Bikes, Bikes and more Bikes!!!

Today, l am going to download some images showing bikes. I have an on-going project about bikes and take images where ever l see them, in this country or else where. Living in London, there have always been people riding bikes to work but after the bombs on the tubes and on a bus, a few years or so ago, the number of bikes just mutiplied out of all recognition! The below image is a new bike system at a train station in London. It works so that your bike can be stacked, one above the other and still be easily accesible to you, even if there is one above or below your bike. Ingenious!

It wasn't until l started this project and really started to look at bikes, that l realised how many different types there are. Colours, shapes and styles are amazing and the way that people decorate their bikes often has something to say about their characters!

The following wonderful pink image, shows that making your mark on your possestions, often starts young! This young lady is really stamping her personality on her bike!Ha!

Some people wear clothes that also shows their character in some way, when riding their bikes! The next image shows an ordinary bike but the gentleman riding it, was dressed all in plaid....of colurs that matched his socks!! The only thing that he had personalised on his bike was his bell. A rather large redand yellow spotted one!

In Amsterdam, Holland, bikes are everywhere and in the centre of town, apart from the trams, they rule the roads! I can't imagine being able to ride a bike while holding an umbrella, in Putney, let alone the Center of London! There are too many cars and buses for you to leisurely ride your bike, like this lady is doing in the centre of Amsterdam !

When it snowed a few weeks ago, l was astonished to see a young man riding his bike in the snow, while pulling a sledge behind him! Now that l call being optimistic! He didn't manage it for very long but at least he tried!

The next image, is not a particually in focus  but it does, l think, show the unusual white tyres and the fact that it was going extremly fast. And l mean fast...so fast in fact that people stopped to watch him and many people clapped when he went past!Ha!

While in Amsterdam, l saw so many decorated bikes with artifical and real flowers, hanging ornaments, bells, horns and in fact anything that made their bikes different from all the other hundreds of bikes! This one l saw in Putney a few weeks ago! Made me smile!

This last image is a sad one. This skip was full of disguarded bikes and some of them where not old or damamged but apparently, the skip owner told me, they had be abandoned all over the south coast and had ended up here! They were on there way to be crushed. There are people out there in the big wide world, that have the latest bike and so just get rid of their "old" one. Why throw it away, why not give it to charity? Such a shame we have become such a wasteful community.