stats. Distance 68.53km Average speed 18.93km/hr Riding time 3:37:14 Odometer 19884km The weather is starting to resemble spring time, the excuses for being lazy and not going out on the bike are getting harder to come by — even with the inflammatory anti-cycling attitudes being drummed up in the media — so Jo and I took off for a ride this morning. Just the normal ride, along North road to the beach, turn left and head down to Mordialloc.
Aha! Finally found the bit of Victoria’s Road Rules that I’ve been after for months. Paragraph 2, Rule 134, Part 11:
134. Exceptions to keeping to the left of a dividing line
(2) If the dividing line is a single broken or a continuous line, or a broken divided line to the left of a single continuous dividing line, the driver may drive to the right of the dividing line to overtake another driver.
Its been a while since I’ve met quite such an aggressive motorist, one who’s prepared not only to scream abuse but to try and hit me with their car — unfortunately tonight was such a night.
I pulled up at the lights to turn right from Clayton road into North road, drawing alongside a dark blue/green Ford station wagon stopped in the through lane. As I got level with the driver’s window she flicked half a cigarette’s worth of glowing ash straight out, half in my face, half down my leg.
Where’s the BikeCam™ when you need it? Not once, but twice this evening on the way home I came within inches of being flattened by morons who decided not to bother giving way to traffic on the roundabouts. First one was just out of Monash on Woodside avenue, moron in a red station-wagon, Subaru I think, rego. ###-###, flying up Koonawarra street, doesn’t bother to slow, straight out in front as I’m halfway around.
stats. Riding time 3:25:37 Maximum speed 65km/hr Odometer 19810km Distance 79.05km Too many months of being lazy and only riding to and from work. No more excuses, time to go out today and ride up a mountain — a little mountain at least! After yesterday’s miserable weather today was fine and sunny so I took the opportunity while Jo was out for the afternoon and headed off eastwards to Ferntree Gully and up and over Mount Dandenong.
I thought that it was about time I entered Bike Vic’s ATBIAD ride. Hang on — $110 for a soggy salad roll and a ferry ticket? No thanks. Jo and I may well ride down to Sorrento and back, but I don’t think Bicycle Victoria will be getting over $100 for the privilege! With over 5,000 entries, what do they do with the more than half a million dollars from the entries?
A grey morning, poor visibility, wet roads. Just what I need, first moron of the month — the lady in the blue Ford Falcon wagon (registration ###-###), she sits beside me at the lights SMSing on her phone, then when the lights go green drives off, eyes still firmly on the phone in her lap as she veers into my lane towards me. I point at her and shout out, “Put the phone down!
So the 69th Tour de Suisse has just finished, and on their last stage they had to ride up the Gotthardpass. Two years ago Jo and I got to ride down that side of the pass!
Possibly the world’s shortest bicycle commute.
Looking back at the orange tree Oakleigh to Monash University, and home again. Here are some of the hi-lights and low-lights of my daily ride to and from work. The trip only takes about twelve minutes, nowhere near as interesting as my previous trip to Monash from Richmond!
A quick count and I’ve calculated that I ride along five roads getting there and an extra two coming home.
’twas a beautiful sunny morning as I was heading off to work, so I decided to take some photos along the way. Not as interesting as my previous commute from Richmond, but it has its advantages — the shortness being the main one!
Motorists do the darnedest things. Today’s idiot du jour was the passenger in the silver Barina, P-plates, Victorian registration ###-###. There it was stopped at the traffic lights about five cars from the front, he decided to throw the passenger door fully open in order to spit on the ground as I was riding up on the left. Somehow I managed to just stop before ramming his head into the open car door.
What happens when someone buys the cheapest possible bicycle on the market? Well, it comes from a large department store, it comes in a cardboard box, it comes with either poor or no instructions, and it needs to be assembled. Can we blame the owner of the Huffy I saw this morning who had built the bike with the front forks on backwards? One of the overseas students turned up riding it at the cyclist breakfast, two of us tried to fix it, but everything is rusted solid and the forks cannot be moved.
Out the door a bit after eight thirty, a quick ride into the city, arrived in plenty of time to join the rally. I guessed somewhere between 100-200 cyclists turned up to support the Wheels of Justice rally in Adelaide, complaining about the total inadequacy of a $3,100 sentence for a driver who killed a cyclist in a hit and run collision.
Two court results of the week:
WA: man vandalises a speed camera — $109000 fine
SA: man kills cyclist in hit and run — $3100 fine
Sheesh! Talk about priorities.
At least the South Australian government has just announced a Royal Commission will be enquiring into the handling of the hit and run.
There’s a rally being held to protest against a recent decision in an Adelaide court, which saw lawyer Eugene McGee handed down a $3100 fine and 12 months loss of licence for hitting and killing cyclist Ian Humphreys whilst drink driving in his four wheel drive.
stats. Today 76.0 km Trip 293km The ride from Bacchus Marsh to Melbourne is always a bit of a slog — first there’s the seemingly endless plains of red dirt and rocks, broken only by the great swooping descent into the gorge over the Werribee river, then there’s the interminably mindless eight kilometres along the Western Highway with the mind-numbing roar of the traffic and the ever present danger of the idiot’s towing their caravans and not realising how much wider than the car the ‘van is.
stats. Today 91.2km Trip 217km There are some magnificent swooping descents in the last few kilometres to Bacchus Marsh, ending in a hill into town with a 60km/hr speed limit, a hill where a bicycle can quite easily reach that speed limit! Unfortunately there seems to be some local law in effect in Bacchus Marsh that insists that the local motorists must be abusive, ignorant and stupid, I don’t think I’ve ever ridden into town without someone being yelled at, swerved at, or had something thrown at them — today was no different, halfway down the hill at 62km/hr on the tandem, some ignorant petrol-head pulled out of a side-street straight in front of us and nearly got 150kg of tandem and riders right up his boot.
stats. Today 80.3km Trip 125km It was cold and frosty overnight, for the first time in many years my old sleeping bag seemed to not be enough and I woke up cold. Stepping out of the tent showed frost on the grass and the tents, and fog rising over the lake. A beautiful sight.
Out of Beaufort and south to Snake Valley, lunch at the Snake Valley pub. I had no idea there were places with names like that in Victoria — it sounds like something out of a bad western!
stats. Today 45km Trip 45km Another Good Friday morning, another Deadly Treadly Tour commences! A little too far from Oakleigh to the city to do the car and bike shuffle, so Jo and I hopped on the first train of the day, loaded down with bags and helmets and the tandem. Arrived at Flinders Street station to discover that we had to carry the beast up the stairs, no easy task while wearing a large backpack!
Riding to work on a quiet Monday morning, it’s a public holiday, there’s hardly anyone on the roads. Riding to work should be easy today… Then as I approached one of the mini-roundabouts in Haughton road there were not one, but two motorists driving around it towards me!
One driving in the conventional manner, on the left hand side of the road, clockwise when seen from above, at about 40-50km/hr.
It went WHOOSH! But thankfully, there was no THWACK to follow. Idiot in a red VW Golf, (NSW registration ##-##-##), driving along with the phone pressed hard against the ear, half in one lane, half in the other, missed my elbow by inches as he decided at the last minute to not exit from North road.
Yow! After some contradictory reports of the Bicycle Victoria ride in Tasmania I finally got to chat with two cow-orkers who had been on the ride. Both had a good time, despite hills and rainy weather — both things that they had been expecting. What they hadn’t expected was the motorist who lost his temper, blasted on the horn and drove through a pack of riders while towing a caravan! Knocked eight people off their bikes and one had to be taken by helicopter to hospital.
stats. Today 74.6km Trip total 120km There was a thunderstorm early last night and some heavy rain, but it all stopped later on. One obnoxious local appeared at the show ground sometime after the pub had closed and seemed to spend half the night walking around the campsite and screaming abuse. On and on he went to the tune of “You can ride a f’ing pushbike but you can’t ride a f’ing horse.
stats. Today 44.75km Trip total 45km A 7.30 am arrival in Jindabyne, out of the bus and into endless queues to register, weigh bags, meet friends, find coffee then get back on the bus to head up to Charlotte Pass.
I’m not sure where Bicycle NSW got the coaches and drivers from, in the light of day the rust holes added nothing to last night’s impressions of lurching driving and grinding gearbox.
Another day, another near miss…. A couple of times a week I meet them, dickheads in too much of a hurry who decide to drive the wrong way up the ring-road at Monash then cut through to the other side. The layout of the car-park seems to encourage them, the entrance is only a little bit past the through road — but far enough that they have to plant the foot and come roaring the wrong way head-on at any cyclist foolish enough to believe that the one-way road will have traffic only heading in one way.
There’s an interesting market held every Sunday in a car-park at the Oakleigh shops; this morning Jo and I wandered over after breakfast for a poke about. Second-hand books, masses of old electrical junk, pot plants and clothes… and a couple of dodgy young Asian guys selling pirate DVDs. I joked about the $20000 fine for selling them with another guy near me, he laughed and pushed past to get his hands on the latest releases… Five minutes later at the other end of he markets there were two police officers interviewing another DVD seller, and packing up their boxes of disks.
There’s nothing quite like an audience to make you nervous for a first attempt at anything — both of Jo’s parents came outside to watch us take off down the very steep driveway! We departed without ignominy, and took off down the hill with frightening acceleration. I’m still not entirely used to guiding 140kg of bicycle and riders!
Out to North Lorne and back for a warm up, another very wide u-turn to turn around, then right across the traffic to commence the ten kilometre climb up to Benwerrin on the Dean’s Marsh road.
Riding home along North road, a car passes too closely. Lady driver in the Audi (rego. Vic ###-###) has the mobile phone in her hand and is busy staring at the display as she taps in a phone number. As I went past her to the front of the lights I gave her an evil glare, but she didn’t notice, too intent on her phone… The lights changed to green, I took off, three cars passed and then came the Audi, this time the phone firmly clamped to the ear, busy chatting away.
OK, so we chose the 85km option — the soft option, the easy option…
Starting at 07:40 from the car-park down by the Ovens river in Bright, the first challenge was taking off up the steep road in a great bunch of other cyclists. Chatting with the older couple on the KHS tandem beside us showed that despite far more experience on the bike they weren’t all that happy with a crowded uphill start either.
The town of Bright must be cursing that Australia day falls on Wednesday and there’s no long weekend. From memory, in the past Bright has been packed, today it seems like a ghost town. There are quite a few cyclists around, but nowhere near the numbers, and nowhere near the number of families, partners and friends.
The morning was taken up by some very important sitting around and relaxing, followed by a visit to the local street market and a chance to catch up with other cycling friends, including Andy and Suzie from Wide Open Road, who we haven’t seen since the tour in 2003 in Switzerland and Italy.
Out for an evening tandem ride tonight, time is catching up on us to get ready for the Alpine Classic on Sunday! Even though we’ve entered to do the 85km baby version, I really think a little more practice was called for!
The gawks and stares and comments are hilarious, anyone would think that we’ve got two heads or something…. Some of the motorists look as though they’ll either drool into their own laps or swerve into a tree.
Uh oh, the Alpine Classic is in a week, we thought it would be fun to do the easy version on the tandem, (85km and up Mount Buffalo) and we haven’t been on the bike since about Easter last year! There’s only one thing for it then, get the bike out of the shed and go for a ride. Merely extracting the big beastie is a task enough, a bit like one of those puzzles where each piece seems to depend on moving another piece first.
It’s 9.50 in the morning, its 27 °C in the office, there’s no airconditioning, I’ve been here three minutes, and on the way I’ve had to deal with an idiot in a bike shop.
I am NOT having a good day.
sigh you would think that when someone tells you that your wheel will be ready that afternoon and they take your phone number, that there’s just the faintest chance that they might ring you up if they decide that they can’t do anything.
Smited by the finger of god1. That’s the only excuse, I can’t possibly have been clumsy enough to pull up at a traffic light, pause as I saw it change from red to green, then have my foot slip out of the cleat as I rode off. Tipped over to the left, flicked the wheel to the right, and down I came on my knee on the front wheel!
Total damage?
New Years’ Eve. The end of a good year. Last bike ride of the year. A seven o’clock start from somewhere in Fairfield, six of us headed out on a two hour ride out around Heidelburg, Doreen, various hilly parts to the north east of the city, then back again. The last few months have seen me only riding to and from work, laziness, house-moving, holidays, it all hit hard as I could barely keep up and had to be almost carried back the last stretch to Mill Park!
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.
