Bikes

Well it's been grey and cold today so we headed out to go be tourists and check our the Riverside museum.  It's pretty good, especially for free.  The huge steam trains are impressive- especially the big South African one.  I enjoyed the trams the most and imagined what it must have felt like for great grandad Joe being in charge of one in Bradford back in the day!

It was on of those experiences where you realise how much has changed in such a relatively short period of time.  There were so many things on show that used to be made in Glasgow - the trains, the engines for the ships, the motor cars and cabinetry, bikes, so much.  None of it is really mady in town anymore and there's barely any of this sort of industry left in the UK either.  There's the obvious upsides of improving technology and economies of scale, and the positive environmental impacts (the picture of the bottle of 'water' from the Clyde at the height of industry was pretty scary) but there's also someting rather sad about the loss.

When looking at those huge steam engine trains, I can understand some of the pride that the workers may have felt in having a hard job but one that produces something so huge and powerful, which must have been intensified when it was the ships.  Not that I think we should go back to the working conditions of those days (there's a reason there's a mesothelioma triangle around the Clyde shipbuilders) but you cna see why the links to such a profession were strong.

Blip is of part of the wall of motorbikes.  On the wall of cars there was an old Austin Metro which reminded me of our old beloved family car, named Chugger. I cried when we replaced chugger for a new model.

The blip was almost a shot of the 'permanent veoldrome' which has some iconic bikes suspended on a circular overhead track.  There was a champion UCI bike up there and also a Danny Mac prototype, plus a video of Danny jumping off bit around the museum when it opened.  Good times.