VisualMANIAC/MAG

It takes some courage to ride a bicycle in Madrid. Every time that, in a conversation, I admit that I am one of those urban cyclists, all eyes turn to me with a mix of envy, admiration and understanding. In confidence, I must admit that, it doesn’t matter how wild the traffic gets, you don’t need to be Indiana Jones to pedal around the city. I could talk for hours about the feeling of satisfaction that floods me every time I dive into the streets with my bike. If I did, I would choose the pages of The Ride Journal. Like everything that is good in this life, this British journal was conceived amid beer and food. In 2008, a few bike fanatics decided to shape their personal stories and create a magazine about the experiences you can live on top of a saddle. They have published 6 numbers since that day.

Here you won’t find state-of-the-art automatic pedals and they won’t tell you either the price of that new fixie you have seen around your city. The Ride Journal speaks of everything else, of what is really important, of epic, of suffering, of the sensation of utter freedom. Each page is a feeling from a different collaborator, seasoned with photoessays and articles with the bike as main character. All printed with great quality and wrapped up in an impeccable design.
If you don’t find it in your newsagents, you can order a copy through The Ride Journal’s site for 10.40 pounds if you live in the UK and 14.50 for the rest of the world. And because they want to make things easier for you, you can download the first three issues for free, which, by the way, have already sold out.

While the issue I have ordered arrives, I will carry on imagining that the concrete rivers of Madrid are canals, and that it is as easy to navigate across them with my bike as it is in Amsterdam, avoiding cyclists instead of taxis, where the air does not smell of exhaust pipe.