Cheers everybody

Hands® turned 1 today – officially, not publicly. It was the day the first lot of stickers arrived and we’d decided to go for a little ride around the city as i’d just quit my job, it was my birthday and my best mate had come up for the day to get some coffee/beers. I wasn’t in the best place mentally and it was looking like a shit winter was on the way. I needed something to focus on to get through it all so I made the logo, ordered some stickers, and started telling people about it. Not at any point back then did I imagine it turning out the way it has so far. Barely anyone I knew then rode a bike or even had one, and the ones that did lived far away. Neither did I expect anyone to understand what a bike club is or does (and I’m still figuring that out).

I put up a little video on Instagram this morning of all the videos I’ve recorded since that first day and you can see the seasons change, the group getting bigger, the rides longer – and everyone smiling. I’d lost a lot of hope this time last year and I personally wasn’t doing a lot of smiling, so to be sat here 365 days later and have all of this to look back on feels really good. We’ve done nine group rides, met a billion new friends and gone camping more than once.

So for that reason, I just want to say thank you to all of you. This whole thing wouldn’t exist without you, the effort you put in and the fact that you show up. Real people IRL are what powers this thing and that’s the way it’s always going to be. To borrow a quote from Jan and Michael, It’s just ‘People on bikes, doing things’.

This isn’t it for the year also: we’ve got another group ride (hopefully two), Map deployment into local Caffeination Stations®, longsleeve kit for the chilly heads and I’ll finally get round to rescheduling that Coffee Outside as the weather has been Naff™ for the last couple weeks. Fingers are getting pulled out too as the blog has been asleep for some months now so expect updates in your inboxes soon enough. Finally, Hands® is making its first movements into long-form video formats, we went camping and filmed it all. Give it a watch if you’re in need of a ATB bikecamping fix.

Have a great weekend x