Riding to a Hive meet-up

I would hope that people are aware of the amazing efforts @nathanmars is making on Twitter to promote Hive. He is working practically full time on this. He has been proposing some meetups to get people together again. The current situation is not really conducive to this, but small events, possibly outside, should be possible. His first was yesterday at his place in Stratford, right next to the London Olympic park. I was not sure I would be going as travel is discouraged and I was doing my lockdown half that day. I had a long phone call with Nathan to discuss what things we could be doing.

In the end I decided to go anyway. To avoid riding the Tube I took my bike on the train. Face coverings are compulsory on trains, so I improvised one.

I cycled from Finsbury Park station. I had not been to the actual park there before, but it was really busy. I had to ride along some fairly busy roads, but as soon as I could I got off to cut through Hackney Marshes. I went there during the Olympics, but had not explored that much. I rode along the River Lea, which was also busy. There were crowds of young orthodox Jewish girls there for some reason. There are also hundreds of canal boats that I assume people live on. This was a quieter stretch.

All the people made progress a bit slow, but it was better than the roads.

Eventually I made it to Nathan's place which is right near the velodrome. It was just the two of us to start with, so we had a good chat. Then @sergiomendes and @adetorrent turned up. I know Ade well, but had not met Sergio before. This was actually his first meetup.

Every event like this I have been to tends to be intense as we all try to get our thoughts across. We agreed that Hive is underappreciated and needs some marketing. The community needs to work together on this if we want Hive to grow.

We popped out for some pizza and then were joined by Nathan's friend Rosa who I hope will join Hive soon. I failed to get a decent photo of us all as Ade wandered out of shot.

Sergio did a much better shot with his magical phone that takes pictures when he waves his hand. Witchcraft!

I had to leave to get my train. The ride back was a bit of a slog against the wind and I had the pressure of making it on time. I rode along the river again, but then took to the road. My legs were running out of steam. I thought I might have missed the train, but I made it by a few minutes and got home in daylight.

I have not cycled much recently, but ended up doing a similar distance to my morning run.

It was a fun outing for my Sunday and my first train trip in over a month. I will be resting today, but will be thinking over our discussions and will be looking to help out where I can on promoting Hive. We have enthusiastic people and need to translate that enthusiasm into results.

Hive five!