Interesting article about the City of London bike squad the other day in the London Evening Standard.
The City's squad of a dozen-ish includes a pair of female officers (right), as we found out at a Bike Week breakfast at St Paul's last week.
One thing in the article that caught my eye was the pen-sized video recorder the bike police wear clipped to their helmet. It runs records on a continuous loop, so that when they hit 'record' it starts recording everything from there as normal, but with the previous 20 seconds recorded too.
Sounds just the sort of thing we need to back our occasional disputes with buses and taxis. Or with police officers telling us to stop taking pictures and videos of that cycle lane because it might help terrorists plant a dirty bomb.
The company is known for its transport 
...but what's with this double-height bike? 
Until 4 July, the Festival also includes lots of 
And I was impressed by the cycle track just before it, on Glaisher St. The council has kindly installed bollards to prevent cars from parking on it.
A recent fashion among car drivers waiting for the cycle crocodile to pass is to hold their horns on continuously, to show their support. Perhaps they've been inspired by the World Cup vuvuzelas, and want to recreate that delightful swarm-of-hornets sound.
I peeled off around Buck House. I had a party to attend. Not there, obviously - it was in Vauxhall. And in the time it took me to look up the address on the A to Z - maybe two or three minutes - the entire CM had moved on without trace, and traffic was flowing as freely as ever. 
So however annoying it might appear to an impatient cabbie, CM only disrupts the traffic for a very, very short time, once a month, on a few slivers of road. 
This was a bit different to the others, because it was an initiative of the shop (indeed of Catherine, in the pic, who's a keen cyclist), plus the 
The spread given by the Permeable Borough proved Bike Week's finest: Harvest-Festival sized crates of fresh fruit, bucketloads of real coffee, hillocks of croissants and muffins...
...plus, trumping the other boroughs, a vat of 
If the Hackney guys raise the bar any further next year, it'll be smoked salmon and chilled Krug. 
Across the city at Ossulston Street, just by the British Library, was another breakfast provided by a coalition of 
Colebrook Row's (above right), provided by the 
There was a wheelbarrow-fronted bike containing a charming toddler for that Islington touch, and busy Dr Bikes doing complex repairs beyond the scope of some commuters, such as adjusting barrel adjusters and, er, pumping up tyres. 
Narrow Street's breakfast, courtesy of the vibrant 
This is a very busy commuter-cycle corridor, with whizzing cyclists far outnumbering cars or taxis. 
Qualitatively, the rider profile seems to have nudged upmarket, with more expensive road bikes and more gear on display. 
Because missing the sunrise - which is always obscured by (a) clouds and (b) buildings on the horizon, even if you walk down the hill for a better vantage point - is a regular part of the fun. 
Or making a podcast about it all, which the amiable Lucy was doing for the Guardian bike blog (right).
All a bit of fun, but of course it's meant to make you think. Things such as, why can't I reverse the wires and power my bike with the mobile phone for an hour and a half?*
And if your car 
I mention it in my column for 
Indeed, the biggest cheers were not for the winner, but for the leisurely young woman in a tutu who just waved at everyone, the bloke in drag, and the elegant white-tuxedo chap who came second to last but was clearly the best dressed.
This year, there was a new item. In my column (and my 
West to east, they're on Stamford St, in front of Kings College; the junction of Stamford and Rennie St (top three pics); Southwark St, Bankside; Union St, opposite Ewer St; and Southwark St opposite Borough Market (fourth pic). 
The docking posts are all up, shiny and new. The hire terminals themselves won't be turned on to the public until the scheme goes live on 30 July, but we gatecrashed the enthusiastic and friendly Serco party. 
Enticingly, the screens suggest that the hire points will operate in a variety of languages - German, Spanish, French and Italian straight off, as well (eventually) as Arabic, Bengali, Mandarin, Hindi, Gujarati, Greek, Polish, Punjabi, Turkish, Tamil, Urdu and Vietnamese.
So, nip along to north Southwark and get a glimpse of what's to come this summer. We think it's good news in anyone's language.
Officers were on hand to give advice on security (right). They gave amusing demonstrations of how a pair of bolt cutters the size of giraffe legs, along with some circus-trick standing and jumping, could shear through a top-rated D-lock in one go. 
And there was the now-familiar HGV Experience (right). Here, cyclists are invited to go up in the cab of a lorry while police cyclists (in this case, the City's only two women cycle officers) sneak up on the inside so you can clearly see that they're invisible. 
Many of the cyclists participating in the role play (where's the Yorkie? the Sun? the England flags?) had been nicked earlier for some traffic offence - busting red lights, pavement riding etc. They were here this morning on the promise of having their fine rescinded if they attended this training session. 
Those other upcoming free breakfasts in full...