Tour Riders.

Which came to me via Headset Press, which is the best new cycling blog I have seen since Roadie launched.

And others also had themselves a wonderful day. Here’s the Cycleaway crew enjoying the autumn cool and gorgeous sunshine on the rail trail between Fernvale and Lowood.

Can’t beat that for a day out! And I hear they enjoyed an excellent BBQ at Lowood and the ride back to Fernvale.

I’m full of admiration for Janey and Jan, the dynamic duo that make up Cycleaway. Because they just get out there and make stuff happen. And they never give up.

Case in point: Womens maintenance workshop! The first one was held on Friday evening at Jagera Arts Centre, South Brisbane. I think it took about 9 months to get it from idea under discussion to actual workshop. And it fills a really great need! I hope it becomes a regular thing. Well done Cycleaway and their expert helper.

Janey even recorded an interview for me on her mobile phone. I think I will struggle to edit the quality up for the radio, but I will give it a go.

But you can listen here:

I don’t know why the rider gets no credit for this. If you look at how smooth she is on those drop-offs (at 1.05, 1.21, 1.36), this is one classy girl on the bike. One of the nicest of these sorts of video clips that I have seen.

I also really liked this one. Dude’s name is Mitch Ropelato and he makes it all look sooooo easy (it’s not).

You know you want to.

(For best effect, hit play on ‘Foster the People’ below, then look at the Storify link, and when the chorus comes along, sing to yourself ‘All the other kids in the South Bank kit, better ride, better ride, faster than Les Hewett’)

No TdD for me. But that’s OK, I’ve got plenty of riding planned this weekend. During the week I took a deep breath and entered the Mount Perry six-hour, as a solo competitor.

Nothing too startling about that.

But what it means is that I have to make some serious effort to get ready. So I posted up  a ride on MTBDirt … the classic Brisbane training ride for enduro mountain-bikers: Gap Creek to Nebo. It’s about 50km round-trip, with the first half as hard as you want to make it, climbing South Boundary Road to Mt Nebo village. And the second half lots of fun and still plenty of hard work, coming back down.

South Boundary Rd today was pretty as a picture.

And by good fortune we happened to assemble a really good group. Of the six who rode together today, I had only met two before. But that didn’t matter at all. Mountain bikers are pretty relaxed folks, I find.

PeteC and Finksta seem to be ignoring me. I'm sure they weren't.

So it was a good start to my concerted push during May to get ready for Mount Perry. I judged my effort well … I was just getting the beginning twinges of cramp on the very last climb on the way back on South Boundary, where you climb up to the Boscombe Rd trail.

I got back and heard that there’s nothing wrong with you that an hour in the forest won’t fix. Well I had four hours in the forest today, and I came home thinking: “I am such a fortunate person to be able to do this.”

To sum up:

• Smashed myself on the bike till my legs gave out
• Spent time with a good mate (hey Phil!)
• Met four new friends

The day can’t get much better. Oh wait … maybe it will! But that’s only tangentially to do with cycling.

Pix by Hootsmon. Here’s more!

… even on a Sunday Spin which is all about getting more women to ride, men still outnumbered.

So if I point that out upfront, at least you know that I know. OK.

But if we look at the quality ratio, it evens things out. Because a car-free & cyclocross-happy Kate Lansell and a cyclo-poetic-blogosphere superstar Eleanor Jackson easily trumps Phil Smith & me.

And if you add in Rowan Lamont, sensitive new-age mtb teacher, you get a very interesting discussion about all things to do with getting on your bike and having fun. Regardless of which category of genital equipment you are (hopefully) concealing.

Just have a listen & tell me I’m wrong.

Well it’s a horrible morning for a bike ride in Brisbane, and I don’t know that its going to improve much all weekend. I hope it does, I need to get out on the bike.

So as a (poor) alternative, maybe you could listen to Phil Smith and Jan Stevenson and myself talking about big rides and small tours, on tomorrow’s Sunday Spin.

That would be the Sunday Spin! On the digital airwaves anytime now, but also available right here on your computer.

And you would also be mad to miss the South Bank Bunch night at the movies.

Because you could watch A Sunday in Hell in pixely small-o-vision on your computer. Or you could watch it on a big screen with a bunch of enthusiastic pizza-fuelled fellow-travellers. I know what I’m gonna do.

I’m gonna win the coolest lucky door prize ever (that would be the new Crankstar kit, see right) .

And you would be mad to miss the obvious place at which poetry intersects with cycling. Which is the Anywhere Festival’s performances of She Stole My Every Rock ‘n’ Roll. Featuring my favourite cycling blogger, and the owner of this bicycle. Two cycling poets … and they tell some crazy awesome stories. You have to hear it for yourself.

And so I wasn’t surprised, but I was delighted, when the Heart Foundation announced some research titled “Increasing Density in Australia; maximising the health benefits and minimising harm”.

It’s an ‘evidence summary’ of the available research worldwide which looks at the effects of urban density on population health.

To sum it up: A well-designed, high-density urban environment is a good and healthy place to live.

What we have at the moment is the result of Australia’s national self-understanding of being the ‘wide brown land’ in which there are ‘boundless plains to share’.

Well yes, we do have lots of space, but it turns out that humans do best when they huddle together a bit. We need urban density to make our cities walkable and livable and rideable, and generally more human.

Here’s the research person Prof Billie Giles-Corti on the subject.

So I went along to an Institute for Sensible Transport seminar on Monday. At which the key speaker was Tom Vanderbilt, author of ‘Traffic’. He has a quite interesting blog. But you had already worked that out, from the Soundcloud embed above. Have a listen!

Extensive readership research* that I have done lately leads me to believe that not every regular reader actually listens to the audio interviews that I put up on this site.

In principle I am perfectly fine with that.

But I don’t want you to miss out on the interesting stuff I find! (That’s why I post the audio snippets, cos they’re interesting, mmmmmkay?)

* or lunch.