Traffic sewer anyone?

Melbourne’s new Lord Mayor wants to [turn Swanston St back into a traffic sewer](http://www.theage.com.au/national/man-of-action-slows-down-on-swanston-street-20081204-6r8c.html ‘Man of action’ slows down on Swanston Street). No one thinks it’s a good idea, except Mr Doyle. Tonight, cyclists will protest outside the first meeting of the new city council.

How fast is fast?

treehugger:

We do prattle on about how the bicycle is the world’s most energy efficient vehicle, but just how fast can a human go on a bicycle?

It depends on how you are measuring that speed. Are they rushing downhill added by the press of gravity? Are they riding an upright style bike in the position familiar to most of us, or are they reclined in the recumbent pose most suited to streamlined rocket profiled two wheeled vehicles? Are they drafting or slipstreaming along in the partial vacuum created by a non-human powered craft? So many ways to feel the need for speed on a bicycle, and to measure that rush.

[Thanks tom]

HPVs to Lang Lang

Speaking of fast, I got an email the other day from OzHPV saying that they’re hoping to run some speed trials at Holden’s Lang Lang Proving Ground next Easter:

OzHPV, the Australian wide association of human powered vehicle users, is planning to run a series of events at the Lang Lang Proving Grounds during Easter 2009 (April 10-13).

The Lang Lang proving grounds are located about an hour south east of Melbourne, on the way to Philip Island. The track is a 5km round banked asphalt circuit. You can ride a bike in what is essentially a continuous straight line. The aim of the events over Easter is to break 2 long standing Australian records, and possibly create a few more in the junior & master ranks. The records we are trying to break are the flying 200m record set by Steele Bishop of 84kmh, and the 1 hour record of Ben Goodall, set at 58.3km.

No sign of this yet on the OzHPV website or their blog but the event appears to be coordinated by the OzHPV treasurer Tim, so drop him an email treasurer@ozhpv.org.au if you’re interested. You need to register your interest by 1 January.

Personally, I like the idea of turning that 5km circuit into the world’s biggest velodrome.

Want!!

Speaking of HPVs, I’ve just been doing some serious drooling at the Greenspeed Glyde velomobile. Here’s a glowing review. [via Recumbent Gallery]

Or maybe a Tri-Sled? That Avatar is dead sexy!

Ahem. “Dear Santa…”

(Ah, and I see that arcadiagt5 is likewise affected.)

Dealing with trashtalk

The League of American Cyclists has an interesting web page: Who’s Trash Talking Bikes?:

Every now and then, someone takes a potshot at bicyclists and bicycling. Sometimes it’s a politician; other times a shock jock. Whoever it is, and whatever their motivation, we don’t like it! So we keep track of who says what, and give you the chance to talk back.

In Australia, Wheels of Justice does a pretty good job in the same space. Are there other similar ‘chapter-and-verse’ responses to trash-talkers in the media?

Bridge out

The East Malvern road/rail overpass is being replaced and won’t be available for about four months:

This bridge is a critical element in the bike network and is a junction point for the Anniversary, Gardiners Creek, Scotchmans Creek, Waverley Rail Trail along with the nearby onroad bike lanes on Malvern and Belgrave Roads.

With thousands of bikes and pedestrians needing to use this bridge every day of the week this 4 month (approximate) disruption to the area will not only have a huge impact on commuting riders but also the large number recreation riders keen to get out on those new bikes Santa delivered

I don’t regularly use that bridge these days but it’s going to be very inconvenient for commuters who ride that way—far more disruptive than the Solway St Bridge fiasco.

Direct action

Are DIY bike lanes more effective than Critical Mass? Certainly they’re less confrontational.

Indictment

And speaking of confrontation, the police officer who featured in a YouTube video assaulting a cyclist on Critical Mass in New York this year has been indicted by a Grand Jury over the incident but the specific charges have not yet been revealed.

Stocking-stuffer?

Don’t ride with earbuds in—go for something like the i-Ride bike speakers. See a review in Oregon Cycling.

Tokyo parking (again)

I know I’ve mentioned this before but I reckon these underground bike storage facilities are brilliant. Checkout the video of the bloke leaving his bike—he just plonks it in, presses the button and walks off. I’d be watching my bike go—and standing there scowling suspiciously at the machine afterwards before I’d be prepared to leave.

[via gizmodo, thanks tom]

Melbourne sans car

Melbourne Metblogs reckons Melbourne, for the most part, is a city where it is resonably easy to manage without owning a car.

Work-Life Balance

BBC Radio 4 recently had a program that discussed work/life balance:

Cycle couriers chose a leisure pursuit that almost exactly replicates their normally daily work.

Hmm, alleycats as a way of “galvanising an identity…a kind of lifestyle”.

[Thanks Peter]

I don’t know where he finds ‘em

tom manages to find the weirdest bike designs, like this TAURUS thing—looks like a cross between a scooter and stairmaster. Right up there with the famous Treadmill Bike. The Randy Ross Stepper Bike looks very similar too.

Eyes in the back side of your head

The Nike Hindsight cycling glasses squeezes an extra 25° into the periphery of the normal visual field. Use of Fresnel lenses at the very edges do the trick and because the corner of your eye doesn’t see detail very well they reckon distortion is not particularly noticeable. But the benefit of being able to detect movement in the over-the-shoulder blind spot could be enormous. Sounds like a brilliant idea to me—the sort of thing that seems obvious once someone else has thought of it!

[thanks tom]

Bike ban recycled

Well, we thought the bikes on trains ban had been well-and-truly binned. Unfortunately it appears to have been the recycling bin:

Bikes will be banned from buses that replace V/Line trains to the North East and tourism experts fear that may put the brakes on one of its emerging markets.

Due to track duplication work:

V/Line will introduce a temporary timetable from 9 November, 2008 which will involve the operation of road coaches between Albury / Wodonga and Seymour. Trains will connect with coaches to run between Seymour and Melbourne in both directions.

However:

Bicycles will not be permitted on board coaches during the works.

Apparently bikes can still be carried on the XPT, but there are restrictions:

CountryLink train services have only three spaces available for carrying bicycles, surfboards or snowboards. Coaches have one space reserved for this type of item. Please reserve a place when purchasing your ticket and limit the weight to 20kg. A fee of $12.10 applies. Please note you are unable to book bicycles, surfboards or snowboards online.

If you are taking your bicycle please arrive 60 minutes before the scheduled departure, disassemble the bike and pack it into bicycle boxes. You can ask at your station about obtaining a bicycle box or source one from a bicycle retailer.

That doesn’t really look like progress to me.

via [publictransport]

Social climber?

For all climbers, social or otherwise, The Alpine Ascent Challenge is open for business: climb at least four of North-east Victoria’s big hills between 30 November and 24 March. If that’s the kind of thing you’re into…

Achiever?

Nominations are open for the 2008 Australian Bicycling Achievement Awards

Discoverer

On Sydney Cyclist, Polak discovers:

By cycling I can now leave home at 8:15 and get home at 4:00. This saves 1h 50mins everyday.

That means I get 9h 10mins extra time per week.

You can’t beat the maths. It took him 12 years at school to catch on, but better late than never!

Poseur

A $2,500 Tricycle? This must be a misprint. No, that’s no misprint:

Designed especially for the kid who has it all, I guess, comes a tricycle made from Titanium.

Take head and insert in own bottom. [thanks (for nothing!) tom]

DIY ‘bent

Another build-it-yourself recumbent:

No welding, done in a few spare hours, this bike is made from 2 old mountain-bikes (mtb). It took me about 2 plus 3 hours.

There’s also a video.

Out in the fresh air

Urban Cyclists: Stick Together, Don’t Inhale? [thanks tom]

What was I thinking?

In October last year I offered some thoughts on bike path surfaces.

That said, for someone with an attention span as short as mine, the presence of other riders on the route can be helpful for keeping mind and energy focussed—if I’m in the mood for a workout. For example, if someone passes me at a pace that I think I can sustain, I might jump on the back. Or if there’s someone up ahead that I could catch by pushing myself a little bit more, that might provide a target that I need to get going.

But it’s never a race and it’s never about “beating” the other person. I’d far rather work cooperatively, ride with someone (rather than against them), and enjoy some good conversation. So if I’ve decided to “draft” someone and I reckon I can sustain the pace out front, I’ll take my turn (for what it’s worth). Conversely, if I really am a passenger just struggling to hang on, I’ll stay put and say “thanks for the tow” when we go our separate ways.

Apart from anything else, I’m so clearly built for comfort not speed that it’s a perpetual puzzle to me why anyone would want to take me on. Big hint: if you’re a club rider and you need to race me either to score some pathetic points in your mind or for a training hit-out, you probably want to reconsider your choice of sport.

Anyway, to my point. I encountered just such a boy-racer on the Yarra Trail last night. I saw him coming up from behind for quite a while—a young-ish fella in what looked like team gear (but I don’t really pay attention to that sort of thing). When he passed, I liked the look of his pace and thought I might follow. Rather than tight drafting, I’ll often follow at a few bike lengths back just to let someone else set my pace, basically so that I don’t have to think about it (remember that thing about having a short attention span?) And that’s what I decided to do.

But boy-racer clearly decided it was a “challenge”, and took off like a startled rabbit. I didn’t really mind because he was still riding well within my speed range and I was actually quite pleased to pick up the pace a bit. I was enjoying the workout but it seemed that boy-racer was playing for sheep stations: when he squeezed between a slower rider going our way and another approaching cyclist, I was alert but not alarmed—anyone can make an error of judgement (hell, I make mistakes all the time). But I backed off a little just the same, maintaining the pace from a good five or six bike-lengths back.

Then half a minute later I saw him do it again: this time squeezing between a pedestrian and an oncoming cyclist inside the confining railing of a bridge. It was then that I knew this dope was not going to take any responsibility, so I’d have to: I sat back and let him go. It caused me absolutely no pain to let him “win”—I was just happy that no one would get hurt in his mad dash to stay in front and “beat” me.

And that’s the crazy thing. Even if I had been interested in a race, where would the victory be for me if the rider I was chasing had been slowed down by riding carefully and considerately of slower traffic? That is possible the stupidest thing about bike path racing—it proves absolutely nothing, but if you go at it with reckless disregard for other people, it’s downright dangerous.

So just for the record, if you see me out there on the roads or trails, I am most definitely not interested in a race.

So a bit of ingenuity and a bit of luck were required. The forecast said to expect a change in the afternoon, so if it came through early enough we’d congregate at SuperGran’s house and take ourselves out for a twilight ride. Sure it wouldn’t be a huge long ride, but we’d be able to squeeze in about 20km, which would probably be enough for the kids at the end of a hot day.

I think it topped out somewhere about 40°C at our place before a southerly breeze appeared from nowhere and the temperature dropped by about 10 degrees in half an hour. The change was on, and so was the ride.

By the time we’d herded the cats kids with their assorted vehicles together at SuperGran’s place, it was getting on for 5pm before we hit the road. Heading to Box Hill via the Gardiners Creek Trail and some back streets, then down Bushy Creek to Elgar Park. Out along the Koonung Trail then across country to Blackburn Lake and back to base. At some point there I managed to add a second passenger to the kiddie trailer that I was pulling (once you get the little blighters in there, you can’t get ‘em out!)

Objectively the ride was nothing spectacular (and certainly not strenuous), but it was a thoroughly pleasant trundle made more enjoyable because we practically had the trails to ourselves—few people seemed to have realised that the change had arrived and that it was mild and comfortable outside. Perfect riding conditions, in fact.

Topping the afternoon off with a leisurely dinner out in the backyard, we managed to salvage a memorable start to the year from an otherwise sweltering hot day. It was so good that Doc Homebrew is already planning another expedition for next weekend. Hmm, the forecast suggests things will be warming up again by then…

Actually I am a bit soft at the moment. And pudgy. For a variety of reasons (which I won’t go into here), I haven’t had nearly enough cycling in the last…oooo…two months. How embarrassment. So before the year disappears under me, I thought I’d squeeze in at least one more decent ride.

But where to go? A route with some distance but (ahem) not too many hills to challenge the out-of-form rider who is carrying a few extra kilos. Well, why not bookend the year with the same ride we did on January 1? Back to the Lilydale–Warburton Rail Trail…

This was to be a little treat just for me, so with no hangers-on to organise, I was pedalling the trail by 7:15. For someone whose breakfast included penicillin and Codral, I guess I can’t complain too much but it did take me a little while to get into my stride. Not that it worried me too much because it was a beautiful morning: still, overcast and mild. In fact, for a little while I thought I was going to get rained on.

Parts of the trail, especially on either side of Mt Evelyn showed signs of water damage from the recent heavy rain: some of the road crossings had soft gravelly edges, the tunnel under Hereford Rd was rutted and full of silt, and there were a couple of other spots where the track was a bit rough and rutted (down towards Woori Yallock, mostly). But in general the trail surface was in good condition, apart from a liberal coating of storm debris.

The traffic was light on the outward journey, just the occasional pedestrian or cyclist. Otherwise it was just me and the cows.

Somewhere between Woori Yallock and Launching Place the trail surface gets a little bit smoother and a little bit wider. In fact, pretty much the whole stretch from Launching Place to Millgrove is top notch trail—just made for zooming. Which suited me because by then I’d shaken out the moths and was ready to click it up a notch myself.

Before I knew it, the distance markers were counting down single-digit kilometres to Warburton. The last kilometre or so, uphill from Millgrove, is on an old-ish bitumen path that is mostly in pretty good shape but tends to be noticeably lumpy in the last few hundred metres at either end. As I headed out of Millgrove I even thought I’d prefer the gravel path that I’d just left behind, but it soon settled down.

When I fronted the counter at Warburton’s Three Sugars Café I was a bit surprised to be asked if I wanted breakfast—to me it felt like time for mid-morning coffee! However a call to the Homebrews to see if they were on the road for their family ride yet confirmed that it was indeed still breakfast time.

Refuelled and recaffeinated, I headed back the way I’d come, whooshing downhill past a steady tide of people making the outward journey. This really is a popular trail but not many were going my way.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who finds railway gradients a bit confusing. Sometimes it looks like you should be going downhill but you find yourself pedalling a bit harder than you expect because it’s actually flat or even uphill. And when you do hit a downhill you really take off, sometimes quite unexpectedly fast.

Not long ago someone moaned to me about how hard it is to climb back up to Mt Evelyn from Woori Yallock. It’s not what I’d call a hard climb but it is a steady and constant incline (as you’d expect of a railway) and I think some people find it a bit daunting to confront that long slope stretching off as far as the eye can see, particularly if they’re a bit tired towards the end of a 70km ride. I was pleased to discover that (lack of general fitness notwithstanding) I haven’t joined their number.

It would be disappointing to end this ride at Mt Evelyn because you’d miss the fun of hurtling back down the hill towards Lilydale. It’s always the perfect way to finish off this very enjoyable route. Well, almost perfect—it doesn’t last long enough.