I do (more of this in the tip section), use the Alt+Tab keys to flip to the WordPress page you are going to paste the code into.

Make sure that the page you are pasting into is in HTML mode (see pic below) and paste in the code using control+v (command+v on the Mac).

So now you have your data collection form as a page on your website. Mine looks like the image below because I added at theme – there are many available – or you can just have it plain:

You shouldn’t be able to see this when you go to my web site because the page is protected and needs a password to gain access to the form.

So, how do we process the data and get it to display on the site? More ’spreadsheetery magic’ needed.

Go back to your spreadsheet and click onto the ‘Add Sheet’ button in the bottom left hand corner. This will add a sheet to the current spreadsheet file, which we will use to process the raw data of our spreadsheet and produce information that we can publish.

I called this sheet ’summary sheet’ and its output appears on my mileage page. You will recognise this sheet if you visit my page.

Just to illustrate some of the things that are possible, I decided to collect and display my total time on my bike plus my total distance travelled in both miles and kilometres, which seem to be the international ‘currency’ of bicycling distance.

I first put my titles down the left hand side of the sheet in the A column. Then, for the first calculation, in B2 I entered the start of the formula:

=sum(

I then clicked onto the spreadsheet link for my data spreadsheet in the bottom left-hand corner of the browser window. I then clicked onto the ‘C’ column header in this spreadsheet – this column holds the ‘time riding’ information that is deposited into the data gathering form. The formula auto completes with the data

Just enter the closing bracket ‘)’ at the end and press enter. That’s it – you should be back in your summary sheet at the cell where you started to enter the formula with the following:

=SUM(‘Form Gathered Data’!C:C)

This formula ’sums’ the column ‘C’ from the ‘Form Gathered Data’ spreadsheet. It will continue to add on every cycling time that I enter into the ‘time’ entry of my spreadsheet.

There is a finite limit to how many entries you can have in a spreadsheet – Google currently limit it to this: Spreadsheets: Each can be up to 256 columns, 200,000 cells, or 100 sheets–whichever is reached first. There’s no limit on rows. In short, more rides than I have planned for this year, and several more to come!

I went through a similar procedure for distances. For the kilometre conversion I put in cell B6 the following formula:

=B4*1.61

Displaying Processed Data on your web site

You have now created your spreadsheet and are ready to get its contents to show up in a page on your WordPress web site.

First, go to the Share menu and select publish as a web page.

The ‘Publish to the web’ dialogue box appears. The part you want to change is the ‘Get a link to the published data’ in the lower section of the box. However, this remains ‘greyed out’ until you click onto the ‘Start publishing’ button in the ‘Sheets to publish’ panel.

The bottom box then becomes ‘live’ and you need to select the ‘HTML to embed in a page’ option, which is below the default ‘Web page’ option. (See pic below).

Type in the cell range of the spreadsheet: in my example this is the range A2 (top left hand cell) to B6 (bottom right hand cell). The two cells are separated by a colon e.g. A2:B6.

When you press the enter key, the box below the cell entry box changes to an iframe HTML code (see pic below). This is the code you need to copy and put into your WordPress page.

Highlight the entire iframe code between the <> brackets by dragging your mouse over the code, holding down the mouse button (I usually go backwards from end to start to make sure I get all the code or it won’t work). To copy, you can use ‘control+c’ (command+c on Mac).

Note that the iframe dimensions are dictated by the width and height dimensions noted in pixels (see pic below). If you want to avoid using sliders in your page, you can change these dimensions to something more suitable such as 600 pixels by 600 pixels.

Some experimentation may be necessary and the size of the text you use in your spreadsheet will also have an influence on the dimensions.

Likewise, the width available is dictated by the template of your blog; most are between 500 and 600 pixels as this is an ideal size for readability and for putting reasonable-sized images on the page.

Hit publish and away you go.

One tip I have is this: as WordPress doesn’t always have the ability to display the text in the way you would expect to see it, have two browser tabs, or even two separate browsers open: one with the WordPress page on which you are working (ie the ‘back end’) and one with how it will appear to the rest of the world.

I usually work in Safari, the Mac default browser, and have Firefox opened displaying (to the outside world) the page I am actually editing – Firefox has a handy web tool called Firebug for assessing CSS etc.

I then use Alt+Tab to flick between the two.

Don’t forget to press F5 on the PC (command+r on the mac) each time you make a change to refresh the browser screen, otherwise you won’t see the last changes you made to the page.

What I am about to write may be difficult to grasp at first, it has taken me a while to get my head around it. My first serious cycling in about 10 years has proven one thing to me; the British weather is not entirely compatible with commuting by bike. Arriving anywhere looking at your best is often difficult and sometimes impossible. For someone who is contemplating selling his car and carrying on running a business, this is an issue.

For the first few weeks of the summer I did quite well. Every time I seemed to need to go anywhere the sky would clear and off I would go. I knew it wouldn’t last and it didn’t. Having made the decision to make the bicycle my main mode of transport, commuting in the rain was going to be an issue sooner of later that had to be dealt with.

My test came one afternoon on my commute home. All wrapped up in the best wet weather gear I had (at the time), I set off into a drenching headwind. An hour later, saturated to the skin, I arrived home with a big smile on my face. Why so happy after being slowly and methodically soaked? Here is what I worked out.

In the modern car worshipping society that I live in, routinely getting wet to the skin doesn’t happen. Protected from the realities of weather in our glass and steel, climate controlled cockpits, the real world gets filtered out.

For the hour I battled along, all my senses filled with the simple task of getting home in one piece. My slow movement, 12 miles across the surface of the earth with its associated effort and discomfort was a simple stress buster. Normally, the commute from work, car powered and effortless, allows my mind to stay engaged on the work agenda, still churning over the problems of the day. During my ride home all this disappears, my whole body is engaged with the task of getting there: pedalling becomes a rhythmic physical mantra. Cycling is meditation.

I found this quote on Wikipedia attributed to Paul de Vivie, the father of French bicycle touring:

After a long day on my bicycle, I feel refreshed, cleansed, purified. I feel that I have established contact with my environment and that I am at peace. On days like that I am permeated with a profound gratitude for my bicycle. Even if I did not enjoy riding, I would still do it for my peace of mind. What a wonderful tonic to be exposed to bright sunshine, drenching rain, choking dust, dripping fog, rigid air, punishing winds! I will never forget the day I climbed the Puy Mary. There were two of us on a fine day in May. We started in the sunshine and stripped to the waist. Halfway, clouds enveloped us and the temperature tumbled. Gradually it got colder and wetter, but we did not notice it. In fact, it heightened our pleasure. We did not bother to put on our jackets or our capes, and we arrived at the little hotel at the top with rivulets of rain and sweat running down our sides. I tingled from head to foot.

So why the smile?

• A simple statement of achievement in overcoming difficulty.
• A demonstration of my own self reliance.
• Satisfaction I feel at not needing £10,000.00’s worth of metal and its associated expense to get me all that way.
• A body awash with endorphins.

Where I live, the car is considered an essential by lots of people I know. Moving from one location to the next is an effortless act with traffic jams and speed cameras the only irritation. You have no feel for the scenery moving past your window, the land moving under your seat. You are disconnected from your own physical landscape; insulated from its realities.

Ride your bike and get wet (now and again); it is good for you.

• I am using the bike as a commuter/tourer and rarely go off road.
• I believe that suspension forks steal some of my energy by absorbing pedal downstrokes (I have little enough to spare as it is).
• Suspension forks are relatively heavy, especially if you don’t need them.
• I had nowhere to attach my mudguards and don’t like drinking the water splashed up from the road.
• In the future I want to fit front carriers (part of the justification to my wife is that I will be able to carry a weeks shopping from the supermarket).
• I wanted to experiment with having a higher handlebar position.
• I didn’t want to have to keep servicing my shocks or, worse still, pay someone else to do it for me.
• I would really like a Thorn trekking/tourer but cannot afford one at the moment

The Mt.-Tura forks have been specially designed by Andy Blance at Thorn to replace 80-100mm travel suspension forks fitted on most MTB’s, They leave the bike at approximately the same height as it would be with an average rider sat on it. They cost £99.00, are made out of Reynolds tubing and have ‘braze-ons’ for fitting mudguards, front carriers, dynamo and headlamp.

I now rate myself as a competent bicycle mechanic because I asked Thorn if I could fit the forks myself. Andy said they could be fitted by a competent bicycle mechanic, so having done it myself perhaps I am some way to being one. Apart from the usual bike tools, the only other tools needed were a junior hacksaw (to trim the incredibly long stem down to the correct size), a file, the Haynes Bike Book (to get my head around how an Aheadset actually worked) and the self discipline to take it easy and not get over excited. I wanted to get the job done quick and get out riding the thing to see if my investment had been worthwhile. I also ordered from Thorn, some additional 1 1/8 spacers so that I could extend and experiment with different handlebar heights before I settled on a permanent position (I am still not trimmed to my final setup). Finally, for my setup, I needed a fresh Aheadset spring washer for the new forks.

Even if I could call myself a mechanic, I wouldn’t feel qualified to give a tutorial on it, so I will omit the fitting instructions. Be warned though, you won’t find any in the box, Thorn don’t supply them, at least they didn’t with mine. I did it the way I thought best, it took me a couple of hours and it seems to have worked out okay.

I have got to say though that these forks are beautifully engineered and finished. I got mine in the Matt Black finish to go some way towards matching in with my bike, the alternative is a military looking Olive Green. If all Thorn bikes are manufactured and finished to this standard I can see where their pricing comes in; the quality is superb. The forks weighed in at around 3lbs before the headset tube was cut down; 1.5 lbs lighter than my suspension forks.

Now fitted to the bike I am very pleased with the result. It handles well and the bike feels more responsive and in touch with the road surface. One fear I had was that the ride would become too harsh as a result of loosing the shocks, but the bike feels great on the road. There is some ‘give’ as you go over bumps but you have that ‘in control’ feeling.

I have read a lot about touring and touring bikes over the last few months with polar opinions about the suitability of MTB’s for touring and longer distance riding. Some would have you believe that contemplating touring on a Mountain Bike was madness. Yet, Richard Legato and his wife Amanda have traveled thousands of miles on MTB’s with full touring kit. I haven’t experienced the feel of a custom touring bike over hundreds of miles of riding, so don’t feel qualified to make a value assessment of the merits of my MTB/Trekker/Tourer over a purpose made machine. However, I found riding my mountain bike before its modification to be a good riding experience on roads. Since the modification, it rides even better. I am looking forward to testing it, and myself, over longer distances in the future.

What is indisputable is that I now have all the advantages of carrier and mudguard mounts and no shock servicing costs. If I look down over the handlebars I could even con myself into thinking I am riding a Thorn Tourer; from the headset onwards it looks the same. I just need to change the rest of the bike now to match. To be realistic though, with its oversize alloy tubes, the bike does have the appearance of an overweight plasterer wearing a pair of stilettos; not entirely pretty. For me though, looks don’t matter. I don’t cycle because of a bikes aesthetic qualities. I do it to get exercise, to get to work, save the planet, make me a better person and to put some adventure back into my life. My bike is certainly different from most. I am happy that the transformation has been worth it and I am getting more enjoyment from my bike.

Image by Amelia Hickson on iPhone

When I used to cycle a lot, about 10 years ago I was no lover of hills. I just used to try to avoid them because I used to find them so hard. Thinking about it now, I realise that I always used to attack them, honking up them, standing on the pedals like I was some kind of road racer. I would try to beat them with the inevitable consequence that they would beat me. I would start off well but slowly grind to a halt, thighs on fire. I wasn’t fit enough to climb that way and I didn’t have suitable gearing for a slow steady accent.

When I would read about other cyclists going on tours through Yorkshire or the lakes, it was a mystery to me how they could enjoy touring in such hilly geography. How could they take on such a landscape and enjoy it so much?

I now realise two things; they had suitable gearing and they took it steady. With my mountain bike I now have the right gearing and with my attitude to cycling changing from speeding to touring and enjoying the journey, I think I have a better approach.

Nevertheless, climbing hills has been still niggeling me; at the back of my mind doubts lurked. Was it something in my physiology that meant that climbing was always going to make touring a misery?

Since I started cycling again most miles have been on flat roads. I felt it was time to try my newly configured MTB/Tourer on the hills. I decided to go to a very steep hill that is close to my home. I don’t know what it’s official gradient is but it is respectably steep, as steep as most routes I fancy tackling in the Lakes or Yorkshire. I had my panniers on with some ‘ballast’ to simulate touring conditions.

I slowly cranked my way up the hill, dropping gears one by one, keeping the caddence up. The forward motion of the bike slowed to the same speed as a person walking, but I carried on. My heart rate and breathing speeded up but not to the point that I couldn’t hold a conversation. I proved this when a Lycra clad elder statesman of the road racing persuasion slowly creaked past me. Sweating heavily and standing on his pedals, he croaked out ‘get out of that granny ring’. I suggested he tried climbing with my panniers on his bike but got no reply. Off he went and I plodded on happily enjoying the view. I stopped for about 30 seconds for a drink but carried on to the top.