Reggie Nadelson in the Financial Times (How to Spend It, 07.06, page 61):

My current object of desire is an Alex Moulton bike. One of the pretty red ones with the little wheels and the suspension system that looks like a Norman Foster bridge. Also, apparently, it snaps into two pieces and can then be slung into a stylish bag you can put in a luggage rack. I’m not sure if this bike is exactly right for riding around London and New York with a sack of groceries in the basket, but I feel that if I were to do so, I would look extremely sleek, a stylish bikista among the lumpen. Was that what Norman Tebbit meant when he said we should all get on our bikes? Maybe not.

I could go for a Serotta, with its special geometries, or one of the other dude bikes, as I think of them – those bikes that can run to $5, $10, even $20,000. Rich dude bikes. Custom bikes. I had a brief fling with the idea, but then I recalled that Senator John Kerry has more than one, and it was just that East Coast WASP snob thing that lost him the election and left us with George Bush. Bush, of course, falls off his mountain bike more often than not. (Literally; this is not a metaphor, but then he choked on a pretzel.) I mean, come on, John; you don’t flash your custom-made bike when people are hungry.

But call me Lance Nadelson; I love my bike. I do not aspire to the Tour de France, unless it takes me directly to Hermès, but I grow poetic about early morning rides along the Hudson or in Hyde Park, all glittering river or dewy grass. My bike is nothing special. It’s just a run-of-the-mill hybrid, but it is my Ferrari, my steed, my Gulfstream V. I even loved my last bike, a wreck that I clung to for years until I left it outside a grocery store like an unwanted child. I have not recovered from the guilt.

Right here is where I’d better tell you that unlike those middle-aged bikery boys, I do not have special outfits. No woman should ever appear in those one piece Lycra bike suits; a pair of jeans does just fine. Also – and please, no medical advice – I do not wear a helmet. The helmets are ridiculous. Some look like bad winged numbers in strange plastic colours. Newer ones – the kind you often see on ageing motorcyclists or Rubies (Rich Urban bikers) – look like tin pots, or the helmets the Nazis wore. Listen, I’ve given up bacon, most carbs, cigarettes and caffeine; a girl’s got to have a little danger in her life.

As important as your bike is your bike store. The urban bike shop is what the local bookstore once was now that all the bookstores have pretty much disappeared, leaving only the giant chains offering bad coffee. In London, my local is EJ Barnes in Westbourne Grove. I think of it as a sort of gentleperson’s shop, a place that is never open at a time that’s convenient for anyone with a job. These days, it gently serves the Notting Hill ladies who lunch and do not have jobs, so can drop in after they’ve tucked in at Nicole Farhi’s café.

Still, I like Barnes’s old-fashioned character. I like the fact that I might run into a neighbour who knows exactly what my garden committee is up to or who’s just divorced and now has to move out of W11 into, whisper it, W12.

In New York, my bike shop is Bicycle Habitat on Lafayette, a hold-over from the time SoHo was a real neighbourhood. Thrillingly, it has not only profited but also recently expanded. It will sell you a bike. It will sell you a pump. It will sell you a vintage poster of Eddie Merckx, the all-time greatest cyclist, or a pizza cutter than resembles a Penny Farthing. Most important it will take good care of your bicycle. There’s an English guy there who has Rasta hair and can do anything with any bike. He is as famous as a movie star in my ’hood and much more celebrated. He is patient even with the likes of me; when I think my bike is dead, he quietly explains that it just needs some air.

And where else would you run into Riad, the gorgeous chef from Balthazar who, waiting patiently for his repair, is browsing through the new Cormac McCarthy novel he just bought?

One more thing: my bike must always have a wicker basket on the front. I don’t like metal baskets. I don’t like those panniers at the back. I like a wicker basket on the front of my sit-up-and-beg lady’s bike, and I like a cushy, comfy seat. So if I can have all that and one of the nice Moultons, or even just my trusty Trek this summer, I’m ready to ride.

Image by Paul Mison