Totally useless statistics for today. The distribution of student account names, sorted by first letter! Very few Umbertos…

count	X
6087	a
2406	b
5241	c
3481	d
2179	e
1180	f
1777	g
2554	h
798	i
6157	j
4847	k
4239	l
6528	m
2637	n
373	o
2994	p
200	q
3293	r
7779	s
3111	t
113	u
1102	v
2012	w
530	x
2427	y
485	z

Moonlight ride

This evening Jo and I caught the train to Eltham and joined a few friends for their monthly full-moon ride back to the city. I’d been meaning to go on these a few times, but have either forgotten, had other things to do, or just plain gone to the wrong place…

Catching the seven-forty train from West Richmond we were reassured to see faces we recognised in the carriage ahead, then not so comfortable a few stops later when four ticket inspectors boarded the train — the general reaction was that of stirring a bees nest with a stick…

At Eltham there were around ten people all together, apparently double the normal number! We stopped into a café for a bite to eat and to wait for the moon to rise, then headed off down the bike track back towards the city. The moon was bright enough that although we all had tail lights, most people were content to ride with no headlight and just follow the bike in front. Getting used to riding in the cool and dark took a little while, there were a few interesting moments at the sharper corners, or when the those leading stopped to wait for the rest!

Strange goings on at one of the sports ovals in Eltham, with what appeared to be several hundred teenagers all milling around in the dark, smoking and drinking and sometimes sitting on the bike path. Things got a little tense as some of them started to bluster and swear and shove at us, and for a moment Jo thought we were going to be pushed off the bikes! I’ve no idea what it was all about though.

Down into Westerfolds park near the Yarra river and we were well away from people, houses and traffic. It was near here that Helen nearly ran into a wombat last month — then almost on cue, there was a wombat wandering along besides the path. We all stopped to watch as it shuffled off through the long grass, not really afraid, just keen to get away from all the people.

The wombat was the most striking of the wildlife, apart from that, we saw many rabbits disappearing off into the grass, as well as ring-tailed and brush-tailed possums, fruit-bats and an owl. The surprise wildlife find was the spiders — it’s possible to see the eyes shining at you from the little wolf-spiders as they hunt in the grass — Geoff was almost besides himself every time he spied one, leaping off his bike to find it and point it out to the rest of us.

Even when we weren’t spotting wildlife, just riding along in the dark with our moon shadows ahead of us was exhilarating. It’s completely different to other riding that I’ve done, even normal night riding is usually just coming home from work, or a trip to the shops, rather than riding for the sake of riding. The serenity was further enhanced by the shock of coming up from the river where the track rides alongside the Eastern Freeway — all of a sudden there were four lanes of traffic heading straight at us, separated only by a chain-mesh fence!

At various intersections on the Yarra trail people turned off to go home, Jo and I left up on Yarra Boulevard for a shorter ride home, rather than detour down to Fairfield boathouse and then ride back along the river. The only drawback of Yarra Boulevard at night is the number of would-be race-car drivers, determined to demonstrate their prowess to their mates — not much different from Yarra Boulevard during the day really. Luckily most of them seemed to be more interested in parking in dark spots overlooking the river than in racing…

Home just after midnight, the two hour ride wasn’t especially fast — quite slow and cruisy actually — but it certainly seemed to be draining! Definitely happy to hop in the shower and get to bed!