Some­times you see them: dig­ni­fied, ter­ribly cool, impec­cably dressed, and upright, mak­ing their way through the rush hour traffic on their old-fash­ioned bikes in a man­ner poles oppos­ite to the more com­mon fluoro speed­sters. A beacon of bicyc­ling style, and also: fairly damned hot.

Yes, you think, now that’s cer­tainly one mode of com­muter cyc­ling I would take up myself if only I was­n’t so scared of get­ting pas­ted by a bus or doored by a car.

Well, to address these very real fears among the major­ity of Wel­ling­ton’s irreg­u­lar and non-cyc­lists comes The Friendly Cyc­list, a site cre­ated by Cycle Aware Wel­ling­ton and fun­ded by the Coun­cil, with a selec­tion of rather nice short videos impart­ing some basic safety tips.

Like this one, on inter­sec­tions, where we learn that it’s quite alright to be in the middle of the lane:

Star­ring Sarah Harpur and nar­rated by a cer­tain very fam­ous gen­tle­man of Nor­folk, the videos are well worth watch­ing in their entirety. And after­wards, once you’ve steeled your­self to brave the mean streets on your mamachari, your next prob­lem is fig­ur­ing out where to securely park the thing close to your non-bike-friendly office dur­ing work hours. (Good luck with that.)