Don't spend it all at once!

I received my tax return a bit late this year. This was mainly due to the fact that I lodged it 8 months or so after tax time. Whoops.

How many custom Seven’s: Seven Cycles - Elium SG

..will I be able to buy with this return?

Not many with $1.90!!

In fact, the return wouldn’t even pay for the train fare needed to cash it!

Repeat after me.. “I love tax!”

Melbourne Skyline

Questioning my sanity (this seems to happen too much for my liking these days) as I rode to work, being passed by sleepy drivers leaving less than a foot between me and their 1.5 tonne steel boxes I was still feeling slow and not in the zone. I wasn’t even close to the zone – I’d need a bus pass before I made it to the zone.

“What the hell zone are you referring to you crazy hippy?!”

I’m talking about the smooth, fast, “what cars?” zone that makes most commutes a doddle.

Taxi drivers would question my sanity if I asked them to take me to the zone, I was that far from it.

Shit.. the point of this wasn’t to talk about the start of the ride it was to talk about the end. 7/8ths of the way in I found my groove, my speed lifted and I felt good to be on a bike again. The sky behind me was a brilliant shade of pink (80’s fluoro? Hypercolour t-shirts?) and the Melbourne skyline as I rolled down Burwood Rd. was (what’s that word all those wanky artists use?) “surreal”.

Outside the CBD was a light dusting of pink cloud “fur” and then as your gaze moved further towards the city centre it suddenly changed form to become a thick white umbrella, just covering Melbourne. It was like the city hadn’t taken its hat off! 🙂

(15min passes)

Now the pink fur has disappeared and has been replaced with the typically-Aussie blue sky along with the typically-Melbourne patches of cloud 🙂

The “umbrella” over the city has shifted into a hue of brilliant orange, the top of which now resembles real clouds – a large mass of rolling orange that will turn white as soon as the sun has fully risen.

What the hell has all this got to do with bikes? Nothing! But it’s my blog so piss off the lots of yaz! 😉

One prick spoils it for the rest..

7 years I’ve been living in Croydon. Almost the entire time I’ve been grocery shopping by bike. I’d roll the bike into the stupormarket and lean it up inside because I hate locking bikes and I felt it was safer inside anyway. Besides, my only (cough) good lock was at work anyway. So after almost seven years of bringing a bike into this place you can imagine my shock when some new security guard tells me to take it outside. Of course I’m immediately arguing with him about it.

“I don’t want to leave it outside!”, “I don’t have a lock!”, “I’ve been doing this for years with no trouble” and he gives me the “I’m a cyclist too” line and proceeds to explain to me what a fucking U-lock is. I left in disgust and leaned the bike up outside returning to buy some strange food products (strange because they’re not in a packet, ready to be nuked – holy crap! hippy’s gone au naturale! ;)).

On the way out, the guard that usually works there – who I’ve been saying “g’day” to for frickin’ ages – tells me that some fuckhead rode into the centre, ignored requests to get off his bike, and proceeded to knock some poor woman down!

So now it’s crackdown time and I get rolled because of what some fucking moron has done. Stupid peds on the road is one thing, but don’t frickin’ ride into their territory and knock them down!!! I’m going to have to assume it was some ‘burb-fucked chroming bmx grommet but I could be wrong. Thanks to whoever it was – I love my life made more difficult.. cock smoking tool.

It’s lucky I’m listening to “Lou Reed – Satellite Of Love 2004 (Dab Hands Retouch Mix)” or I’d be really mad! 😛

Stuff Stuff Stuff!!!

Google Search: stuff

I have lots of “stuff”. 25 years of accumulated “stuff”. I have to move it all somewhere other than my house. It is mega-painful. Throw this out, keep that – but where to put it? On and on it goes, the same questions asked. Will I use this in Europe? Will I use this if/when I return? Is this something I want for sentimental value? Is it really that significant to me that I can’t bin it? What is this? Why do I have 20 of these? I’ll want this in the next few days, but where can it go for now?

Some “stuff” has to be moved before Friday when the bedrooms get painted. Anyone want some “stuff”? I think my most hated word has changed from “work” to “stuff”.

$12.50 for a tube.. rack off!

Yeah.. so I notice my tyre is flat. I brought the bike into work last night and it seems to have gone down over-night. Must be all that over-inflation I’ve been putting it through before races:

Just a.. few… more….. pou..nds! Ahh.. There we go!

Head down the road to Lawrencia Cycles and ask for a 700C tube..

That’s $12.50 thanks.

Jeezuss!

I recoil in horror, only just managing to stop my head spinning around 360 degrees.

I hand over the money reluctantly, knowing it’s double what I usually pay, knowing I have a bunch of repaired and unrepaired spares at home, knowing that there are other bike shops but they are all outside walking distance, knowing that this shop always overcharges because they are in the Yuppie Zone(tm), knowing that I need to ride because it’s been too long and I have a 24hr race on the weekend, knowing that if I don’t buy it now I wont fix it and I wont ride home which will suck my motivation to train tonight..