On the radio, you can’t see me waving my hands around when I talk.
This Great South East segment went to air on Sunday March 31, but I’ve only just got hold of a copy. Critique/heckle me in the comments.
My favourite moment: the fake laughs from both Emmas right at the end after I’ve made a terrible Dad joke about testing positive for caffeine.
You know that there’s no week that I enjoy more than Bike Week. For someone who loves bikes and may possibly be slightly ADHD, a different bike event (or several different events) every day for 9 days, is pretty close to heaven.
To be right in the middle of it the whole time is great fun. By the end of it, I’m tired and punch-drunk, but still having a great time. I was fortunate this year that my role for the Big Day (Sunday 24 March, when we had the Coot-tha Challenge and the Great Brisbane Bike Ride, and the Family Fun Ride) was to help manage the start line, and then be the MC for the finish site at South Bank. Easy & cruisy.
But although the Big Rides day is the climax of the week, I find the smaller events to be more fun and more personal and more interesting. My favourites this year were the ones that I was heavily involved in: Cyclocross, of course, and MTB Film Night. I was also heavily invested in the success of the Women’s MTB ride, which I couldn’t go to, not being a woman, and being busy with putting signs out on that day anyway (in case I was tempted to cross-dress or have gender realignment so I could attend).
What I like about this pic is that everyone is smiling, except Besty who has her back to the camera. Nice.
I’ve given cyclocross plenty of blog-time already.
MTB Film Night was a triumph in my book. The event was Emma’s idea, and at least 80-90% of what happened was all her vision as well. We turned Epic Cycles into a relaxed and funky movie cinema for the night, with big screen and pizza and beer. About 70 people had a great evening, and during the film itself Emma and Imo and I mostly hung out outside and chatted and relaxed.
It came at the end of the day when we had Ride to Work Day at Brisbane Square, so it turned out to be one of those days where you start work at 5 am and finish at 10.30pm. You don’t want to do that too often. It turns you into a zombie.
Epic in cinema mode. A great night!
So a few days after Bike Week, the zombie aspect is wearing off and I’m starting to feel like I could eat up a few more interesting bike rides soon. Some family circumstances are conspiring to keep me from that just at the moment, but down the track I’m hopeful of reporting on some mtb events, and more CX racing of course, and the occasional dirt-road Audax. Watch this space.
A whole lotta people ready to ride their bikes. This was the Great Brisbane Bike Ride in 2006, the first year I worked for BQ on the event.
So the Great Brisbane Bike Ride has a long history … I think it might go back to the late 1980s. The first one I recall being part of was called the Brisbane River Ride, and it was in 1987, and it was in aid of the Wilderness Society.
Back then, the Bicycle Institute of Queensland used to hold meetings at a centre for green concerns at Bennetts Road, Morningside. That little shop now houses a photography studio.
I don’t know why I’m mining the long history of the GBBR. Maybe because it’s not the big sexy event anymore, now that we have the BDO Brisbane Coot-Tha Challenge.
But there’s still a place for the GBBR. For young and old, for new riders and regular joes and josephines. I like that is has played its part in inculturating the river loop into Brisbane cycling.
And this year’s edition, is on Sunday 24 March. It’s going to be a beautiful day, I can feel it in my bones. Enter here.
A Baum would be one of my two or three most favouritest dream bikes*. But I have to admit to myself (and to you) that I really don’t like this V8-Supercar paint style that they seem to be using on all their new bikes.
Wonderful Wednesday flickr.com/photos/baumcyc… #baum
— Baum Cycles (@baumcycles) February 13, 2013
But I’m going to post this before noon.
Just a chance for some random updates.
I am a believer. It’s the way I live my life, it’s the way I was brought up, and it just seems like it’s the way I am.
I believe.
In lots of things.
I occasionally pose as a cynic, but I’m not really that good at it.
Because most of the time, I want to believe. And I want to continue to live my life as a positive person who believes in ideals, in goals and movements greater than me.
And even though the history of cycling suggested I was foolish, even though credible witnesses with no reason to lie told a different story, I believed Lance for years and years.
I believed George Hincapie, even more than I believed Lance.
But even though I’m a self-confessed believer, I am a man of many more than 40 summers, as worn down by life’s experiences as many of us are.
I’m perfectly fine with ambiguity as well. I don’t always need clear answers. Just a framework is enough for me to construct my own (hopefully ethical) response to most situations.
Lance hasn’t ruined pro cycling for me. I just don’t believe quite as much as I did before.
And of course, the general tenor of this blog makes it obvious that Lance hasn’t ruined cycling as a thing to do. It is still awesome. Always has been, always will be.
The main “lesson” that keeps getting repeated to me throughout the Lance affair, is that good journalism is hard work. And about 95% of sports journalism trades access for rigour.
Anyone can have an opinion. (Anyone can have a blog, and an opinion).
But to discover the truth requires a disregard for the personal consequences, a willingness to actually do some interviewing, some research. This has not been a strong point of sports journalists.
“And he can’t stand Beelzebub, cos he looks so good, in black”.
Riding the Turtle Trail
With our families on holidays together, Brucewez and I spend a fair bit of time together on the bike. And after a couple of days, we ride in sync, like Waldorf and Statler. It’s good.
We spent a week at Innes Park, on the Coral Coast, east of Bundaberg. The Coral Coast is bounded by the Burnett River to the north, and the Elliot River to the south. The coastline is about 25km long, but there is not one coastal road that allows you to hug the coast all the way.
There is coast road in each of the townships: Burnett Heads, Bargara, Bargara Lakes, Innes Park, Coral Cove, and Elliott Heads. But to link them up you frequently have to leave the town and go via an inland road, and then back out to the coast at the next town.
Except: From Burnett Heads to Bargara, you can ride the Turtle Trail!
The Turtle Trail is mostly a bitumen surface, and it follows the coast quite closely from Burnett Heads, down through the Mon Repos turtle rookery to Bargara.
It makes a ride around the Coral Coast area from just another flat beachside ride (pleasant enough, for sure), into something quite memorable.
And for Bruce and I, it was totally unexpected. We were just out riding, and by not actually navigating much, had ridden down to Elliott Heads and then north, by feel, all the way to the Port of Bundaberg.
We had just had a coffee and refreshments at Burnett Heads, and were poking around a lovely little park, when three ladies rolled in on hybrids and low-end mtbs. I was looking at the Coral Coast pathway sign, and they told me they had just ridden it.
So we did too. Happy days.
The second unexpected piece of fun on the Two Heads ride, was Logan Road.
As I tried to explain earlier, on the Coral Coast you have to keep leaving the coast and coming back. It looked like Logan Road was an unbuilt gazzetted road, and so when we came to the corner of Poinciana Drive and Logan Road, and the gate was open, we took that as a sign that we should attempt to use the not-quite road named after brave Captn Logan.
Bruce did some of our best work on that road.
Bruce giving it the full Rapha treatment on Logan Road, which is much better than the one we know in Brisbane.
The Two Heads ride: four stars, highly recommended. If you happen to find yourself in Bundaberg, or Bargara, or similar. If you can’t go there, listen to Radiohead instead. Similar effect, I reckon.
New ‘road’ wheels for the CAADX … they are Hope hubs, Velocity rims, 28 spoke, built by Emma. They were on her Cotic Roadrat, but they seem to be right at home on this bike!
(To misquote John Lennon)
We’ve battled through another year of Briztreadleyness. Some good parts, some sad parts. Some new friends, which makes it a good year. A (dodgy) podium in a gravity mountain bike race, which was pretty damn awesome at the time. Twice as many cyclocross races as last year, so that’s a plus as well.
And a new bike, and a fond farewell to an old bike.
But the big ticket item this year for Briztreadley has been the Sunday Spin, on ABC Digital radio on Sunday afternoons. I’ve had lots of fun with Phil Smith learning how to be a regular on the radio, and I hope to make it work even better into 2013. What do you want to hear on a radio show about cycling in Queensland, and in Australia? Let me know.
The CAADX is now all set for road rides, and mostly ready for some CX adventures as well. I upgraded the brakes to Paul Minimotos (they had free shipping in November, what can I say). Emma had a set of wheels which would be perfect for the CAADX, and a need to sell some bike kit to fund other stuff. So the result can be seen above. It’s very sweet, and the freewheel on the Hope hubs clicks away like a Campag hub from the 70s.
Good piece on the Velonews site about Kristy Scrymgeour, the head honcho of Specialized-lululemon, the top-ranked women’s cycling team in the world.
Some of the highpoints:
“What we need to do now is create sustainability in women’s cycling,” she said. “We try to pay our riders really well, but a lot of riders still need to put in hours in other jobs. It’s hard.”
The common thread running through Scrymgeour’s career in the sport is her passion for women’s racing. She views the success of her Specialized team as a building block in her bigger project of raising the profile of the sport. It would be easy for her to sit back and celebrate her team’s many victories, but Scrymgeour is not content to wait for someone else to do the work of building the sport. It’s a job she is determined to do.
“The big goal is to grow women’s cycling,” she said. “That’s what we need to do. I keep reminding myself that. It’s hard; it’s not an easy thing. Sometimes you wake up and think, ‘are we going to get anywhere with this?’ But there’s a lot of positive energy around it, and that’s definitely what we have to focus on.”
All that and the sweetest kit in the peloton, men or women. By a country mile.
Go and read the whole thing yourself. Good stuff.
A seat post without a seat … how one tiny nut can make a whole bike useless.
I was sitting on the ride of the road at Coominya at 3.30 on Sunday morning, with a broken bike.
This sounds like it would be a lonely and desperate place to be. But it was not. Every couple of minutes a small group of cyclists came past, and without exception they would stop and check on my well-being. And after about 40 minutes, a large well-appointed four-wheel-drive with a four-bike rack on the back stopped, and the driver gave me a lift.
I was on the Audax Midnight Century, one of south-east Queensland’s enduring and iconic bike-riding events. And despite my eventual DNF, I had a great night, with 84km of exhilarating riding, followed by a few hours of relaxed chat about bikes and riding, and some good food.
About 30 of us Audax nutters gathered in the carpark of Ipswich Brothers rugby league club for the event. Deja vu. This time I was there with my friend (and my daughter’s father-in-law) Ernesto.
And on the dot of midnight we had a quick briefing from Dino (here’s my reconstruction of the route), and off we went. Ernie and I had intentions of hanging back and seeing what was what, but the early pace through the suburbs of Ipswich was quite benign, and by the time we reached the Cunningham Highway on-ramp at Yamanto, we were with the lead group.
When it all settled down on Ipswich-Rosewood Road, Ernie and I were in a group of 12 or 13 riders. I would describe the pace as “pretty willing”, and was finding it occasionally difficult to keep up with the rhythm of the group. But I was still there through Rosewood and Grandchester, until we hit the Grandchester range after 40km.
At that point the road goes up for 3km. It’s not a hard climb, but there was no way I could match the pace of the front group, so I took my own counsel and rode at my own pace. Over the top another rider caught me, and we rolled down towards Laidley together.
Ernie was waiting for me at the turnoff into Laidley and we rolled along with our new friend (whose name I never asked) to the rest stop at Forest Hill, 55km into the ride.
It’s five past two in the morning. LET’S EAT!
This is a hungry man.
With some fabulous zucchini slice on board, Ernie and Wes and Ivan and I got back on the bikes and into the inky blackness that is the Lockyer Valley on a Saturday night (well any night I guess).
And our group swelled to about six or seven riders. The pace seemed to moderate a bit, whether it was just for me was hard to tell.
But we were making time, enjoying the night, and the slightly surreal experience that is night-time road riding. It feels fast, whatever speed you are actually doing. It feel like you’re getting away with something.
But I didn’t get away with it for much longer. Across the Warrego Highway near Plainlands, then past Glenore Grove and Mt Tarampa, heading towards Coominya.
I got out of my saddle for a little bit of extra oomph up a rise, and there was a rattling noise beneath me. I sat down, it disappeared. I got up again, and the rattle was back.
I sat down, and the seat moved out of horizontal with me, and just about came off the seatpost.
So I called out ‘stopping’, and pulled over the side of the road for a look. It quickly became apparent that I had lost the top nut out of the rear of the two bolts in my Thomson Elite seatpost. The two-bolt design is great for adjustment of the seat … you can fine-tune it so that the seat is perfectly level … but if one bolt is out of action then the whole seatpost fails to hold the seat.
So there I was, a few km from Coominya, and about 80km into a 160km ride. I called the organisers, and after a few minutes on the phone we had arranged a pickup in Coominya.
So my midnight century was a DNF. But even though me and my bike failed at the task, from that point on I still had a great ride and chat with Peter, who was on sag duty for the night.
And I still enjoyed the hospitality of the Fernvale rest stop. And chatted with various other event participants, both about Audax stuff and about BQ stuff. And with this event being a DNF, it just means that next time I ride I have to try harder to make it to the finish line.
Now THIS is an Audax bike. Mercian is an English brand. This one is a fixie, in the fine Audax tradition of making things harder for yourself unnecessarily. And it’s got typical English touches like a Brooks saddle and Carradice saddlebag.
Dawn at Fernvale.
Not your typical Audax machine. This is a custom-designed and made titanium Koiled, which belong to Nick who is also a super-awesome enduro mtb racer.
Ernie, Wes and Ivan finished together, and they clocked up 160km. Well done gentlemen!