+1 : Successfully avoided all unthinking drivers on the way home
-1: Assumed cyclist in front of me was going straight ahead on “preferred cycle route”
-2: Assumed cyclist in front of me would indicate if about to turn right,
-3: Assumed cyclist in front of me would do head check before turning right just in case there was any traffic behind him.
-4: Assumed cyclist in front of me heard me call out “g’day” as I started to come up behind him.
Thought for the day: If you ride a tandem bicycle with only one person on it you will be subject to endless strange looks and wise-cracking comments from passers-by about the empty seat. Meanwhile, you’ll be surrounded by cars all with four or more seats, mostly empty and containing just one driver….
Ah, Friday night in the ‘burbs, dinner with the parents in law and a 9:30 ride home from Mt Waverley to Oakleigh. A simple task it seems!
It was cold, damn cold. Less than 10 °C as I left the comfy warm house, then 58km/hr down Forster road is an eye-wateringly shocking wake up.
Onto the bike track from Mt Waverley to Oakleigh, No moon, no lane markings, overhanging bushes and no lights on the path.
Amazing! The combination of a very short commute and the cold winter weather means that on any given day I generally see no other cyclists, or around one or two a week. Maybe the rising petrol prices, a glitch in the statistics or a fluke of my timing, but in the last 24 hours I’ve met ten other bicycle commuters while riding to and from work! Maybe I should keep a log of how many other riders are about through the colder and then warmer months….
Aftermath of bicycle vs jaywalker There I was, riding up Beddoe avenue to Monash uni. on my way to work, slowing for the roundabout, looking left, right and straight ahead for motorists, checking for ijuts riding on the footpath who shoot across in front of you, watching for some of our less knowledgeable overseas students who drive, ride or walk unpredictably or on the wrong side of the road, I was indicating right an’ all — employing all the usual safeguards at this tiny little roundabout… then out of the blue whump.
Ugh, why did I volunteer for this? I admit it, I was hoping that BV’s offer would put me on North road so I could see first hand just how few people really use the useless “bicycle lane”. “Volunteer to take part in a bicycle commuter survey, tell us where you live and work and we’ll place you somewhere nearby”. I volunteered, I specified Oakleigh and Clayton — 5km apart — they put me down on the Nepean highway 10km away in Moorabbin in the opposite direction!
On it goes…
Drivers find cyclists a road hazard from Herald Sun; State News
MORE than 60 per cent of Victorian motorists find cyclists are a road hazard, according to research carried out by insurer AAMI.
…
Anything to sell more newspapers, split the population into “us vs them,” pick a minority and stir, this is the way of the little paper.
It contains such gems as “47 per cent of Victorian car drivers have had a close call with a cyclist,” but somehow seems to neglect to ask what percentage of motorists have had a close call with another motorist.
Pah, I shouldn’t have bothered to even open the envelope. After writing two weeks ago to Grenda’s buses to complain about being run off the road and shouted at by one of their drivers, today I received a response.
Our office has received your correspondence dated 9th January 2008. You have raised an issue of immense interest. Our policy is very supportive of your sentiments that we must all do our best to share the roads and respect the road laws.
How odd… as I was riding along North road this morning I was thinking that I really should write back to VicRoads and thank them for their clarification of the use of the bus lanes. Less than a minute later I had to bite my lip to stop from laughing as a VicRoads maintenance vehicle drove out of a side-street, safety orange light busy spinning around on the roof, assorted warning signs all sitting in the back… and the driver chatting away on THE MOBILE PHONE.
Slightly different to last year’s ride — instead of a stinking hot, dry, dusty northerly blowing, this year we copped a rather bracing cool southerly. Made the last 20km North from Breamlea to Geelong a “breeze”, but certainly was a demoralising slog for most of the second half of the ride along the southern side of the Bellarine peninsula.
For a ride that seeks to promote cycle safety and good relations between motorists and cyclists, and indeed between all people on the roads, two incidents stick in my mind from the day.
They’re here to help….
I’m convinced that not only is VicRoads determined to get cyclists off the state’s roads, but that Bicycle Victoria is in league with them. Us poor cyclists are outgunned, but not outclassed.
Bicycle Victoria appears to like to have concrete things that they can point at to, so that they can prove that they are living up to their motto More people cycling more often … so long as it is on nice safe little off-road bike paths or specially painted bike lanes.
After all these years of spotting the swooping magpie (Gymnorhina tibicen) just in time, or hearing the whoosh as the go for the back of the head, today my luck ran out.
Damn! Ouch.
I was cruising home slowly up the Dandenong road service lane, no point in exerting yourself when the temperature is up around 35 °C, somewhere alongside the sports oval where the old men play boules there came out of the blue a completely unexpected smack on the side of the head.
Ride-to-Work day was amusing in some small way. In the morning could I tell it was RTW day? Not really, North road was bumper-to-bumper stationary cars, in twenty minutes I saw one other cyclist, the traffic choked to a halt as the road gets widened to accommodate more cars, with a special bicycle ghetto being built in the median strip that you a) can’t get to, then b) have to give way at every single cross road at then c) use the footpath past the primary school.
Ah, I guess that settles it then, it is now definitely time to get my ride-to-work bike to the mechanics for some much-needed TLC. All winter long I’ve been looking at the great lack of teeth that is the cluster and chain-rings and thinking that I’ll do something about them once the weather improves….
Last week I was starting to think that the weather had improved and I really needed to do something about them….
The Rosstown Rail Trail is all a bit of a joke really; there is no railway, there was only ever one train on it, and there is no rail trail — just a handful of signs at semi-random locations, some pointing one way, some pointing the other, and the odd place where there are signs that point in both directions. The general feel is that someone somewhere once got some funding to put a few signs in.
Sadly, illusions I’ve had about cycling just keep on being broken. Today was one of those days that really starts to get you down.
After all the mess and fuss about drugs in sport and drugs in cycling especially, capped off by last year’s Operation Puerto affair with naming of 200 European athletes — 30 or more of the cyclists, assorted suspensions and fines, I had thought that this year’s Tour de France would be free of it all.
Waiting for the Melburn-Roobaix to start Yes or no? Will we ride into the city for the second Melburn-Roobaix or not? Last year it was heaps of fun; a day out riding around the city with all the more interesting cyclists you can find, single-speeds and fixies of all shapes and styles, together with all the other more ordinary bikes… but last year the weather was great, and this year is different….
Quite amazingly, the TAC has finally decided that their 100% obsession with speed being the cause of all collisions is not the be-all and end-all of road safety. There’s a new campaign telling motorists to — shock horror — pay attention and put the phone down, stop fiddling with the radio, stop playing with the children and DRIVE THE BLOODY CAR WITHOUT KILLING PEOPLE.
A good start, but sadly reality intrudes.
Seems that May is bike month in America, not only that, but in Motionbased’s blog I get a mention as one of the two runners up for logging the most number of “commute” bike rides for the year. Hardly record breaking distances with my 5km ride, but there would have been another month’s worth of entries if the Edge 305 hadn’t been off being repaired for all of January!
Interesting that the second, wamble, and third, ajft (me), are both Australian, while number one, mallfellow is in the US.
Dear selfish bastards… PUT THE PHONE DOWN BEFORE YOU KILL SOMEONE!
You’d think that with all the recent media focus on idiots who insist on breaking the law, that maybe, just maybe some drivers would actually STOP USING THEIR BLOODY PHONES. Obviously not, they just can’t resist their mobile phone addiction. I’m not really looking for them and in my fifteen minute ride to work I’m still seeing four or five a day, every single day.
Its amazing the amount of absolute crap you see on the roads when you slow down to cycling speeds… glass, metal, bits of builders’ rubble, bits of garden rubbish. Cycle lanes end up full of the stuff and then people on bikes riding legally “as far to the left as practicable” end up completely outside the bike lane and must endure the ire of ignorant people in cars.
Unfortunately all the well-meaning bleeding hearts with “cyclists’ best interests at heart” seem to want to build more special purpose bike lanes, forgetting that what keeps all the crap out of the roadway is the traffic running over it and flicking it off to the left and right — you build a chunk of road that cars can’t drive on and that’s the bit of the road that ends up with all the crap in it!
Up nice and early — no chance of a sleep-in with two small boys in the house and an enormous flock of cockatoos in the trees outside; screeching from one lot and elephantine stomping from the others…
Breakfast and pack and out and onto the bike; the simple plan was to ride to Queenscliff and catch the ferry to Sorrento, then ride up the bay to Frankston and catch the train the rest of the way — I don’t think I’m quite up to the 200km or so of riding the whole way!
Must be international idiot on the roads day, or maybe just Melbourne Motorised Morons…. A few drops of rain on the way home and two idiots try to hit me, one successfully.
Major idiot number one was the one that missed; traffic was banked up all the way back from the roundabout on Haughton road to North road in the right lane by people wanting to go around and turn right, so what does our hero do?
It almost felt like I was living in Richmond again — left work on the bike, off down Ferntree Gully road and onto the Gardiners creek trail to head into Richmond to meet Jo for a beer. As usual I’m heading against the general flow of commuters; ones or twos, threes and more, the odd group of six, all flying along with total disregard for anyone else on track, all convinced that there’s only traffic heading in their direction!
At the moment, Thursdays seem to be crap days.
Woken — yet again — at 5 am by garbage trucks then while riding to work I was hit by a truck at a set of traffic lights.
At the corner of North road and Clayton road I know that there’s usually a left-turn arrow, so I’d stopped at the far right-hand side of the lane to let traffic turn with the arrow, five or six cars turned through with plenty of room, then the small tow-truck pulled up on my left, the driver yelled out the window “Fucken idiot get out of the way” and with that promptly drove left around the corner — striking me with the tray of the truck as it went around and pushing me half a metre over into the car next to me!
stats. Today 132.0km Average speed 20.5km/hr Riding time 7hr 15' The Trek T50 at Tawonga gap, 110km to go From a start at 07:20 we had until 16:05 to clock in and be within Audax’s allowed time limit — our cards were punched at 16:01, according to Evan this meant we had overtrained by three minutes!
stats. Today 21.0km Average speed 24.0km/hr Riding time 0hr 52' Bright on the Australia Day long weekend; people everywhere, cars with bikes everywhere, people with bikes everywhere, bikes everywhere. The “Bushfire-induced dearth of visitors to Victoria’s North East” certainly doesn’t seem to apply today!
A late afternoon ride from Bright out to Boynton’s winery to meet some friends, pleasantly surprised to find that the driveway at Boynton’s now has a little less gravel and seems a little more navigable by bike than always used to be the case.
statistic Today 82.1km Average speed 20.5km/hr Riding time 4hr 00' odometer 22645km The last weekend before Australia day, and our last chance to go for a ride and try to get a few more hills into the legs before the Audax Alpine Classic next Saturday! Woeful preparation, at least we’re only in for the 130km option.
Under grey threatening clouds and through grey threatening suburbs full of grey threatening 4WDs we made our way out to Ferntree Gully then up Dorset road to The Basin, I’m only used to riding home that way so I missed one turn and we had a lot more of a major road than we really wanted.
statistic Today 124.2km Average speed 22.7km/hr Riding time 5hr 27' An early start, out of bed at 05:45 for breakfast and to drive down to Geelong, every second car on the freeway seemed to be carrying bikes. With no idea how crowded it would be at the ride, we parked in the first car-park we came to and rode the three or four kilometres to the Botanic gardens — an unnecessary precaution as it turned out, but a good way to check the tandem and warm up a little.
Last day of the year, last chance of a bike ride for the year. I think the same thing happened last year, a ride off along the Great Ocean Road. It started out with the idea of gently stretching the muscles from yesterday’s hike with a ride out to Wye River. Along the way I chatted to another cyclist heading to Wye and he decided that it wasn’t far enough and would continue to Kennet River.
Home seems very quiet after four days of niece-and-nephew filled activity! Time to catchup on a few of the outstanding chores, put away some of the Christmas loot and buy some much-needed provisions, then time to get off the couch and get out on the bike — far too little bike riding has been done this year.
I decided to go east in search of Lysterfield park, site of the Commonwealth Games mountain biking circuit, and ride around some of the trails out there.
Bushfires are raging across Victoria and the forecast for the weekend is two days of high thirty temperatures and strong winds. Woke this morning to stiffling heat, thick smoke filling the air and a dull orange sun shining down. Visibility is down to a couple of kilometres and there’s no incentive to go outside and do anything at all. This is in the city, 150km from the fires, it must be terrible out there fighting them.
Something is getting me down today. Either I ate too much last night, or Christmas is bugging me, or I didn’t sleep well or something. I know I ate too much, the Chicken Parmagiana from Groove Train was a ridiculous size, I’ve never seen a chicken that size….
It didn’t help that when I went out for a ride this morning before work some idiot drove into me in the last kilometre before I got to work — he thought he could squeeze his Hyundai Excel between the stationary row of traffic and me, it didn’t fit.
First day of summer, last day of the week, thirteen weekdays to the end of the work year. Mayhem, madness.
Its starting to be a bit of a Friday thing; leave work at around five-thirty and ride in to Richmond to meet Jo for a beer somewhere, pretend that we still live in Richmond. An odd feeling to be riding back in to the city at the end of the day when most of the commuters are heading back out to the suburbs — a chance to see again the guys I never knew the names of, but who I saw almost every day on my way to and from work!
Reminder to tourists on the Great Ocean Road An early rise — most unusual for me — and out and onto the bike for some much-needed hill climbing. Shivering in the cool air I was regretting leaving my warm jersey back at home, definitely not a morning for the short sleeves! An eye watering descent down Richardson boulevard to the main coast road, over the river and commence climbing up the Dean’s Marsh road.
Woohoo, ride to work day! Um, I guess that’ll be just like any other day, except with Bicycle Victoria pumping their fists wildly in the air in the background.
As they asked, and as I replied, in their questionaire: How will you celebrate Ride To Work Day?:
The same way I celebrate every day, happy to be alive after the idiots in the tin boxes yabbering on their phones haven’t killed me.
Vanity site? Technology experiment? Learning tool? Blog? Journal? Diary? Photo album? I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you…
I experiment. I play. I write and I take pictures. Some of the site is organised around topics, other parts are organized by date, then there’s always the cross-references between them.
Its all been here a fairly long time. Like the papers on my desk, or the books on the bedside table, the pile just grew… and it all grew without much plan or structure. I try not to break URLs, so historical oddities abound.
Long ago it started as a learning experiment with a few static HTML pages, then I added a bit of server-side includes and some very ugly PHP. A hand-built journal/blog on top of that PHP, then a few experiments in moving to various static publishing systems. I’ve never wanted a database-based blogging engine, so over the years I’ve tried PHP, nanoblogger, emacs-muse, silkpage and docbook before settling on Emacs Org mode for writing and jekyll for publishing. But the itch remained… I never really liked jekyll and the ruby underneath always seemed so much black magic. So now the latest incarnation is Org mode and hugo.
