We rode together as spring turned to summer, and although there weren't many tricks that Henry could show me which I didn't already seem to have imprinted on my DNA, he did introduce me to some of our fellow commuters: there was Freddy, and Larson, and the Gribbley brothers, and Amanda the reckless speed demon; Jacob the Elder and Jacob the Younger, insurance agents both; slow-as-a-slug Sturges, Prim Paul, and Watson with his ancient Pashley, which he'd rather unimaginatively nicknamed Sherlock. This is the crowd that left about the same time in the morning as Henry and me and worked in anonymous office buildings within a few blocks of each-other. They all seemed harmless enough.

To somebody who didn't know better.

The Gribbley brothers, for example, were psychotic. Oh, you wouldn't know it if you were disinterestedly glancing at them from behind the window of a car or a bus, but get in between them--Emil always kept about 20 feet ahead of Sherwood--and you'd feel their wrath. Emil would slow down and Sherwood would speed up until he was so close that you could smell him (which you really didn't want to do; why do you think Emil kept upwind of him?) and in a practiced pincer movement wrenched you from whatever reverie you'd been enjoying and deposited you bruised onto the kerb, wondering at man's inhumanity to man.

They all had their tricks. Freddy liked to startle the unwary with a sharp stick he kept in place of a frame pump. Amanda was simply demoralisingly fast, coming from behind and shocking you practically out of your saddle with a sonic boom, though she always tended to fade in the home stretch. Larson never waved back. Prim Paul always made every single light, no matter how unlikely. He cycled with a hand in his coat pocket, leading Henry to muse that he was fingering a device which controlled the traffic lights. Come to think of it, he did work in that government building...

Watson packed can of WD-40 in his front basket which he would spray at the rims of anybody who got within shooting distance. Jacob the Younger was following in his honourable father's treads. They both always brought up the rear. Then there was Sturges. He was like the tortoise that won the race; you'd always spy him in the farthest reaches of your handlebar mirror, disappearing into a speck, only to smugly appear ahead of you right at the end. We all suspected, but could never prove, that he caught a ride when nobody was looking and then neatly inserted himself into the course just before the finish. The sneaky bastard did ride a Brompton, after all.

Henry, ever moderate, always kept to the middle of the pack, well away from the Gribbleys, Freddy, and Watson. He was unfailingly polite to all. After we'd been riding together for a month or so he casually mentioned the Commuter Challenge. It sounded intriguing...