Self Righteous Cyclist

In the absence of most of the road riding events over the past two years, my mate Jason and myself from the Brunswick Cycling Club decided to head to Kingston, a tiny hamlet between Ballarat and Daylesford, with a school, a church, a pub and a showground with a grandstand that had a touch of the Field of Dreams about it. “Build it and they will come” and so we did. 48 riders signed on the John Collier Memorial Handicap on Saturday 27 th November. The race consisted of 3, 28km laps course before finishing on a slight rise in the main street of Kingston.  In what was a race of attrition, only 22 of those 48 finished.    In a fitting touch to the initial race sponsor, John Collier, the starting commissaire mentioned that this race had been held since 1972 and that John put money into the event to help promote cycling in the area in the hope that it might help unearth some future Olympians. It’s a great story and one of the many about John told at the presentations by hi...

With Covid-19 threatening to impact the nation's summer food crops because of difficulties finding seasonal workers, I'd like to share my experience as a young person growing up in the country who threw himself into fruit picking from the age of 15. My goal is to start a conversation about the opportunities for young people who are on holidays or without work at the moment, to get out and do something which will benefit themselves and the nation. My family settled in the Goulburn Valley, the food bowl of Victoria, Australia.   Every year at harvest time, local orchardist, Santo Varapodio would be on the local news lamenting the fact that the Goulburn Valley had high levels of unemployment and yet local fruit growers struggled to find enough pickers.   This problem has not gone away, so I’d like to encourage more people to get out and give it a go as I did 37 years ago.   In 1982, I couldn’t wait till I turned 15, the legal working age so that I could go and earn a few...

Transformation time; from self-righteous cyclist to self-righteous runner.  Aside from being a dedicated cyclist I've run an average of one marathon a year for the past 15 years.  Why running? The answer is simply time efficiency.  When Paula and I started our family back in 2001 the 10-12 hours a week of triathlon training had to give way to a part time Masters, a full time job and becoming a father.  Restrictions on my available time meant that if I was going to choose one element of triathlon to concentrate on it would be something I could actually take my young child out with me when I trained.  Hence a new love of running was uncovered.  Previously running had been the worst of the three triathlon legs for me, but before too long I became equally strong across them all.  I've had many conversations with cyclists over the years about what happens when you change from cycling to running.  The common thread of the conversation is losing top...

I was fortunate to spend the Easter long weekend with family near Wangaratta in the North-East of Victoria.  Wangaratta is the home town of Olympic 4000m team pursuit gold medalist Dean Woods  and is host to several annual road and track cycling events.  In addition to getting out for a ride on some relatively quiet country roads, one of the things I enjoy is reading the local newspaper.  When reading the most recent copy of the Wangaratta Chronicle, I read a  letter to the editor in which the author complained about cyclists riding whilst using a mobile phone and the need for cyclists to be registered.  Stopping for a coffee after a ride, I overheard a table of fellow cyclists discussing the same letter. Clearly the feedback was gaining traction in the local community.       After speaking with the editor of the paper, I found out that the story that prompted this letter was the most recent local cycling fatality ba...

To Helmet or not to helmet, that is the question . Apologies to Shakespeare and his great work in Hamlet, not Helmet. According to Wikipedia , in his speech a despondent Prince Hamlet contemplates death and suicide. He bemoans the pains and unfairness of life but acknowledges the alternative might be still worse.  Sure enough Hamlet was talking about avenging the death of his father, not about whether it should be compulsory to wear helmets in the face of possibly worse consequences without one.  Helmet laws - now there's a divisive topic in Australia right now without any middle ground. On one hand, all states and territories have mandated the compulsory wearing of helmets for cyclists. This is regarded by many as an extreme position introduced by 'nanny states' to deny people the personal freedom to choose whether to wear a helmet or not. Similarly civil libertarians are lining up on the right to defend people's rights to choose to helmet or not helmet.  As Libe...

Sunday afternoon, Tallarook roadhouse south of Seymour, Victoria on my way back to Melbourne and hoping for some fried food to provide some diversionary therapy for my liver after a big night out.  A bike rested against the window outside the entrance.  I say to my mate, "I'll ride back to Melbourne and you can give the rider a lift".   The first thing that struck me was that this was no ordinary bike   with 80/73/53 front chain rings and 11/32 rear cassette.     To paraphrase Paul Hogan in Crocodile Dundee, "that's not a chain ring, that's a chain ring"!  More like something out of an engineering workshop.  To put that in perspective 53 is the upper end of the biggest chain ring on a standard off the shelf road bike. This bike is a beast in it's own right.   The rider appeared. "How far are you riding today I inquired?" 470km was the reply accompanied by a  brief outline of the day's activities so far starting in Melbourne...

Punk, Mod, Sharpie, Goth, Bogan, Hipster, Normcore ... Every few years a 'new' fashion and lifestyle trend emerges, dominating conversations and polarising the masses.  It seems we need to feel good about ourselves by pouring scorn on a sub-culture - it's part of our DNA - and the reason why those tabloid papers and current affairs programs sell in the first place by allowing the consumer to feel morally superior.   So, yes, they're different to the rest of us.  In this post I want to say a kind word or three about hipsters.  Those healthy looking young things on their fixies, the real ones with no brakes, with their glowing complexions from having just eaten half a bunch of Kale sprinkled with quinoa (before those ingredients became mainstream),  who drink boutique beer from some speakeasy that only sells direct to customers in an old jar and are listening to the most awesome music, but what's the point of telling you, because you non-hipsters will have ne...