After 10 years in the nation of the motorcar, former BBC North America Editor Justin Webb is settling back into the saddle as the new presenter of the Today programme.
"Come and present the Today programme, they said," says Justin. "What they didn't mention is a number of induction courses, of which this seems to be the first".
"I cycled here from home and I found it both frightening and quite difficult," Justin told one of the organisers of the Transport for London Cycle Friday scheme in which he was taking part.
"It is quite intimidating getting on a bike," he says after having "a rather elegant collision with a bollard" on the way to the commuter cycle.
In the US, he says, using any transport that's not a car would be seen as eccentric. In London, things are different, says TfL's David Rowe. "Its cheap, its green. More and more people are turning to the bike."
But Justin does detect something very American about the cycle convoy - "a sense of community spirit, a sense of people ganging together to increase their group confidence and ability".
"I realised that you need confidence and you need basic proficiency which, if you haven't cycled for a long time, isn't necessarily going to be there."
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