ubuntu-cyclists team mailing list archive

["John Gill" <swfiua@xxxxxxxxx>]

As Marc said, it has been fascinating reading all the cycling + ubuntu
stories here.  Its reminded me of some of my biking experiences over the
years.

In my teens (late 70's) I did lots of cycling, mostly in the UK where I grew
up.   At that time I had an old Raleigh 5-speed that I eventually converted
to a fixed gear, when I had a touring frame built by a local bike maker (J F
Wilson) and that became my bike for many years.

Since then, biking has more often been just a means of getting to and from
work, but I've always loved bikes.

Currently, I have three bikes, a Canonndale that I bought in 1998 when my
tourer finally bit the dust, a Brompton folder and a tandem.

In 2000 I became ill with glandular fever and never really got better, the
problem was put down as post-viral-fatigue.   Curiously, whilst walking a
shortish distance would leave me exhausted, biking 2-3 miles often made me
feel quite a bit better.   It was in this period that I got the Brompton,
and used it in the last 2 miles of my commute from the train station to
work.   As this was my main form of exercise, it really reinforced my love
of bikes.

In 2005 I was diagnosed with Myasthenia Gravis -- which explained all the
fatigue + with treatments my life is now a lot closer to normal.   Just over
a year ago we moved closer to work (7 miles away), so I decided to cheat and
fit an electric nano-motor to the Brompton.   This worked really well for
me, as I could pedal as much or as little as I felt like on any particular
day, quite important with the MG, since over-doing exercise on a bad day
would usually knock me back quite a bit.

Anyway, in the next couple of weeks I'm moving to live in Ottawa -- so it
was good to hear of at least a couple of cycling Ubunteros in Montreal.
Can't wait to catch up with the bikes, which have been in a container for
far too long already.

Now my other big obsession in life is open source software and ubuntu in
particular, hence my little corner of the web:

http://www.bytesnbikes.org and blog http://bytesnbikes.blogspot.com/

Not much there now, but I expect this to change when I get to Ottawa as I
should have a lot more time for it and open source too.

I've been using linux since 1997, both at home and work and started using
Ubuntu with Hoary.

I've dabbled a bit with python on the Series 60 and used it to create
https://launchpad.net/johnjohn, a GPS mapping tool.  One of the main uses
I've had of this is as a speedo on my bike.   I've been wanting to fix it up
to collect more info on journeys and make it a more useful tool on a bike.
I'm also looking forward to Android phones coming out + been following the
Openmoko too which is pretty popular amongst cyclists, along with
http://www.tangogps.org.

Looking forward to hearing from more out there + with a few of us not too
far away from each other maybe we can organise some rides to start joining
the dots?

John