Self Righteous Cyclist

Firstly a quick quiz to kick off the post.  Pick the odd word out. Tradies: Contractors: Utes: Vans, Hi-vis: Work boots: Bicycles.  Ok, so you can’t drive and ride at the same time, but my latest effort of trend spotting turned up that there are a few tradies around Melbourne who prefer to park and ride to their CBD work sites.   I met 3 building site workers early one morning as they were saddling up to ride to their CBD building site.  They parked their cars in an unrestricted parking are about 4km from the city.  They leave their tools secured stored onsite to avoid the need of hauling them in and out of their cars.  Pictured below is Darren, who along with workmates Daniel and Francis combines their preferred modes of transport on a daily basis.  The guys were also good enough to give me their pros and cons of riding The pros ·        Saving on Parking.  In the city costs at least $15-20 a da...

Just when you think you've seen it all.  Saturday morning started out much like any other - riding down to the local tennis courts to watch my two older boys play tennis, talk cycling with the other parents - then all of a sudden I catch two guys without bikes swapping vintage riding jerseys like the ones Lance was wearing when he was doped to the eyeballs and seemingly at the top of his game.  It seemed to be a case of that one fits better on you than me.  Perhaps it was a case of male insecurity.  Does my gut look big in this? That's the thing about lycra, you can't hide anything.  I'm more inclined to say who cares what you look like, just get out there and ride.    An hour later I'm on my way home and I spotted a group of 25 plus guys all in various arrays of riding gear having a BBQ and drinking beers in the park.  Surely there's got to be a story in that I thought to myself.  As I got closer I realised something was missing among t...

Apologies this week to Bob Dylan, it was so windy it blew the froth off my post ride coffee! Ever since I was a kid riding a mile (1.6km) to school, the wind has been my nemesis.  I'm almost paranoid to the point I swear it's been following me around all these years.  From post ride coffee, to campfires, to bike rides, rattling bedroom windows and swirling around high rise office blocks, it's almost always there.  Our family home was north of the school so in the summer mornings we would usually get a light push to school and a howling furnace like blast to ride home into.   Beach Road, Melbourne's most popular cycling destination is a classic example, where riders starting from the CBD cruising down thinking how fast am I and cursing all the way back. Or occasionally you get hit with a wind change which rarely goes your way. We've all been there, heading out on a ride into a light breeze only to find ourselves having to push home into a horrendous ...

Apologies to Frankie Valli and his Four Seasons and Neil Finn from Crowded House.  Early summer in Melbourne can throw up some pretty variable weather as the climate changes more quickly than a newly elected politician's mind. Having just been to one of my sons' school for an open morning where I was under firm instructions to not wear my riding gear.  Yes it seems even 9 year old boys are lycra conscious these days and they're not even wearing it.  Dressed in my work attire and ready to cruise on my mountain bike across town to the office, it began to rain.  What's worse when it begins to rain is that you're poorly attired for riding in the clothes you're planning to wear for the rest of the day, no rain jacket, no shelter and feeling hung out to dry in the middle of one of Melbourne's busiest thoroughfares.  The high and dry motorists could be forgiven for feeling smug about being warm and dry in the comfort of their cars while watching the cyclists s...

Yes, another story about cycling and coffee, with gratuitous cross promotion.  Recently I have seen more of Sydney, than my home base of Melbourne which has been a great opportunity to soak up the cycling culture of a different city.  More about the public opinion of Sydney's self appointed queen of cycling Clover Moore later.  Clover deserves her own post!  This post is dedicated to the little things which make cycling easier. Last Thursday, 30th October at Milsons Point on the North Sydney side of the Sydney Harbour Bridge the Bicycle Network and the coffee crew from Rapha worked very hard to capture cyclists attention to sign up new members prior to the end of October.  They were there offering free shots of coffee and Carmen's Dark Choc Espresso Nut bars .  Now I'm listening.  Actually I have been a Bicycle Network member for the past 5 years and will continue to do so.  The organisation is the peak body for representing cyclists' inte...

Few drinks slake a hot summer’s day thirst like a cold beer.  Lager, bitter, wheat beer, Ale, Pilsner or stout, we all have our favourites.  But it’s winter in Melbourne and the love of a cold beer goes on. A couple of weeks ago I went down the local football ground to watch the second half of the game.  As I wandered along the outer wing I spied a small slab of Victoria Bitter strapped to a bike rack, complete with a Kransky in a roll resting on top.  The bike was angled on the slight rise so the next beer would just roll out gravity assisted.  A couple of geniuses if you ask me.  Fortunately for Matt & Matt pictured below it was about 10 degrees and the beer would stay cool for the remainder of the afternoon without any ice.  Like many great inventions Matt stumbled across the idea after going to his local bottle shop and wondered how he was going to get his mini slab home.  Eureka, the bike rack and a couple of octopus straps saved the...

I was reading a Mizuno advertisement recent which posed the question, "what if everyone ran?" Great question I thought and next I plugged my question into my search engine "what if everyone rode a bike?" and discovered I wasn't the first.  Rather than write a blog on the topic I'm going to throw this question out to my blog readers, twitter followers, Linked In colleagues and Facebook family and friends for the next week.   Here's your chance to write a line or two, a whole paragraph or a page.  Make it fun, make it serious.  To quote a tag line from another shoe maker, just do it!   Your thoughts will be pulled together and updated in this blog next week....... Well ok, it's been more than a week and if I was a journalist with a deadline I would have been sacked by now.  Here goes. To draw this question to an overdue conclusion, one of the best replies I had to this question was from a winemaker who lives in the Yarra Valley and...