Sylwia grew up in a town just outside Warsaw, Poland and got their mitts on their grandma’s bicycle aged seven. They were riding with confidence within the hour. “From that first time I rode the bike, the world just opened up,” Sylwia tells me. “It’s so much more fun than walking, and I could go a lot further and still be back in time for my curfew.”
Back then, bikes weren’t for kids. They were purely functional, a way for older people to get their weekly shop faster, but Sylwia soon became a hobbyist. They loved tinkering with it. Taking the wheels off, adjusting the brakes, taking it apart and putting it back together. They loved nothing more than cycling off to some faraway forest or lake and when they were 11 they voyaged all the way to their mate’s house in a village 15km (9 miles) away, asking strangers for directions as they went. The episode nearly gave their mum a heart attack. “I left a note but it fell off the door,” they remember.
In 2016, Sylwia relocated to Glasgow after meeting some friends based in the city through bike polo. Their first job was at a popular bike shop chain with over 50 stores across the UK. “I was there for six or seven months,” Sylwia says. “It was like death by a thousand paper cuts.”
I ask for an example of a paper cut. “I was a mechanic, and the guy on the shop floor was a sales person. If a guy came into the shop, he would naturally go to the man. So I would see him roll in with his chain off the cogs, ask how I can help, and he’s like, ‘No, no, I’m fine. I’ll speak to the guy,’ who points right back at me, and I’m like, ‘Okay. Ready now?”