TALES FROM THE SHED
Once upon a time, in a magazine far, far away, every year at around this time we would run a story. Magazines do this. Although the words and pics were always different, the title was always the same: Winter Drawers On. It was a feeble joke when it was a new joke – and it’s a joke older than any of us, I reckon – but it became a sort-of magazine tradition. Traditions in magazines can be fun, and break up the work of actually putting it all together – RC has a few scattered here and there, and occasionally readers spot them, and more occasionally comment. That old magazine was the long-deceased Used Bike Guide, which like RealClassic did its best to feature the views, opinions and entertaining tales of writing riders who were also readers. It was a whole lot of fun, too.
The basic thrust of the annual story was to take a survey of winter riding kit and report back. Simple stuff; go take a tour of local bike and bike accessory emporia and see what was on offer, take a guess at how wind and waterproof it might be, and make suggestions, preferably humorously, too. It is a depressing measure of how much more I rode in those days than I do now that
