Fourth day of riding in to South Melbourne for a course at Excom — learning all about Windows XP (or at least enough to be dangerous). I could get to enjoy this — out the door, down to the end of the street, right turn onto Swan street, ride to the end, right turn onto Alexandra parade, through the tunnel and onwards along City road, then, right turn onto Montague street, stop.
Moron of the moment: Cycling up Ferntree Gully road around 09:40, here it comes from the side road, white Falcon panel-van, blue sign-writing, window down, driver’s elbow out, phone in hand, brain in neutral, yacking away, half-way out through the Give-Way sign.
“PUT THE PHONE DOWN!” I yell as I swerve around the bonnet.
A blast on the horn and a scream of abuse, I continue up the hill. A squeal of tyres and he tears up behind me, swerves into the next side street, stops and keeps swearing.
stats. Today 24.88km Trip total 599km Typical last-day bike ride foolishness. Bicycle NSW want everyone to ride into the final town in one big mass. Nearly everyone has the feeling that the ride ended last night, and most of the riders just want to get it over with and head home. There’s the usual bunching up on the roads, and then being herded into a holding area on the outskirts of Cootamundra to wait in the sun and get gradually more and more annoyed.
A cold morning again today — but Yass is renowned for being cold and windy! I left with thermals on under my jersey, but after the first nine kilometres of dirt roads had to stop to remove them, sweat was pouring off me!
I was expecting a very cold morning, thick fog, maybe even a frost…. It was cold, but not that cold. Even so, it didn’t stop the whinges and moans from the people from the coast! The temperature seemed to drop between waking up and leaving, maybe it was as the wind increased.
stats. Today 99.76km Trip total 370km A very windy day — and an even windier night last night! A storm passed through just after midnight, howling winds, lightning and thunder, and a few drops of rain — but mostly just the wind! Bicycle NSW were so concerned about the reports and warnings that they received that they turned all the floodlights on and were attempting to take down some of the marquees.
Rest days on tour when camping are a problem — I tried to sleep in past seven but the sun on the tent and beer in the bladder forced me up and out. Breakfast was a subdued affair, hangovers all around me from those out partying late, and grumpy comments from those who had come home early and then been woken by those out partying late.
Dark at 5.45 am, we are woken by Debbie’s loud hailer again. The stars are still out and there are bats flying around the floodlights catching the insects. I’m convinced that we really don’t need to be woken so early…
stats. Today 71.84km Trip total 190km A quarter to six in the morning and Debbie’s mellifluous tones bellowing out woke us all. There is a distinct difference of opinion between various groups as to whether these are necessary or not — some people seem incapable of waking and organising themselves and need to be woken while it is still dark, others quite happily get up later, then pack and eat with no outside assistance.
Dr Alan, Jeff, Ron, Jim and I rolled out at 8:15, fueled up on porridge and in good spirits. The pace was a little high and Ron left us to ride at a more comfortable one. Jeff and I moved to the front on the first of many short sharpish climbs.
By the time I arrived in Warragamba I’d catalogued a few more minuses to sitting in the back seat of the bus — the seat won’t recline, and it was right next to the toilet, luckily the latter just stank in a chemical, rather than biological, manner.
stats. Today 0km Trip total 0km The start of another RTA Big Ride… It was 1 pm when I left Melbourne in Joey’s car, brand new helmet in hand, all the usual accoutrements stuffed into duffel, and Norky bike laid across the top.
A relatively event-free drive to the Victorian border, with far less traffic than I usually encounter when we drive this way at night. From Albury to Gundagai there was a huge thunderstorm visible to the east, dark and foreboding, not a good sign for a week’s camping!
A SMIDSY … my first for the year. Straight through the stop sign in front of me – I guess he didn’t see it either – I hit the brakes, I slide to a stop, he smiles, waves apologetically and calls it out – yes – word for word.
Breakfasted up on Bridge Road after visiting the markets, then hurried home to change and ride down to Port Melbourne to join Evan and Kyllie for a bit of a bike ride. We weren’t sure where we all wanted to go, the only thing we agreed on was avoiding Albert Park and the congestion around the Grand Prix.
Getting to Port Melbourne was a challenge — every road seemed to be bumper to bumper with cars, stationary and fuming — both drivers and cars.
Lessons learned from this morning’s ride to work:
Keep Left: To the majority of pedestrians on the shared paths, this means walk three abreast, use the entire path, then step randomly to the left or right when a cyclist approaches Control Your Dog: To the majority of dog owners on the shared path, this means “hold a lead coiled up in your hand, and ensure that your dog remains somewhere within eyesight.
This afternoon we decided that it was time to get out of the house and complete the Lilydale to Warburton rail trail — lazy pair that we are!
We parked at Woori-Yallock and lunched on pies from their award-winning bakery, then down to the trail to ride off along the valley — periodically checking the horizon for any signs of smoke! There are no bushfires around this part of the state, but I didn’t really want to be around if one started from a cigarette out of a car window.
An irritating bit of shopping today in a bike shop — I ducked in to take a quick look at helmets, since mine is starting to fall apart and I’ll probably have to replace it soon. The 20-ish guy in the shop was far too over-eager to sell me something, anything, now but also seemed to be of the mind-set that anyone venturing out on a bicycle without a helmet was guaranteed of dieing of head injuries in only days.
Riding home, listening to the magpies in the trees — memories of riding on frosty mornings in Canberra. Melbourne’s weather is a little too mild in the winter, sometimes I miss the really cold, clear, mornings!
Richmond to Monash University, and home again. Here are some of the hi-lights and low-lights of my daily ride to and from work.
Despite a personal dislike for “cycle paths” and most other cycle-specific infrastructure, most of my commute does use one of Melbourne’s bike paths… except that they aren’t really bike paths.
Every off-road bicycle path in Melbourne is really a shared-use pedestrian footway, where pedestrians have absolute right of way over cyclists, and there is no legal enforcement of the keep left requirement, or any of the other rules and regulations, which appear to be little more than local council suggestions.
Nearly lost my coffee this morning — in a messy sprayed guffaw at reading the latest obesity-related message in <uk.rec.cycling>. There was mention of someone suffering from HFBV — the acronym looked innocent enough at first it looked reasonable enough — until I read the footnote explaining it at the bottom of the page.
Yesterday evening we finally got to try out the barbecue in the park — after nearly getting killed buying sausages! A strange coin-operated device, I don’t know why they bother with the overhead of maintaining them and collecting the coins, when a single 20c coin lasted long enough to cook our entire meal! Apart from having to chase away someone’s dog while we cooked, it all made a pleasant change from dinner at home.
I should have stayed in bed…
Coffee failure Got up, stumbled into the kitchen as usual, stood around while the coffee created itself, then poured coffee into two cups. Went to fridge, took out orange juice and milk, unscrewed cap of orange juice, poured orange juice into coffee. Damn. Poured corrupted coffee down the sink and split the remaining coffee into two much smaller cups.
Bike failure Now to ride to work… 4km down the track and there’s a loud PING — the sound of a bolt snapping — as one of the bolts holding my seat on snaps and the seat falls off.
An interesting event on the morning ride to work today… I rounded a corner, passed the two women walking along waving empty dog leads in the air, rounded the next corner and slid to a halt to avoid the dog that ran out of the bushes into my front wheel. “Move, you stupid dog” says I, not really expecting a reply. Then from across the river came the following — from a man with two dogs of his own, an anger problem, and probably a guilty conscience — “Get F[$#@$#%ed you F##]%Ging prick, go and F&*(##) off!
Jo decided that she really did need to get on her bicycle a bit more often than once a month, so this afternoon we drove out to Lilydale to ride along the rail-trail. As usual, the Lilydale end is totally unsigned, so we gave up trying to find the trail end and rode straight up the Maroondah highway until we found where it crossed. Once on the trail its a pleasant ride through the forests, lots of other people, but they’re all better behaved than the ones I meet on the tracks in town — everyone keeps left, for example.
Time to be a feral unemployed bike-activist asshole (according to one posting in that bastion of petrol-headed free speech, <aus.cars>). After several years of reading the Critical Mass mailing lists, but not going to any of their rides, I decided to head into the city for the 7th birthday ride. The last times I was there, years ago, I became quite disillusioned that there were a small number of people who were pro-bike, a large number of people who were anti-car, and a medium sized number of people who were just anti-everything.
Another day, another homicidal maniac…
Dear Sir,
Just in case you’re reading this, the reason that the cyclist smacked your car with an open hand — making that remarkably loud sound — was that as you drove through the give-way sign and straight into his path, he had just had to perform an emergency stop to avoid riding into your drivers door at 40km/hr.
Oh well, he certainly jumped. Now if only he learns from the experience…
The Spiegeltent is back in its box, back home to Belgium for some R&R. That’ll teach me to not quite get around to visiting it. Maybe next year…
Hmmm, maybe its time to get serious and compare the KHS Alite and Cannondale MT800 tandems:
KHS Alite Cannondale MT800 Frame 7005 Cannondale Mountain Tandem Size 20"x16" MS/LS/LM/XS/XM Weight 17.5kg 17.9kg Price $3300 $4400 Fork O/s CrMo Unicrown Fatty R 1 1/18 Headset Tioga DX/2 Ahead Cane Creek C-1 Rims Sun Rhyno Lite, 40hole Sun Rhyno Lite, 40hole Front Hub Alloy QR Shimano Tandem Rear Hub XT 145mm Shimano Tandem Tyres KHS 26x1.
Flat battery? Need a mate to start your car? Where do you think you should park. No worries — park right across the middle of the bike path, she’ll be right!
Just another of the myriad uses that bicycle paths seem to have in the public mind…
In case its not quite obvious what the content of the photo is, I was sitting at my least favorite set of lights waiting to cross Malvern road to continue up the bike track.
After four days on the tandem, riding my own bike this morning was a bit surprising. It felt so light and manoeuvrable! I realized as well how much my seat has slipped down over the last couple of weeks, put that back up to normal height, hopped on and nearly swerved into the kerb in our street — the steering seemed that twitchy! The tandem must have helped the fitness though, the ride along the Boulevard was a lot quicker than it usually is!
stats. Distance 233.32km Riding time 8hr 32m Average speed 27.3km/hr 4.15 am is a completely ridiculous time to be getting out of bed. I hadn’t really slept since about 1 am, neighbours seemed to be coming home steadily between two and three, a cat was yowling outside the window the whole time, and then the birds started chirping around 3.45 am… I think I’ll stick to more sociable bike-riding hours in the future.
Off for the week’s bike riding in a vague hope of maintaining some fitness before Around the Bay in a Day. It was such a calm, still morning that I hurried off down around the bay to Frankston and back, deciding to climb Oliver’s Hill for a little extra exercise. As usual, some petrol-head in a rusty old bomb tried to run me off the road in Frankston, but that’s Frankston — it happens every time.
BV's 'Ride to Work' function A little detour on the ride to work this morning — I headed into the city for Bicycle Victoria’s annual “Ride to Work” day and free breakfast. Everything there was all sweetness and light, in some contrast to the ride to get there!
One car parked in the clearway/bike lane on Bridge Road. Seven cars and a tow-truck stopped in the bike lanes at traffic lights.
Wow, impressive response to a Usenet posting! In a discussion of UK cycle routes and Sustrans routes I made the comment that when searching I hadn’t been able to find any information about them, and then when I looked on the CTC’s website it was rather “hostile,” and that when I sent email enquiries I had never received a response… today I find an email from the Director of the CTC asking for feedback on how I believe they can improve their service — I can think of a few other organisations that could do with that level of customer care!
There are 1440 minutes in the day, roughly 100 of them I spend on my bike riding to and from work, 500 of them I spend at work. That one hundred minutes riding are far more enjoyable than the rest.
Speaking of cycling, I just tried to have a look around the CTC’s website — it seems to be gradually crumbling to pieces. I think if I were them I’d be tempted to just bin the whole thing and start from scratch.
Yet another “Bike Path Surprise” this morning — rounding one of the corners after going under Toorak road I found myself hitting the brakes to avoid running into the back of a very large council truck. I’m not quite sure why it was on the path, but it seemed to be ripping branches off the bushes on both sides as it passed. Maybe it was some bizarre kind of gardening experiment.
stats. Distance 108.20km 28.5 °C, winds gusting to 100km/hr — yep, sounds like a perfect day to go for a bike ride. My one intelligent decision was to head north, into the wind, in the vague hope that this would make the ride home easier. Out towards Whittlesea on a dead-flat road the head-wind was holding me down to 18km/hr, occasionally slowing to 14 in the stronger sections — on a good day you can average 30 along here!
stats. Distance 93.8km Escaped in the afternoon for a ride along the Great Ocean Road. Despite all my best efforts I couldn’t quite manage to get my average speed up to 30km/hr. Very light traffic, surprisingly few idiots on the GOR, a clear sky and magnificent views. Average speed was 29km/hr when I got to Apollo Bay, and despite the tailwind on the way home, fell to 28km/hr by the time I returned to Lorne.
Life’s too short to be served bad coffee. Two bad coffees in a row and now we can’t bring ourselves to call in at Via Ponte. A sad thing when both Ian and Michael are such nice guys, but with all the other cafés in the street — Bridge road — we keep walking past theirs and on to somewhere else.
A longish ride in the afternoon. Just like last Saturday I headed out in short sleeves, half thought of coming back for a warmer shirt but didn’t.
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.
![Journal for [2003-06-05 Thu]](https://ajft.org/img/default1.jpg)
