How would you feel about a calm Christmas and a peaceful New Year?
Here at Russell’s Bicycle Shed, we’ve been thinking a lot about how time, hassle, and stress are related over the last year. We’ve been working flat out to keep the city moving through the twists and turns of the Pandemic, and we know thousands of other key workers have too. (And hats off to them all).
Woman fixing a bike
If you work for a living, you can calculate how much your time fixing up your commuter bike is worth. And how much time you save for your employer by riding in to work rather than waiting in a queue for half your commute. And evidence shows that cycle commuters are more alert and ready to get started once they arrive, unlike stressed out rush hour drivers. That’s more productive time for your employer, in addition to the fewer days off sick you take because you ride a bike.
We’d like to spend more of our time talking to friends and customers about how the city can come out of all this as a better place for cyclists, with better active travel routes like Grey to Green, and more enlightened employers providing secure parking and other essentials for the commuters who save them time and money by riding to work.
But we’re often too busy replacing hundreds of rusted chains and worn out wheelsets.
We want to keep the city (and you) moving, and we’ve seen how much stress is involved when you decide to ride to work one Spring day only to discover the bike you last used in October has seized up. Or how it feels to miss an important meeting one morning because a wheel rim or a tyre fails halfway there.
So, there’s the setup, here’s the sell: if you and your family cyclists love playing with oil, grease and spanners, read no more.
But if you’d rather spend your time watching a film with your partner of an evening, or meeting your mates at the weekend instead of spending the afternoon trying to make your gears work, ask yourself, how much is that time worth? More than £11 a month?
That’s how much it costs to join our Club, with the two annual services, emergency fixes and free loan bike required to keep you moving, without hassle or stress.
And when everyone is saying ‘buy less stuff to help the climate’, and ‘spend more time on yourself and your loved ones’, maybe spending some festive funds to have a peaceful, hassle and grease free New Year is worth thinking about. Yes? Join the Club.