Inverted bicycling

I had to wait until my 11'th birthday before my mum and dad bought me a bicycle. We went to a bicycle shop in Winchester - in Jewry Street I think it was - and I chose one that was yellow (my favourite colour) and black, with 3-speed Sturmey Archer gears. I loved that bike. I took it to Oxford where bikes rule the day - on one occasion I left it locked to some railings whilst attending a lecture and on returning found that some joker had stolen the lock and left the bicycle!  Sadly the bike was stolen when, later, I was living in London.

But in the days of my innocence, one summer's day (I can still picture it in my mind) I was on one of my bike jaunts and I thought - what about crossing my hands so that my right was on the left handlebar and vice versa?  It was amazing how quickly I lost control and ended up in a bed of stinging nettles much to my chagrin.  I was reminded of that experience when I stumbled across this video:

A similar experiment in which the subject has to wear lens that invert his vision 24/7 has been repeated several times.  I first saw it in a Fact and Faith film "Windows of the Soul" - forward to about 13 minutes if you're interested.  Occasionally put on by this or that church, I would implore my parents to take me. Remember there was no TV in our home back then, and of course no Google. In our enlightened internet age they seem rather cheesy but back then they were cutting edge. At least, I thought so.

The moral? Perhaps I should have persevered with riding with cross hands? Or is this post just another peep into my childhood - the strange boy who only borrowed science books, especially those about electricity, from the public library, whilst my older sister would choose novels. Who would spend hours in his "workshop" disassembling old radios and TV's and, occasionally, actually constructing something out of the bits.

Never dampen creativity!