Ahead of the opening of cycling exhibition 'The Perfect Machine' at Summerlee Museum in July 2014 we are profiling cyclists from around Lanarkshire and Glasgow.
Maja volunteers with the Glasgow Women's Library (http://womenslibrary.org.uk) in Bridgeton where she is one of the 'Paper Girls' who distribute library information by bike. Many thanks to Rita Lamarra of the Thursday night Photomedia Studio photography class at Summerlee for taking this photograph.
"I got my bike in Berlin where I used to live. I lived there for about three years and it was on the small ads in Berlin that I saw it advertised. I didn’t actually want a single-speed bike but I thought it was so beautiful and I really wanted something this colour, it’s a vintage Giant it just looked really nice. So I went along and it belonged to a guy who had found it, probably paid about 50 Euros for the frame, I think it’s an old ‘80s Giant frame and he scrapped most of the parts apart from the frame and did it all up himself. It was like his project, his baby and his plan was to do it up for his girlfriend (it was a bit of a smaller frame it didn’t fit him) and she then decided instead that she would prefer to have a sort of lady’s shopper bike and he was devastated because he put so much work into it! So then he decided to sell it on to someone and he saw how much love I had in my eyes and I think he was like, ‘go on then’.
"I rode the bike in Berlin for about a year before I moved back here, it’s suffered a few scratches there from its transport to Glasgow. I find the single speed surprisingly okay in Glasgow, because Berlin is really flat and I thought it was going to be really tough in the hills and stuff but it’s not, it actually works really well. It’s better because it’s more a challenge, in Berlin it just felt too easy and here at least I feel like I’m getting a bit of a workout from cycling.
"I cycle to work. I did my degree in Glasgow and during that time there is no way you would have had me on a bike on the streets in Glasgow. I suppose I built some confidence up in Berlin and then came back here and felt that I was ready to face the traffic in Glasgow. It’s really different here and people are not very bike-friendly, there’s a lot of animosity on the road."
If you would like to be featured in 'Cycling Stories' please contact Justin Parkes, Industrial History Curator on 01236 856376; ParkesJ@culturenl.co.uk
'The Perfect Machine', Summerlee Museum of Scottish Industrial Life, Coatbridge
5 July to 14 September 2014
