The ride to Tamiflu

I've been off the air for a few days because I have been as sick as sick can be. I had such a fever, I was halucinating when I was awake, and having the same halucinations when I was asleep - and it was the same bloody halucination over and over again. I got pretty sick of it after a while, and it was not very good - it was about a computer game of all things.

It all started with me wanting to be able to ride to Parramatta Park. I have no great desire to see the park - it's just that there is a cyclepath that heads north from the park, and if I wanted to get onto that path, I needed to get to the park first.

Over the last two weeks, I have made two abortive attempts to find the park. Well, two abortive attempts to find Parramatta in fact, which is pretty hard, given that it is supposed to be the second CBD in Sydney. Typical of the RTA that the signage that they erect on our cycle paths is so bad, you can miss an entire CBD.

On my second attempt, I actually took the correct turn off (or at least one of the available alternatives), but my ride petered out several hundred metres off the cycle path because those dicks at the RTA had not bothered to erect any signs telling you where to go once you get off the path.

The thing about following a cycle route is that it is generally not a straight line. If you were to drive from A to B, you would not deviate from your path if there were some nasty hills in your way, or if the traffic on certain bits of road was fast, crowded and nasty. Taking a bike route is lot more of a meander - you try and go around the nasty hills, and you definitely avoid the shocking bits of road. Your course is anything but straight. That means you need lots of signs to say to cyclists "this way" and "that way", and you need them to be numerous and obvious.

That is obviously not at all obvious to the RTA.

I wasn't going to give up after two measly attempts. I went home and studied the RTA bike maps for a while, then compared them to Google maps and tried to make sense of where they wanted me to go.

It was a bloody nightmare. None of their maps have street names on them, so I'm not sure how you are supposed to work out which street to take. I simply took a best guess, and trusted in the Force.

As soon as I turned off the cyclepath into suburbia, this is what I found. Christ, what a lovely area.



Until now, my main considerations for the route that I take revolve around speed and safety - with safety being foremost. But I've only really considered road safety. I'm now going to think about the risk of being mugged!

On my way back, the poor bastard that owns the car was standing there with a mobile mechanic. He was obviously trying to get some new wheels for the car. It made me think - this car is a piece of junk - just what type of wheels did he have on it that someone wanted to steal them? Did dipshit put several thousand dollars worth of wheels on a car worth about the same?

Some people are such tools.

I didn't want to take a photo of the meathead and his car as he looked like he was not long out of prison. I just glanced his way and kept on going. Discretion being the better part of valour and all of that.

I won't bore you with the details of how I found my way to Parramatta Park - let me just say that I am considering printing the RTA maps on soft paper and hanging them next to the toilet. Backing the filling was the order of the day.

Once I got to the park, I found it quite nice to ride around. It's one way, there is a lane for pedestrians (which, like pedestrians everywhere, they stray out of), a side lane for bikes and a single lane for cars. Speeds are kept down to 30. I was toodling around the park when I went past this woman setting up her racing wheelchair. I kept going to a bit, then pulled over, took some photos of some birds to pass the time and then snapped her as she went by. She was the first wheelchair athlete that I have seen out and about.



They don't actually grab the wheels with their fingers when they go to push - they have these big rubberised pads on their gloves, and they push the pad against the wheel and push. The pad must have enough grip for them to impart a lot of force on the wheel. She was obviously warming up, because she was as slow as a wet week on that first lap (about 20km/h). I followed her for a while to watch her action, then took off. Those wheels are also canted right in as far they will go - there is about 1/4 inch of space between the wheels and her sides.

Once out of the park, I needed to find a way home. I was not going back the way I came in, because that way was crap. Along the way, I passed the dead centre of Parramatta.



Did you know that people living in Parramatta can't be buried in this cemetery?

Of course - they're not dead yet.

By the time I got to the cemetery, I had done about 30km and I was feeling a bit the worse for wear. I know I haven't been riding an awful lot of late, but I shouldn't have been feeling that bad. I managed to get back to the cycle way without too many problems, but it was not long before I was really hurting. I had to stop every few kilometres for a breather and then promise myself that I'd call J for a lift when I got to point X. All I had to do was get to point X.

Point X came and went, so I gave myself a new point X and kept on going. This went on until it was complete agony, but by then, I was close to home, so I said bugger it and kept on going.

All up, it was not a fun ride.

By the next morning, I was a complete mess - fever, chills, sweats, joint pain, hallunications, pressure behind the eyeballs and the cough from hell. At one point, I was coughing violently every 15 seconds, and it went on for hours. I couldn't sleep, and I could barely breathe at times. As a result, I've wrenched every muscle from my groin to my armpits from coughing.

A day later, I was barely in shape to go and see the quack. How I wish these guys made house calls still. He prescribed Tamiflu, but warned me that it cost $70. It could have cost $700 and I would have paid for it. I also would have paid him a few hundred dollars to make a house call. When you are that crook, even leaving the house and sitting in a waiting room is agony. Sydney's completely crap roads don't help. The jolting there and back just about killed me.

To cut a long story short, the Tamiflu kicked in about 30 hours later, and 40 hours later, I am able to do some writing (but not much else). My brain feels like mush, my head is full of snot and my voice is completely wrecked from coughing.

All in a days riding really.