Good logistics delivers the right item, in the right quantity, to the right place at the right time. It was once my professional concern, the subject of a magazine I edited. Amazingly I became an expert and experts as far away as Japan, though more often in Germany and Sweden, paid my air fare so I could chat with them.Those with more uplifting professions - especially teachers - will no doubt think I led a blah life. Business, my dear! So corrupting, so crass! And we all know what Boris Johnson thinks - it begins with f.
But logistics can be fascinating. It's nationally important, good logistics measures a country's efficiency. Good or bad logistics will be at the heart of what Britain becomes post-Brexit. Logistics is anti-waste; mainly of time and time, as we all know, is money. Its principles are simple even though they may be fiendishly hard to apply. In retirement I became the official washer-up chez Robinson and am now the best washer-up I know. My system is based on what I learnt as an editor. Using a dish-washer? Not on your nellie!
My bike has languished somewhat of late, and I recently resurrected it in the service of small daily tasks. Compared with walking bikes offer higher speeds and improved carrying capacity; such efficiency turns me on. It's true, efficiency can be positively erotic. I don't expect, or intend to solicit, your agreement on this.
Securing my crash helmet proved fiddly. I examined the straps and noticed a flaw in the way they were routed. I can solve that, I thought. I wonder if that puts me ahead of the Swedes? Actually, the Swedes are the world’s best in logistics and I doubt it. My love for them pre-dates Scandi-noir.
For even more efficiency, try an ebike, RR. 50 miles (at least) on an overnight charge. I notice that Halfords is currently upping their advertising on them with full page articles of riders' personal experiences after getting them. They are even offering 24 hour "try-outs"
ReplyDeleteIn 70 years of cycling I have never worn a crash helmet. I bought one once and hated the feeling of being strapped up in it. It is a personal choice and should stay so. Australia made them compulsory and cycling dropped by over 50%. So much for advocating its use for physical well being. I guess more people die from the resultant lack of exercise than ae killed in a cycling accident by not wearing one.
They seem to be a "talisman" - wear one and you will always be safe. But it has been proved by research that they are not very effective in a hard accident. To wear one comfortably it has to be lightly constructed, which means that they are of limited use. Motorcycle helmets are another matter - they can be of heavier, effective construction. I would definitely advocate them for children though, since they are inexperienced and/or takes unnecessary risks.
Incidentally I note that Henry Marsh, the noted brain surgeon, who cycles everywhere, has taken the informed decision never to wear one.
For Avus - On a walk recently I met an e-cyclist coming the other way on an unsurfaced track. We chatted and I was impressed by the e-bike and its potential until I found out how heavy it was. The guy I met was young and fit, but he admitted that if he came to a locked gate or stile he would have the greatest difficulty in lifting the bike over, and that it might not even be possible, which is no problem with a normal bike. So, especially if planning to use off the tarmac your route would need researching beforehand.
ReplyDeleteRR - for logistics see the Morecambe and Wise breakfast preparation sketch.
Sir Hugh:
DeleteI certainly agree about the weight if having to lift one bodily. I confine my rides to tarmac or gentle woodland tracks.
Actually, for my type of riding, the weight is unnoticable once under weigh (correct spelling I maintain, from its old nautical derivation of anchor raising!)
Avus: The bike's being used for "small daily tasks", errands if you like. If old age denied me the car I'd consider an ebike. As it is the cost of an ebike and the bother about charging are unnecessary. More than that an ebike would, I assume, reduce the benefits of exercise. Yes, I know one can pedal unassisted but then one would be propelling unwanted weight.
ReplyDeleteI'm astonished by your phrase "being strapped up". Once the helmet's on I cease to be conscious of it. The design ensures hearing is unimpeded and I wear it unselfconsciously as I prod about the supermarket. I haven't researched bike helmets but I suspect they are designed as disposables; in the event of an accident they destructively compress as do modern car bumpers. Making them stronger would be a chimera; the forces associated with the accident would then be more readily transferred to the cranium.
You rate them as "not very effective". Thus I may infer that they are effective to some degree. Given the choice - knowing my head was about to hit the tarmac - I'd prefer to be wearing one. The arguments against wearing them seem faintly reminiscent of those employed by seat-belt resisters decades ago. Thinnish. I am a great admirer of Henry Marsh and I also admire those hardest of hard sportsmen who race in the TdF. The latter wear helmets. They didn't want to, had to be forced to. Remember the early car racers - open shirts, cotten caps. Mike Hawthorn even wore a bow-tie. Occasionally society has to step in; racing vehicles is a mad activity; not to do step in could well be seen as colluding in someone's suicide.
Other things. Bones become more brittle with age. Reaction times get longer. Eyesight deteriorates. All that manliness, now 70 years in the past, might benefit from a little forethought.
Sir Hugh: We were discussing bikes only a few days ago. I don't think helmets cropped up. I remember when I photographed you climbing you were wearing a somewhat vestigial helmet. Falling rocks I suppose. However, if you fell, gyrations would be necessary to ensure you landed head down, that being the only part of your body that was protected.
I have an odd shaped head. Long and narrow, back to front. hence I find that a cycle helmet, which seems designed for a round head, gives me a headache from forehead pressure. If I had it loose enough to be comfortable and unnoticable it would simply slip off in an accident, which would negate its use. Even motorcycle helmets have to be one size bigger than my noddle circumference because of this.
ReplyDeleteBicycle helmets are of limited value in collisions with cars, but I've seen firsthand how effective they are in cycle only crashes. Very.
ReplyDeleteAvus: You are not the first of my acquaintances to have an oddly shaped head. My oldest friend, Richard, now dead from motor neurone disease, had a head with a curve ratio (in plan view) similar to the one you describe. His wife was mad keen on horses, latterly that branch of the sport known as "driving". If he was ever going to see his wife at weekends it seemed he too must adopt the same addiction. Protective headgear is mandatory in these activities and he found it difficult to achieve a good fit; they were quite wealthy and it is quite possible he had a helmet made specially.
ReplyDeleteBut I'm not entirely sure - reading between the lines - that head shape is the only reason for your helmet antipathy. The reference to "70 years" hints at pride in such abstinence, What was good enough in the old days, etc. I mention this because I have had experience in wearing clobber made out of unyielding plastic, albeit at the other end of my corpus. I am of course referring to ski boots. I skied for over 25 years and I've known others - equally addicted - who eventually gave up the sport due to ill-fitting boots. The agony is absolute. But there is one solution. Heat of the right sort can be applied with a hair dryer (Lock yourself in the loo if you believe being observed would threaten your manhood) and the plastic can be eased into a more congenial shape. Some effort is involved but to me this seems preferable to a PS on your tombstone: The Tarmac Won!
MikeM: I was surprised how comfortable the thing is to wear, but then perhaps I belong to the category known as L'homme moyen sensuel in fiction favoured by the chattering classes. In fact the spine is arguably even more vulnerable than the skull in bike crashes and there's no protecting that. It's simply a matter of going with the percentages.
Child no. 3 started out as a theatre major but is now a business major. Statistics, calc, micro, macro: I have no idea how I produced such a being. It's not natural to him, but I admire people going after things that are not easy for them...
ReplyDeleteMarly: I worry about "such a being; it's not natural to him". Was it so important that he became "literary". What he is now is natural. In school and no doubt college afterwards, he was merely a blob of wet clay on the potter's wheel.
ReplyDeleteYou say you admire pursuit of the difficult. Then force yourself, ask him questions about statistics, calc, etc; invite him to educate you on subjects you have previously ignored. Statistics can tell you things about poets you may be unaware of; language can be approached numerically as well as via flutters of the heart. How often has "lachrymose" occurred in US prosody; might its fashionability be at an end?
Is the word fashionable? I don't know but figures would tell me. A pox on figures, you say, conscious of Restoration echoes. But your IQ - which you have employed beautifully and creatively - is measured in figures and may have been instrumental in guiding you towards more certain literary comforts.
Did you know Borodin was a chemist?
All: Whoops! Having just re-commented for Marly I notice that today is July 4. I once asked a Pittsburgher in Pittsburgh whether I should stay indoors on that day. Worriedly she said, "No, but why would you ask?" Making me sorry for being a smartyboots, much given to asking silly question.
ReplyDeleteIn times like these independence seems more than an abstract noun. To the USA I say: Resurrect the spirit of Fort Sumter! Come to think of it I may have got that wrong. But at least I like baseball, martinis, drives into the Virginia Panhandle, the funeral-like experience of shopping at the A&P, that sly columnist who wrote for the Philadelphia Inquirer - Joe McGinnis? And the odd sense of split personality that came from watching The Forsyte Saga on PBS.
Actually you're all great; DT's slogan is a calumny.
Oddly, many of us did stay indoors on the 4th this year, as it was oppressively hot here in the northeast. 99 or thereabouts. Here's a quote from the comments section of yesterday's NYT you might appreciate..."Liberals want the world to be like the Heaven the conservatives pray for, while conservatives want the world to be like the Hell the liberals don't believe in."
ReplyDelete