There and Here

Oh, hi. There you are. If you're wondering where I am, you can find me over at the Artist as Family blog where I am documenting my family's adventures as we ride our bicycles around Australia.

Come say hi, if you please.

High 5-ing the World

Resolution? Promise? Goal? I don't know what you'd call it, but a year ago we made one.

In a conversation about where we'd like to be as a family, we quickly realised that the future we were planning didn't include a car.

Three years ago we gave up shopping at supermarkets, a year ago we gave up air travel, two months ago we gave up eating out of season and we're slowly transitioning towards giving up our mobile phones. But giving up our car feels like the biggest decision we have made so far.

It took us a year of preparation. We started a log book so we could see all the reasons we were justifying using the car. We biked, walked, carpooled and used public transport as much as we could, and after surviving the winter, knew that we were ready.

The town we call home has limited public transport options—no trams and no trains—so we knew we'd have to be a bit more organised whenever we wanted to leave. But on the plus side, we live in town, so it's a five minute bike ride up to the post office or library.

A week ago, we drove our car to Melbourne and delivered it to its new owner. The second he drove away it started to pour, and it dawned on me for the first time, the reality of our decision.

The next day, PJ started converting our carport into a bike/tool/potting shed.

After researching and test riding several cargo bikes, we finally made our decision. Yesterday PJ and I bussed and trained to Melbourne where we picked up our Kona Utes. Our first ride was a two-hour stint from the nearest train station, home.

My legs feel strong today, though my arms are a little sunburnt. Not from waving down passing cars to give us a lift, but from feeling so overwhelmed with freedom, I couldn't help high 5-ing the world.

We Rode

I thought we'd get a crowd of 20 people, I had hoped we'd get 30, but 40 turned up, which is about 1.3% of our small town's population.

We rode bikes and scooters. We rang our bells and we blew our whistles. We waved to people we know and those we didn't, standing on the footpath. We slowed the traffic to the pace of our cheers and wheels.

We reclaimed public roads as public space.

Then we all sat around with our celebratory ales, toasting the mighty and the free.

If you're this way inclined, please feel free to join the Daylesford Critical Mass Facebook page.

Or if you're that way inclined, please feel free to tune into ABC Ballarat this coming Monday at 6.40am (yikes!) to hear me talking about the event.

I look forward to riding with you in a month!

Thanks for the photos, Kate.

En Masse

We made it! The weather here is still chilly and un-springlike, but the coldest wintry days feel like they're behind us.

We have walked and ridden our bikes on 90% of the journeys we made this winter past, and I am happy to report I haven't had a single cold. PJ takes a raw garlic clove at the first hint of a sniffle, but I swear by my daily intake of spirulina. And lots of time spent outdoors.

The advent of the warmer weather is bringing with it more people on bikes in this little town of ours, but not necessarily more bike awareness, so we thought we'd change that with our very own Critical Mass.

If you live anywhere near the Central Highlands, we're meeting at the zebra crossing outside Daylesford Primary School at 5pm on the last Friday of each month, which means our inaugural ride is tomorrow.

If you're going to come along, please do come say hello. For those of you I've never met, here's what I look like:

And yes! That is a puppy in my basket. Introducing Zero, the newest addition to The Artist as Family. He's a 9 week old Jack Russell and he'll be coming along tomorrow too.

Hope to see you there!

(Thank you, Kate for the photos.)

Bike Like

From here.

From here.

From here.

From here.

Thank you so much for joining me for Bike Week. I hope you ride safely, wherever you are.

Pushing Forward

From here.

From here.

From here.

From here.

It's Easy to Miss

From here.

Guest Blogger: My Dad

G’day. I’m Meg’s dad, and I’m honoured and delighted she’s asked me to be guest blogger as part of Bike Week. So here goes:

I’m not sure if I must establish my credentials. But if so, they’re here [1].

My best bike ride ever was in 1998 when my wife Vivienne and I rode our Cannondale tandem from the bottom of England to the top of Scotland [2]. We rode 1,891 km in a leisurely 37 days.

I’m chuffed that Meg writes for Bicycle Victoria [3].

With atmospheric CO2 now above the nominal ‘safe’ level of 350 ppm, governments must implement policy incentives for more bicycle journeys. Many more. And disincentives for more journeys powered by the infernal combustion engine. Because bicycling will continue to be the most environmentally friendly form of transport. Apart perhaps from walking. [4]

And whilst pedalling you get fit and lose weight [5].

In Melbourne, Copenhagen-style bicycle lanes are a leap forward [6].

Research shows the best indicator of the bicycle friendliness of a city, is how many women are bicycling [7].

On 13 October, which was the latest National Ride to Work Day [8], I was working in Hobart and I walked to work. Bummer.

I used to love the Tour de France. I thought the riders were superb athletes, not least because they rode up mountains faster than I could ride down them. But doping and other scandals have dampened my enthusiasm [9]. Pity.

I own three bikes. Mainly I ride the pictured Peugeot mountain bike. At present it’s out of action because riding up big hills has stretched the chain [10] which needs replacing. I have a metaphoric withdrawal tremor. I must get a new chain soon.

On 11 November the Tasmanian Tourism Minister is launching a program to attract touring cyclists to this area. There’ll be four marked themed trails spanning 250km. You’ll be able to download maps, and also over seven hours of podcasts comprising interpretation of the Great Western Tiers region [11], and local stories told by residents. If you’re riding by, I’ll make you a cuppa. (After 11 November, I’ll put a comment on today’s post linking to the maps and podcasts.)

I hope you enjoy the rest of Bike Week. Also I wish you happy pedalling, and that the wind will always be at your back and the road ahead will always be down hill.

Rack 'em Up

Even though I live in a country town where I don't need to lock up my bike, I love it when I come across bike racks that are creatively designed. Actually, that's not true; I even love the ones that are purely functional.

From the utilitarian

to the affirmative

to the personalised

to the whimsical

to the busy

to the playful

to the protective

to the literal

to the thoughtful, such as this one that has the added feature of a bike pump.

I love 'em all, because they usually mean that bicycles are not too far away.

Camper Bike

From here.

Bike Week

It's Bike Week here in the Land of Meg; a whole week of posts dedicated to the wonder that is the bicycle.

Two days ago, this wonder was on display in our town for all the community to experience.

To celebrate International Day of Climate Action, two local green groups screened the film, The Age of Stupid, which I implore you to see if you have not yet.

To offset the carbon generated by the projector during the screening, 12 grid-connected bikes were set up in the middle of town on Saturday, the day of the screening, to generate the 2,000 megawatt hours needed to power the film that night.

As the bicycle is the most efficient means of self-powered transport, I have always thought that pedal power = a lot of power. But compared to coal power, which we receive at the flick of a switch, pedal power is an inefficient, time-consuming way of producing electricity. But boy oh boy was it a fun way to learn that it takes nearly all day to create enough juice to screen an 89 minute film!

Happy Bike Week, y'all!

Down and Dirty

I have an article in the current issue of Bicycle Victoria's Ride On magazine. It's for a section called Women's Spin, aimed at raising the profile of cycling among women.

This is the photo of our chook Louie that accompanies my words:

The gist of the article is that when I lived in Melbourne, I considered feminine to mean unruffled, neat and delicate. "If I could have sat side-saddle on my bike I would have."

But now that I live in the country where I grow vegies and keep chooks, you will often see me pedalling around in my dirty gardening clothes. "In the city I would check myself in the mirror before going out in public, but now I wear my soil-covered clothes and straw-filled hair like a flag I wave proudly to proclaim who I am."

I hadn't thought twice about it, until yesterday afternoon when Z and I were talking about the men and machines that have been working opposite our house for the last week. It has rained every day that they've been there and I commented to Z that I would much rather be warm and dry and working from home than drenched and cold and slipping around in the mud.

'But don't you like getting dirty?' Z asked me, stunned. And that’s when I realised that although I love the dirt and may even define myself by that love, I can't actually say that I like getting dirty. Not in the same way that a seven year-old boy can, anyway.

Fence

This morning before Z and I set out on a bike ride, we knocked on the front door of our new neighbour's house with a batch of homemade cookies to say, Welcome to the neighbourhood!

Here is the fence between our houses. PJ built it at the end of last year. We call it our Social Warming fence as it's slatted and only runs part way along our boundary.

This afternoon, Z and I went to visit O and his niece Lily. For his birthday several months ago, O was given a copy of Home Beautiful magazine from the month and year he was born. I laughed when I saw this advertisement – a social warming fence from the 60s.

Rednesday: Earrings

These red can pull tabs have been a-hangin' from my ears since 2003. 

Kids I meet usually scream at me that I am wearing a can on the side of my face, while grown-ups ask me if I made them. I am never sure what this question means and usually answer: "If by 'make' you mean, was I drunk at a BBQ and did I pull them off some cans and stick them on my earrings, then yes, I did make them."

I like them because they are red, because I would much rather recycle up than recycle down, and because of the tinkly sound they make when I'm on my bike and coasting down a hill into the wind.

Contrail

From Doobybrain:

Contrail is a concept bicycle device that attaches above the wheel of a bike and covers the bicycle wheel with a layer of chalk. The chalk then creates a trail or mark on the surface of the road, turning the bike into a sort of large drawing utensil. 

The concept, developed by Pepin Gelardi of Studio Gelardi focuses around the idea of safety in numbers. By using this device, bicyclists will have a clearer path on which to ride safely and out of the way of vehicular traffic. At the same time, as more bicyclists using the Contrail go over a line created by a cyclist before them, the line gets brighter allowing drivers to clearly see a marked bike path where there might be none. It’s sort of similar to what happens when a dirt path appears in a grassy field after lots of people have taken the same shortcut over a period of time.

Pedal Power

Photo by Diana

So far I have blogged four posts that mention Victorian premier John Brumby, and of those four all of them have been negative.

Today however I have something favourable to say about him. Why my change of heart? Because he has finally come to his senses and yesterday pledged to spend $115 million on a cycling strategy that declares VicRoads will now be required to consider bike lanes in every major road project.

Under the plan, 23 bike paths around Victoria will be completed in the next 18 months, and 33 bike cages built at train stations around Melbourne.

"For the first time in Australia, bike riding has been formally recognised as part of the core transport system," said Bicycle Victoria chief executive Harry Barber.

Pretty good stuff! But before I take out my quill to write Mr Brumby's name in my good book, he first has to do a little soul searching and weighing up of good and bad of his own.

The Australian Grand Prix is set to start on Thurdsay, which means there are still a couple of days to call it off. 

What's it going to be, Mr Brumby?

Laneways

There's no point waiting for governments to take the necessary steps towards a more sustainable future for the planet. We haven't got forever.

If premier Brumby isn't going to pledge adequate funding to create more bike paths in his car-centic Transport Plan for Melbourne, maybe it's time we created our own?

More here.

In other laneway news, if you're in Melbourne tomorrow, my sister Emily is playing at the St Jerome's Laneway Festival at 2.30pm on the QV stage.

The Basket Club

A-tisket, a-tasket, a brown and yellow basket...

Twelve years ago I found this basket at a trash & treasure market and it brought me much much joy. It was simple, practical, could stand up on its own and wouldn't bang against my legs when I hooked it onto the handle bars of my bike.

When I carried my basket I felt happy. And when I carried it, I noticed so many others happy and carrying their baskets. And so I made up 100 of these cards to give out to fellow happy basket carriers.

My mum wanted to be a member so bad that she bought herself a picnic basket so I would give her a card that she then displayed proudly in a frame.

It was a small gesture, but it meant the world to me.

Congratulations goes out to my mum today! As she has just found out that her book, Alzheimer's: A Love Story, has been accepted for publication by Scribe.

You are an inspiring human being, Mamman. Because of your actions and your words.

T-Shirt Weather

They say that once you have survived your first winter up here your body acclimatises, making each subsequent winter a little easier. This winter was my second, and it's true, it was much more bearable than the first.

This most certainly has a lot to do with us now living in a properly insulated house, and it also has a lot to do with the current epidemic of sunny days, that has all but melted the memory of the snow that appeared on our earth just 6 weeks prior.

After a day of open windows, we closed our laptops and headed up the street to a local wine bar, PJ on his skateboard, me on my bike.

There was live music, glasses toasting the sunset, and questions of where abouts and how abouts we have been since winter transpierced.

Redar

I rode my bike past this red grid the other day that I had to dismount to pick up. It's usually to fill my basket with gleaned fruit that I stop, not discarded bits of plastic.

I like red things. I like red things for lots and lots of reasons. And have done so for almost a decade. One of these reasons is as a means to filter because the world is just so big. Someone once called it a redar, like a radar, but only for red things.

My mum has come to stay for a couple of days. We walked through the bush first thing then read and wrote for the majority of the day. The plumbers came to hook up our water tank and we walked to a nearby trash, treasure and collectibles market, where I once again noticed how I notice.

I notice red. It doesn't matter what: sparkly shoes, capsicum, olive oil tins, tattoos and forsaken bits of rubbish I can wear around my neck.