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! ๐
(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 ๐
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! ๐
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! ๐
Stuff Stuff 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”.
For those about to roam.. DHTML Lemmings!
I remember playing the original version of this in the 80’s..
http://193.151.73.87/games/lemmings/
“Nobody will ever need more than 640k RAM!”
– Bill Gates, 1981
$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..
It's not me.. it's you
“Australian men (and women; let’s not be sexist) in general, and Victorians in particular, are some of the world’s worst drivers. Unskilled, uncharitable and just plain uninterested, they adopt a standard of driving that falls well short of the mark.“
Take it away cfsmtb:
cfsmtb.blogspot.com – driving us wild
Direct article links:
Vagabondage a.k.a. EuroTour the Mid-Mid-Life Crisis
I handed in my notice last week and will be finishing up here on April the 5th. Damn! I was only 10 years away from Long Service Leave! ๐
I’m currently trying to get rid of 25 years of accumulated crap – I’m a total hoarder – can’t throw anything away!
I’m also “planning” some form of cycle tour in Europe somewhere.. The term ‘plan’ is not entirely accurate as it looks like I’m going to end up with a lot of ideas and not much of a clue about anything. I’ve never toured before so I figure I should make my first attempt in a bunch of foreign countries, while I have no job, limited cash, no foreign language skills, no idea at all, in fact, of what I’m doing. Sweet!
So far it looks like I will take the GT (fitted with gears.. I’m a wuss.. shutup!), with panniers for a couple of changes of clothes, small camera, money, maps, a little food. bikesoiler showed me his SPD shoes which look like normal hiking boots but have SPD cleats fitted to them – they would be cool in that I could get away with only taking one pair of shoes for everything. I’ve got to sort out clothing. I only have race gear – nothing remoately passable for normal casual wear and not much warm stuff for the European cold.
Speaking of cold, cyclingnews reports the following:
“As an example of Europe’s abnormal colder-than-cold cold-snap, on Monday, the daytime/night-time temperature range for Brussels was 0 degrees and -4 at night. Meanwhile, way down in balmy Mawson, one of the largest bases on the Antarctic mainland, they also had a daytime maximum of zero, but at night it was only -3.“
My vague ‘plan’ at this stage is to fly into London, leave some gear with friends, ride from London to Dover, ferry to France, ride north over the edge of France, north through Belgium and explore the Netherlands. If I’m still alive at this stage, ‘sybaritic’, one of the posters on Lonely Planet’s Thorn Tree bike touring forum, suggested:
“You could ride from London, south to dover, cross the channel to northern france, ride east through belgium, netherlands, northern germany (inland as far as berlin if u want, or along the coast), northern poland (incl warsaw if u fancy), through the baltic states lithuania, latvia and estonia, on to russia (st petersburg), through south finland and helsinki, ferry to south sweden (stockholm etc), ferry to denmark (copenhagen etc) back to northern holland for the ferry to hull then south through eastern england back to london.“
I think I’ll play it by ear when I get there. Knowing my navigation skills, I’ll probably spend the first week, just trying to get out of London.. ๐
Walk Sydney Streets
I found this link on cfsmtb’s site and thought it was well cool.
“Secrets and surprises among 330 photos as a 90-year-old walks every street in 134 suburbs of Sydney, Australia.“
Link: Walk Sydney Streets
I think there's something in that for all of us – don't you?
Go soothingly on the grease mud, as there lurks the skid demon.