After over a decade of not riding in the Around the Bay in a Day bike ride, this year Cam and I have entered for the family option on the tandem. It used to be that when you said you’d ridden “Around the Bay in a Day” it meant that you had, in fact, ridden around Port Phillip bay and that you had done so in a day. There are now so many options and distances that you can pay your money, ride 20 km from Albert park down to Elwood and back and say you have “Ridden in Around the Bay in a Day (event)”. Or sorry, that’s “The $SPONSOR Around the Bay in a Day (event)”.
Three or four days to go so its probably about time we looked at how to get there and how to get home – it used to be so easy when we lived in Richmond and I could just ride to and from the start!
Consult the documentation… “Following rider feedback we’ve decided to make the move from Melbourne’s Alexandra Gardens to Albert Park in 2018” OK, so far so good… and “There is no event parking at Albert Park, so we recommend catching a train to a nearby station”. Nearest station is 2.7 km away – the station on our line is 4 km away – so they’ve moved the start to somewhere with no parking, told you to catch a train, but it’s not really that close to a station.
Added degree of difficulty, Metro aren’t running trains on the Pakenham/Cranbourne line that weekend so anyone out in the SE of Melbourne can’t catch a train!
Looks as though we’ll have to ride to Caulfield, catch a train to South Yarra, ride to Albert Park, do the event, then repeat the ride, train, ride to get home.
Extra points; Daily Savings starts on Saturday night so getting there for 7 am effectively becomes getting there for 6 am.
This is looking ugly, checking maps and PTV journey planner website:
| travel | distance / time |
|---|---|
| Home to Caulfield | 5.2km / 17 minutes |
| Caulfield to Sth Yarra | 6:29am train, 6:40am arrival |
| Sth Yarra to Albert Park | 4.5km / 15 minutes |
So we’ll pretty much have to be out the door by 6 am – summer time (GMT+11) – which will be a 5:30 am wake up, which my body clock – and my son’s – will think is 4:30 am. Then the next day is the first day of school for the term. This is going to be ugly.
