Whilst I might not personally want to wear what I see some other cyclists wearing, first and foremost I'm usually pleased to see other people cycling... if they start skipping reds or mounting the pavement or declaring that the seat has to be higher than the handlebars then I rapidly become less pleased. Someone seeing a cyclist sees that cycling happens and is possible. If I see someone wearing an anorak I sometimes feel uncomfortable on their behalf if it's anything warmer than freezing cold, but that's just my unnaturally low vicarious heat-related discomfort threshold. I'd do the same if I saw anyone wearing a suit jacket. Last spring I saw someone stopped at a junction having just climbed a steepish hill who was wearing a tied tie and collared shirt underneath their half-zipped-up anorak, which made me very glad I was wearing only a single layer of breathable fabric.
The problem isn't that cyclists who choose cycling-biased clothing turn up at work wearing looking weird or specific or not-normal-or-regular (and, of course, regrettably unCitizenly unstylish) clothes, it's that our offices still require us to wear clothes derived from silly eighteenth-century toffs' hunting outfits to sit at a desk and type. It contributes to the current obesity and physical lethargy problems currently being experienced by western societies - force people to dress for at least a third of the day in clothing which makes activity uncomfortable and it'll affect the levels of activity they comfortably achieve. If enough people travelled to work actively enough to indicate clothing suited to the dispersal of sweat and dissipation of heat then clothing suited to activity could become the mainstream sartorial paradigm of the modern office environment.
Whilst it might be nice to imagine Edinburgh remade in Copenhagen's projected image, with nice wide well-drained well-laid well-prioritised cycleways forming a network worthy of the definition linking all the major commercial nuclei and running alongside arterial routes to the suburbs which are assiduously brushed and gritted and ploughed during winter and along which people may unhurriedly pootle unthreatened and unharried by motor vehicles and going slowly enough to wear clothing with double-digit TOG values, Edinburgh will not magically transform itself into this overnight. We still need to get home this evening and go to work tomorrow, and take the children to school, and go to the shops, or even just pop out for some fresh air. We have to work with our existing network of roads and paths and the other users thereof. If the commute is our only chance of getting some exercise (not even training or racing) it's no-one's place to criticise us for dressing appropriately.
Whilst waiting for the segregated network on which the non-cycling nine-tenths of the city's population can begin cycling with impunity, we can carry on doing what we're already doing to encourage more people to cycle: getting out there and being seen to be cycling in the city as it currently stands. Also, the more we're out there the greater the chance that other road users will also notice us and learn to cope with us in advance of our being joined in the future by new cyclists. We can demonstrate now that it's never too cold or windy or wet or hot, that no street is too steep nor too badly-cobbled, no ostensibly flat tarmac surface too pitted, no distance is too great and no road interchange too motor-vehicle-biased, wearing whatever it is which keeps us comfortable in the current conditions. There is a lot of unnecessary garbage in many of the world's shops but there has been the odd advancement in clothing technology which is arguably quite useful. The zip has been around for a while so it's odd how rare they are on suit trousers' hip pockets. A zip is old tech compared to a smartphone but the zip has the ability to stop the smartphone falling out of the pocket to smash onto the ground.
If someone wishes to simultaneously demonstrate that it's possible to cycle wearing three-piece tweed suits, fine. If they have a stylish hat which is sufficiently firmly-fitting for it to not be whipped off by the wind, good for them. However, if they wish to believe that cycling whilst dressing as if they've just escaped from an executive boardroom or an expensive fashion boutique's window is any less of an affectation than cycling whilst wearing a cycling jersey covered in sponsors' logos from the window of a bike shop, they ought to try thinking again. A suit is (at least to me) a business-specific or wedding-specific or funeral-specific item of clothing. Even my cheap £100 suit is more expensive than everything I wore to cycle to work this morning. 'Regular' and 'normal' are not absolute terms - it's what's regular and normal for a particular entity. If I were to ride about wearing a suit, I'd look like a sweaty mess, even in winter; very few people want to look like a sweaty mess, so people seeing me riding about in a suit might be discouraged from copying me. If I wear things in which I'm comfortable and which minimise my sweatiness and messiness (and dry-cleaning and repair bills) I'd imagine it would create a much more positive impression of my preferred method of travel.
We can keep reporting pot-holes and other infrastructural hazards to the council, educate drivers (either through their complaints procedure (particularly where it seems that there's an institutional grievance against cyclists) or even face-to-face through a vehicle window (if we have the temerity and necessary social skills to carry it off)) no matter what we're wearing at the time. Addressing the problems with infrastructure and other road users requires no particular style of clothing, so anyone can do it. The more comfortable or all-weather-capable we feel, which is something we can only judge for ourselves, the more we'll go out and the more issues we can spot, and the more we can be spotted. Being out there is the important thing.
.andrew lamberton
