It was pouring with rain last night, and the weather forecast predicted more of the same for today. When I crawled out of bed at 6am for the Sydney to the Gong Ride, the pattering on the roof suggested that the meteorologists were right.

A 90km ride in inclement weather? For charity? Bring it on.

By the time I'd crossed the Captain Cook Bridge over the Cooks River - in the company of several thousand other dauntless cyclists - the sun was out, and it was blue and balmy skies all the way south through the Royal National Park to Wollongong. There are certainly worse ways to spend a Sunday morning.

I want to extend another huge round of thanks to my generous army of sponsors: with your help, I was able to raise the princely sum of $745. You guys rock.

Last Friday, on the way to work, I collided with a stationary car. In my feeble defence, it had started moving when the traffic lights turned green and it pulled away in front of me. It stopped its left-hand turn when a pedestrian decided to make a last-minute dash for the little green man. I missed this important detail, and smacked into the back right hand corner of the station wagon.

"Are you alright?" asked the other cyclist at the intersection, who was right behind me, as I hobbled over to the kerb to check my bike - and myself - for any damage that might prevent my resuming my journey.

"Yeah, I just need to get my balance back."

Bike and self appeared generally undamaged - excluding superficial grazes and equivalent scuffs in the handlebar tape - so I continued on to work, with an embarrassing story to tell all my friends.

I'd been planning to take the bike into Cheeky Transport for some TLC anyway, since the Gong Ride is coming up in a few weeks and having brakes and gears in full working order is a good idea if one is going to be sharing the road with 10,000 other cyclists (of varying levels of experience). This little vehicular incident was as good a reminder as any; I dropped the Allegro in on Saturday.

Fast forward to Tuesday night, where I collected my freshly tinkered bike, experienced a random, spontaneous nosebleed (the altitude of Cheeky Transport is clearly higher than it appears), and left the recumbent bike for some TLC of its own. The front disc brakes on the 'bent have started rubbing and squealing - for reasons beyond my limited mechanical insight to correct.

With a newly tuned, nicely shifting and braking, Allegro bicycle at my disposal I headed forth - first to the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital post-natal ward to visit Fiona and Mel and their new daughter Zoe, and thence on to home.

Coasting down my own street, I had to brake as a car pulled off the kerb without indicating. The driver stopped to let me pass, I rolled another 50 metres, pulled into the empty space in front of my house, braked to stop - and my shoes failed to unclip. I tipped over onto my left-hand side, yelling at the inevitable betrayal of gravity, and hit the ground. Tacoed both the Allegro's wheels.

Clearly that slight difference between the cleats required for the pedals on the Allegro and the cleats required for the pedals on the 'bent, is enough of a difference to matter.

I will standardise my cleats, I will standardise my pedals. I will be grateful this didn't happen at traffic lights. I will apply arnica montana cream to my purple knees. I will be back at Cheeky Transport for the third time this week.

Last year I ummed and ahhed about doing the Sydney to the Gong Ride, and signed up on almost the last day. (I wasn't sure I could make the distance. Turns out it was easy.) Leaving things to the last minute meant that there was no opportunity to collect sponsors for the event - which is a fund raiser for MS Australia.

This year I've signed up with plenty of time to spare. Anyone want to sponsor my 90 km expedition?


Many thanks to Michael, Jeff, Adela, Graham, Shane, Meg, Glenn, Fran, Cheryl, Veronica, Max, Phil, Leanne, Sherene, Sarah, Fiona, Antoine, the good folks at Cheeky Transport, and my mysterious anonymous sponsor for their generosity.

The cold weather has arrived with a vengeance.

I wimped out on cycling to work on Friday, but it was with justifiable reason: 60 km/h (37 mph) winds, with gusts up to 90 km/h (55 mph), accompanied by 70 mm of rainfall. Not so severe as the weather conditions further north - a ship driven aground at Newcastle, and a stretch of the Old Pacific Highway swept away at Somersby - but perilous enough for yours truly on a bicycle.

With the change in the weather, I'm having to reassess my commuting clothing. Last year I added a variety of colourful long socks (viva Pippi Longstocking!), and high-visibility work shirts to the wardrobe to cope with the morning chill. I'm not sure if I've grown more fragile in the intervening months, or whether it's colder this time around, but this year that's just not cutting it.

The cycling leggings I bought to wear on the recumbent (I may not be able to grow the long grey beard, but that's no reason I can't look the part!) on top of the knee-high socks are keeping my lower half comfortable, but there's more to me than legs!


So I've purchased a Submerino wool jersey from GroundEffect (in orange, naturally - loving it) and a new pair of full-fingered gloves (haven't had a chance to try them out yet) to armour myself against the elements. Hopefully this will suffice to get me to and from work without anything turning blue.

It's nowhere near Ice Bike territory, but then again I'm a thin-blooded Aussie. We don't get ice and snow hereabouts.

It's been a very long and very busy week.

When my alarm went off at 5:45am, to rouse me for the Sunday morning Waterfall ride (me and my recumbent, like a camel at the Melbourne Cup), I climbed out of bed with less difficulty than I had been expecting the night before. My clothes were all neatly folded by my bedside, ready to dress and go.

I headed to the bathroom to brush my teeth, and was standing looking at my bleary eyes in the mirror when the tired hit. Not the "oh, it's early, and I haven't woken up yet" type tired that a few more minutes out of bed will shake, but the "I'm going to have to lie down now, because I'm so exhausted I could cry" sort of tired.

The ride just wasn't going to happen. I headed back to bed.

Alarm time: 5.45
Hours worked worked this week: 54.5

Coincidence?

In response to my Have bike, will pedal post, Fran asked:


It's actually something I've been meaning to blog about for a while now, but I've been trying to think of a way to explain the difference in balance between the two without being able to resort to hand gestures. (Also, since I'm not a physicist and haven't played one since high school, I don't know the technical terms.)

Have you ever kayaked? You know the way the boat responds as you dip and pull with the oar on the left side, then shift your balance towards the other side, then dip and pull on the other? You're proceeding forwards, but your forward momentum is affected by and dependent on a constant series of shifts to the left and right.

This same sort of process takes place when you're pedalling on a recumbent bicycle: you're pushing with one foot, then with the other, and because your legs are stretched out along the length of the bicycle, rather than positioned up-and-down at the bicycle's centre, the bicycle sways from side to side in response to the forces of your pedalling.

At very low speeds, yes, it's harder to balance because the forward momentum of the bicycle is not enough to overcome the pull of gravity and you don't have your own body's years of training in "behold, I am upright!" to overcome this.

Riding close alongside another bicycle, the constant shifting of a recumbent bicycle makes the probability of nudging your companion just that little bit more likely. Riding in a group, where the riders are riding in a paceline, taking turns at the front and then dropping back ... well, that's tricky to coordinate at the best of times.



Edit:
On the way to work this morning I was riding behind a guy on a mountain bike. His seat was too low, so his knees were sticking out like Prince Charles's ears, and he was riding very slowly. He was weaving side to side as a bicycle will do under such circumstances.

Which got me to thinking that the physics of an upright bike aren't that different to that of a recumbent. If you're riding hard on an upright bicycle, you'll see that the bike shifts from side to side in response to the forces being applied: it's just that your butt, not having to stay in the seat to support your body weight, doesn't need to follow it.

Digging around the website for The Golden Compass, the film adaptation of Philip Pullman's "Northern Lights", I came across a picture of a coach designed in the modern-day Victoriana style (is that steampunk, or do I have my genres crossed?) of Lyra's world.

It's gorgeous to look at, but ... how on earth do they steer this thing?

It's been a couple of weeks now since I had any significant symptoms of nerve damage in my left arm. It's been a couple of weeks since I had to see the physiotherapist. I've actually started riding the Allegro, my touring bike, to work again two days out of three with no discernible ill effects.

But I'm still cautious. An easy 10km, 40 minute ride through the back streets of Alexandria isn't quite the same as an excursion over the Roseville Bridge to visit my parents, or up the Old Pacific Highway to Gosford. I still don't feel physically recovered enough to put bigger numbers on the odometer on the tourer.

On the other hand, if I'm only doing 100kms a week, I'm not going to get the sort of physical fitness I want. I'm not getting the sort of cycling time that I want. Riding to work is easy; it doesn't leave you with the weary-but-accomplished feeling that you get from several hours spent pedalling.

Which is a dilemma, albeit one that the recumbent (now purchased outright) is coming in handy in resolving. These past two Sunday mornings I've managed to lurch out of bed while the sun is still having second thoughts on the matter, and follow the Dulwich Hill Bicycle Club folks on their ~80km training ride to Waterfall and back.

A recumbent's no good for bunch riding, so it's not something I can actively take part in, but it gives me a route to follow and some idea of the pace I should be aiming for.

Last week, following the stares of bewilderment from the group at the appearance of this strange recumbent beast in their midst, Damian was kind enough to keep me company. This week I set off along the Waterfall route with no intention of joining up with the group, but our paths intersected on the way back in, and I joined Lindsay & co for coffee at Cafe Bo Bo.

Now if I could only manage to stop falling off the damned 'bent (I've lost my balance on the bike twice in the whole time I've been riding it, and both times it was right in front of Lindsay), I might not be so self conscious about the whole exercise.

An image from the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF)'s "20 tips for sustainable development" mini-site, it would also make a nice design for a t-shirt, or even a messenger bag.

Clunk. Click click. Hisssssssss.

It's not a sound you ever want to hear coming from your rear wheel. I felt it as much as heard it this morning, about 2kms into my morning commute, and brought the recumbent to a stop.

At first I thought it was my waterbottle again, repeating the grand escape it had made yesterday afternoon - only choosing this time to hit the wheel of my bike instead of rolling under a passing car. The hiss of escaping air quickly put paid to that idea.

A quick inspection revealed a piece of metal, a length of wire about the thickness of a carpentry nail, curved rather like a fishhook. It had driven itself into the tyre, gouged a crescent-shaped slice in the kevlar, punched a good sized hole through the inner tube.

I walked home.

It's been a whole year since I bought the Allegro.

In that time, I've fallen off and buckled the back wheel, ridden to Gosford and to Wollongong, carried a lawnmower, gotten too many flat tyres, put 4500 kms on the odometer, and generally enjoyed cycling around Sydney.

Let's see if I can actually manage to put some touring miles behind me in the next twelve months.

I haven't been riding to work since the beginning of January.

A combination of too many years at a computer desk, extended time in the saddle over the Christmas break, and the final straw of several hours crouched in the garden left me with a pinched nerve (C6 on C7, for the curious) in my neck. I'd thought that the waves of pins and needles running up my left forearm would go away when I stood up; two weeks later I was still waiting.

Several months - and a good number of physiotherapist visits - later, I've maxed out the physio bonus points on my private health insurance. I'm having to watch my posture (James has been commenting frequently on how upright I stand of late), and perform neck retraction stretches at 15 minute intervals, but things finally seem to be under control.

I'm still not entirely symptom-free, and I'm cautious about triggering a relapse by jumping back on my bike. On the other hand, I've also been going stir crazy from the lack of exercise (and the lack of fun!) that the loss of my daily bike commute entails.

This past week, however, I've found an alternative. I've borrowed Moz's recumbent bicycle - not the one pictured above, but similar: short wheel base, above-seat steering. It's taking me awhile to get the hang of the different handling of this strange machine, but I'm back on two wheels again and - better yet - I'm not getting any of those prickling sensations in my arm while I'm riding.

I'm starting to worry, though, about the prickling in my chin. Is that my recumbent rider's long grey beard starting to grow in?

"Why would someone you've never met trust you with their $5000 bike?" Meg asked yesterday, when I showed her the Bike Friday that's currently stashed away in its suitcase in our bike shed. The only answer I could reasonably come up with was, "why not?"

I'd received Jess's slightly desperate plea for help via Crazy Guy on a Bike earlier in the week:


Given I had the space and the ability to help, why wouldn't I do so? I hadn't given the matter of trust any thought at all: it was implicit in the request.

Does something still count as altruism if you do it for the sake of feeling good about having helped someone?

Warmshowers.org, the Warm Showers List for Touring Bicyclists, put us in contact with Robert and Emmy, who have just finished a 6 week tour of New Zealand on their M5 recumbent bikes.

They weren't expecting to spend a full weekend in Sydney, but they found themselves with a day to spare while Qantas hunted down one of their bags which had gone missing in transit. That could almost be considered good luck: it would have been a shame to pass through Sydney without seeing any of it.

Their journal is in Dutch, but between Babelfish and the photos I can follow along.

Good luck with the rest of your trip, guys!

When I left the house this morning for my first bike ride of the year it was overcast and barely finished raining, so I wrapped my Stormtrooper jacket around my waist in case of further cloudbursts. I didn't even think of putting sunscreen on.

By one o'clock the sun was scorching. I have been duly punished.

I stopped by Bunnings on my way home from a ride to La Perouse, and bought a lawn mower.

The cashier was appalled. "You're not carrying that home on your bike, are you?"

I've just returned from my first Critical Mass ride, across the Sydney Harbour Bridge, in the company of several hundred other cyclists. The entourage included several bikes towing stereos on trailers, five NSW Police officers - on bikes, in uniform, and presumably on duty - and a number of primary schoolers on their little BMX bikes.


Still, I'm not sure I'm clear on the point of Critical Mass.

I was waiting at the lights in North Sydney, with the rest of the Mass dispersing and the police cars that escorted us across the bridge still sitting with their lights flashing. Two preschoolers, standing waiting at the pedestrian crossing, were wondering out loud why there were so many bikes and police cars. "I think they want more bike paths," said their mum. "There are parts of the city that don't have bike paths, and they want to be able to ride there."

"It's more about making people aware that bikes are allowed on the road, too, just like other vehicles," I interjected, fishing for a better off-the-cuff explanation based on my limited understanding of the philosophy behind this organised coincidence. "There you go," said she to the kids, though I didn't hear their response because the lights changed.

But is it about making cyclists visible, or is it about having fun? Because I'm not sure that the two are compatible for all values of having fun. Zooming along the tunnel onto the bridge, whooping with joy at the experience, cheerfully ringing your bicycle bell as you roll down Macquarie Street - these are visible, and these are fun. Standing on the top tube of your bike in the midst of a pack of inequally experienced cyclists, in the view of the motorists waiting on the other side of the road, may be fun but I can't help thinking it does a lot to reinforce the negative stereotypes of "those damned irresponsible cyclists".

Or maybe I'm just turning into a cranky old woman.

Edited to add:
The Daily Telegraph are being their usual inflammatory selves about the matter. I think that's me in the foreground of the photo they used.