Great Vic... A bike ride. Part II

A few details about the Great Victorian Bike Ride 2014

(ha ha... blogging this was a good idea, now at least I'm bothering to read some of the details on the Bicycle Network website)

Where:      Albury to Lilydale
Duration:   9 days including two rest days (I'll only be riding 5 days... day one is a rest day... cool!)
Dates:        29 November 2014 - 7 December 2014
Distance:   520km (I'll do 334km Albury to Mansfield)

Towns the ride will pass through, Albury, Yackandandah, Bright, Myrtleford, Moyhu, Mansfield... There's more but I'm not going there so who cares! (Or check the route out HERE)

Terrain: A bit of unsealed road to negotiate and.... whoah! Holy crap! What the?! Hills! Bloody big ones! Oh yeh... 'The High Country'! Right, hills... We don't do hills here in Darwin. The elevation profile looks like I imagine my electrocardiogram will look when they've revived me after my first attempt to climb one!

This is an image of an ECG, it's not the actual Elevation map if you want that click HERE

I saw something in the email they sent me today about preparation, better go back and find out what I'm supposed to be doing.

OK there's a video and some basic advise HERE, on 'Final preparation tips'. (Final? Oh... whateva!) I'll summarize:

• Something about next few weeks of training (too late mate, I only have one week!)... 
• Ride multiple days in a row = Check! 
• Don't have to ride long distances = Check! (top points on that one!)
• More than three days per week / commute = Check!
• Get used to being on the bike for several hours at a time. = (Well... Nahhh)
• Get some experience in windy, rainy weather. = Huh? (We aint got none of that here yet.)
• Wet weather gear.... = (in Darwin that means take your T-Shirt off and enjoy a warm shower... what's this joker talking about?)
• Raincoat = (Is this guy a bit of a sook or what? Raincoat? What for?!)
• Prepare for cold = (Huh?)
• Nutrition, experiment with foods, energy etc.. = Check! Check! Double Check! (You got it brother! I'll get onto that right away... you can never be too prepared!)
• Hone your descending skills = (descending? Oh yeh hills... Oh crap I'm going to need to fix my brakes!) 
• Get your bike serviced before riding or make sure you check the cassette, chain, brakes, bottom bracket, tyres... = bla, blah blah blah... (OK, OK, I get it, I'll check my brakes, sheesh! bit fussy if you ask me!)

Damn it's past midnight! I thought this was going to be fun but it's shaping up to be a bunch of humbug!

Catch ya tomorrow, when I've had a chance to find out where they're hiding the fun on this little adventure.





    

End of January

It's nearly the end of January... nothing much to talk or post about really but I just wanted to stick something in here so the blog doesn't go completely stagnant.

I've been off work for most of the School holidays in an attempt to keep the kids entertained and the wife a little saner than she otherwise would be at this time of year. I'm not sure having me pinned down at home has been the relief she'd hoped it would be! Sorry about that darling... I'm hopeless at being housebound!

READS:


Pedaling Revolution by Jeff Mapes. Read it! A great bicycle advocacy book which, although a few years old and written from an American perspective, was quite relevant to Australian conditions. There were heaps of references to blogs I read regularly and to incidents I'd read about at the time they happened. Although a book that focuses on policy, infrastructure and town planning might be boring I found it interesting enough to knock it over in about 3 days!

The Last Navigator by Steve Thomas.  Am 3/4 through this. The author of this book had a very unique opportunity to meet and be taught by true navigators from another age! Sadly the art of navigation and the traditional culture of the Caroline Islands have probably given way under the weight of western culture, technology and all that. Some of the magic of the ancient guild of navigators from that region is alluded to through the book along with many reflections on the terrible fate their culture faces as young people loose their respect for the ancient knowledge having been exposed to all the stuff that is offered by a contemporary consumer society... or something like that. Many of the reviews I read about this book appeared to have been written by people from an anthropological background rather than sailing buffs. There is so much that I am finding familiar with what I am seeing happening to Yolngu culture. It's quite frightening to see how generic the destruction of traditional cultures can be.

The Hobbit by J.R.R Tolkien: I started reading this with my eldest child this week. As a pretty crappy reader I this is the first book I've ever attempted to read a second time.. (Excluding Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which I chose to read twice at school!) We're reading a chapter a night and are really getting into it! We've just met Gollum in the cave, I love those riddles and the way he talks to himself.

RIDES:
I have really missed my daily 20km commute to work and back! Seriously! I loose my mind when I can't ride my bike once a day! The time I spend riding to and from work each day is my great escape! This is my mellow time, my undisturbed meditation space and my only exercise. Since I've only been working two days a week over the past month I have noticed I am more easily agitated, I'm also noticing that the gut I grew over Christmas has settled in with me getting no exercise!
I was able to ride to work on Tuesday, (The day that the monsoonal trough arrived in Darwin). There was so much rain on Tuesday, we had flood warnings. There was no way I was going to let that stop me from riding. I happily cycled home in the rain. I was in a state of bliss! Riding in tropical rain is quite a pleasure actually. I even had music! I discovered an old bum bag with a headphone socket that I'd squirreled away ages ago. It worked beautifully with the mp3 player safely inside and the headphone jack plugged into a waterproof socket. Cool! As I rolled over the bridge at Rapid Creek a whole bunch of micro bats came swarming out of the tunnel under the road, some of them flew straight into me... or I rode into them, not sure who had right of way when it comes to bats in the rain. It was quite a funny thing to happen. One of them hit pretty hard but I noticed he straightened up and kept flying so I assume he/she's OK.

There have been other short rides closer to home with the family. Most afternoon's the kids and I take the cart out and accompany Sam while she walks the dog.

My only longish ride over the past two months has been the ride out to Howard Springs.

OTHER ACTIVITIES:

Ummm Mulch Pit for gardening, (only occasionally), Litchfield Park, Wildlife Park and today Fog Dam.

10/10/10 = NUC Wheels of Change

350.org has done it again!

"Dear friends,

It's happening--and it’s even bigger than we thought it would be.

From what we can tell from reports streaming in from East Asia and Australia and New Zealand, 10/10/10 is going to be the biggest day of climate action ever--from one end of the planet to the other, people are already hard at work."
(Bill McKibben 350.org)

10/10/10 marked another 350 day of Climate Action! Yesterday in Darwin there were 3 events planned.




NUC Wheels of Change - A bunch from Nightcliff Uniting Church decided it would be a great idea to ride to Church

Lakeside Drive Community Garden 10/10/10 Working Bee - The Lakeside Drive Community Gardeners chose this date as the time to turn the first sod of soil in the creation of their ambitious new community garden on a spit of land between the road and the Rapid Creek.

Peddalling for the Planet - A bunch of cyclists planned to get together dress their bikes up and ride a 3.5 km circuit to promote climate action.


I was fortunate enough to attend two of these events and the atmosphere was great.

A pretty large bunch of people turned up at Nightcliff Uniting Church on their bikes... I shouldn't have been surprised really! There's a lot of active enthusiastic participants in life who attend that Church. I should have known they wouldn't need much prompting to jump on their bikes and have some fun riding to Church! Unfortunately my family weren't feeling too good on Sunday morning (it seems they'd finally caught the cold I brought home from work a week ago!) so it was a party of one who left our house at 8:30 am. I didn't have to ride far before I met with Penny, then Lucy and her two boys. The 5 of us had quite a pleasant ride along the McMillans Rd cycle path and then past the farm on Rapid Creek. By 9:15 we'd arrived at the Church early enough to watch all the others come peddling in! It was so cool to see everyone rolling up. There were about 5 families who rode together and a bunch of others who peddled solo from various locations around Darwin. I'm pretty sure now the youngest riders were a pair of 3 year olds while the oldest would have been somewhere over 60 years old... The atmosphere was so great that Jana (the Minister and worship leader of the day) had to come out and ring a bicycle bell to get the crowd to come in and join the service!
This spontaneous effort spurred people to think about future rides we might like to do together as a group.

Later in the day at about 4:00pm when my girl was feeling more like riding we hopped on our bikes and rode down to Lakeside Drive where we met with a bunch of others who had peddled down there to start work on the new Community Garden! Once again the atmosphere was buzzing with enthusiasm and a sense of fun! Once again there were a great mix of children and adults all participating in an activity of affirmative action toward a carbon neutral future!



It was great to take part in these events! Being part of a community of people from all age groups working together for a sustainable future is a great buzz. We don't know exactly what the future will bring. Maybe we will never achieve the goal of 350 parts per million of Carbon in the atmosphere but working together as we have may help us to build the skills necessary to participate in a rapidly changing and increasingly hostile environment.

We only want a little shade!

(Once a shady avenue)

If you ride your bicycle along McMillans Rd in Jingli/Moil NT. Then you've probably noticed that all the lovely shade trees have been knocked down. My ride home from work has been so much hotter thanks to the DPI's new landscaping project.

OBSTRUCTION: When I asked why, I was advised that the trees obstructed peoples vision... I mistakenly thought that they were referring to road safety and other traffic but as I ride by that way every day I know that there never was any such obstruction. However with the trees there the Bottle Shop/Hotel and motel were slightly hidden from the road... Is it possible they cut down the trees so that traffic can be directed to the drive through bottle shop more easily?

The form of these trees was quite uniform, narrow trunks with a spreading canopy of leaves above (kind of like big umbrellas). I'm not saying they weren't an obstruction at all because I believe they were blocking particular things. Firstly the row of tree trunks would have acted like bollards along a busy roadway... If a car had lost control and jumped the curb it is quite likely one of those trees would have stopped it from smashing into traffic, pedestrian, cyclists or property on the other side. The other obstruction the trees caused was far more likely to affect cyclists and pedestrians... The canopies of those trees obstructed the harsh rays of the afternoon sun from frying the skin and brains of those who traveled along the bike path. If you ask anyone who uses the shared bicycle/pedestrian path they will tell you how nice it is to have some shade... They will also tell you how pissed they are now that the shade they relied on has been removed!

The signs say 'landscaping in progress', I can't wait to see the end results of what they have done to our landscape! I can only imagine, greener grass and a manicured water intensive, 'Prettification' but NO Shade!. I wonder if they'll have to declare the amount of carbon they are releasing through the chipping of those trees?

(Stumped!)

(Marked for the Axe)

Thanks for nothing DPI. Please don't call the work you are doing 'improvement'.