It will be no secret to the readers of this blog that I love! Bikes. These beautiful vehicles are possibly the pinnacle of human innovation. They are easy to repair and there are many variations, and they make you feel very connected to the terrain around you and your body.

Since becoming slightly more serious about fixing bikes a few years ago, I’ve learned a lot about them. The toothy circles at the back aren’t (just) cogs: they’re cassettes, and the front part that the chain slots into are chain rings. There’s no derailleur without a derailleur hanger. There are lots of kinds of brake systems, and disc brakes and V brakes are great and calliper bikes are horrible to adjust.

Maybe my favourite thing about bikes is how it’s possible to switch parts out to make bikes work better for you, learning to have preferences in seat softness and handlebar design. A lot of people are used to riding reasonably clunky bikes that are the wrong size and shape for their body, but I truly believe that everyone’s perfect bike is out there somewhere.

If you want to adjust your bike, you first need to know what it’s possible to adjust. My new(ish) zine “bikes: a double sided introduction” is a little starting place for that. It unfolds to a full picture of a bike and then fold up to identify individual parts. Where is the derailleur? What kind of tyres should you be using? How does a disc brake work? Hopefully, it’s a starting place for the curious.

It’s a double sided introduction, so if you unfold the zine, there’s a more whimsical side, where different bike parts are identified and I wrote little haiku about them. This is more about the joy and silliness of biking, trying to convey the sensation of flight or the observation of a slowly blackening chain in winter. I also like to think that the way you read the zine, slowly rotating around the bike, echoes the form of a bike and how the wheels go around and around.

You can read this zine in full here! If you want to download and print it, make sure you print double sided, then fold up the zine in eighths with a slit in the middle. (this video provides simple instructions if you’re confused).

As well as the bike zines, the full editions of my portents zines are now available on the Mostly Good Ideas zine page too. If you want a printable version, send me an email. I’ll write more about the portents series when I finish the third instalment at some point in the next few months (but probably not before October).

I took my zines, as well as some handmade collage notebooks, to Ōtautahi zinefest which this post was maybe meant to be an announcement of but never mind. It was a bit chaotic and stressful because there was a lot of other things going on that week, but an interesting experience, and it started some conversations with people about their adventures. I did a trade of one of the low carbon adventure zines for a zine about buses which was probably my favourite trade and very on brand. JJ and I tabled together, along with new-friend Bleu, and it felt really special to share this side of my creativity with my very wonderful and creative sibling.

Delightfully, Éimhín’s table was next to us too; they and their friends (who are the Get Home Safe collective) had a completely full table, and my brother got a Rat King Landlord tabloid edition and got to find out who Éimhín is. My parents also learned that zine culture is a Big Thing and not something their two children made up to constantly present them with small booklets. There are so many weird feelings around pricing and being a writer vs. being an artist, but it was ultimately a lovely community event – and the bike zine was by far the most popular of my work even if it was ironically the easiest to make. As a fun reward, I Had a Low-Carbon Adventure won runner-up in the “writing category” and a zine of Éimhín’s which I illustrated about media and friends and food and joy got an honourable mention. And Bleu and Percy won best poetry zine, incredible stuff (their zine was translucent which I plan to incorporate in future zine ideas).

It was my first ever Zinefest and hopefully not my last, because I have at least two more zines I want to make before the end of the year if I can conquer my second-language-based self doubt for one and complete some very labour intensive illustration for the other. Plus, Shreyas keeps threatening to make zines too…