The inaccuracy - it burns

"Standing stock still, her finger suspended over the trigger, she stares through the sight of her Dragunov rifle". So says the SMH today.

Let's have a closer look at the "Dragunov".

Hmm. Looks awfully like the FN L1A1 SLR that I carried many years ago.

Here's a Dragunov by comparison.

This simple inaccuracy makes me question the whole story.

By the way, sticking a scope on an SLR no more makes it a sniper rifle than sticking fat tyres on a taxi makes it a race car.

Mise en place - more

Since the body is not up to riding this morning, there is only one solution - bake a chocolate cake!

I'm not going to provide the recipe. Instead, I'm going to write about prep.

Junior keeps talking about moving out of home at the end of the year. Before he goes, I'm trying to show him a few things so that his new flatmates won't boot him out after two months. One of those is keeping the kitchen in a usable state.

See, he has this habit of getting hungry around midnight, and his favourite stomach filling night time snack is mee-goreng with bacon and fried egg on top. Whatever. For all I know, that could be a culinary masterpiece that's about to sweep the planet.

I can deal with his weird selection of food. What I can't deal with is walking into the kitchen at 0600hrs to find grease encrusted frying pans and plates and pots filling the sink. It drives me nuts, because I discovered long ago that cooking a meal is so much easier if you've cleaned up the kitchen before you start. I can't get over how many people try and cook something without first clearing away any mess in the sink and on the bench tops. Failing to do so is just a recipe for frustration, chaos and disaster. He still hasn't worked out the connection between him making a mess at midnight and me kicking him out of bed 6 hours later to clean it up. He thinks it's very unfair.

So before I do anything these days, I do a quick clean up first.

- empty the worm bin into the worm farm. No point in trying to stuff more food scraps into an already full worm bin. Start with an empty bin, not a full one.
- empty the kitchen bin into the big outside bin. Nothing worse than trying to cram a few empty foam meat trays into an overflowing kitchen bin - and then watching the compacted rubbish slowly expand and the meat trays popping out to land on the floor. Start with an empty rubbish bin
- wash, dry and put away anything left around the kitchen. When I finish prep, I don't want to be looking at a stack of dirty dishes and wondering where I'm going to put my dirty prep stuff. Start with clean bench tops and an empty sink

The cake is now in the oven. As soon as it went in, I cleaned everything up. So now the next person to go into the kitchen will be able to make a meal using a clean slate.

He's a teenager, so of course it will take him 20 years to learn these things for himself.

Knackered

When I went to bed last night, I was thinking hard about riding this morning.

The body told me otherwise this morning. I couldn't even lift my legs up to get my feet into a pair of shorts. I had to sit on the edge of the bed to get dressed.

Me thinks I pushed it a little too hard a few times this week.

What apps do the fast guys use?

I finally relented last week and installed an app on my phone which tracks me when I go for a ride. The only reason I did it was to get some data on how much climbing I am doing (it's cheaper than buying a GPS) - but after a week of data collecting, I found that it can't tell that the Anzac Bridge goes up and over a body of water. Instead, it thinks I ride on water.

Ah well.

The day after I started using it, emails started appearing from the software maker telling me how good I went the day before. Nifty. It's a daily encouragement to exercise more - the same as having a personal trainer nag you each day to get out and do some sit ups (now there's a thought).

The email also tells you how you did in comparison to everyone else that has recorded their times along particular sections of the route you took. I was stunned when it told me I was in the top 1% on a number of sections, including the hilly bits. When you're as old and big as me, you don't climb anywhere near as well as the skinny young blokes. However, there was the email telling me otherwise.

What gives?

I can think of a few reasons.

First, people aren't riding flat out on my route - it's not a race (even though when you pass a lot of blokes, they turn it into a race). I ride hard - but not "race" hard, which is where you get to the end and fall sideways off your bike because you don't have the energy left to unclip your legs. I don't feel like arriving at the car park at work and then collapsing on the concrete in a gibbering mess. I'm giving it up to 90% rather than 100%, and I reckon a lot of cyclists are content to commute at no more than 70-80% of their potential - it means less sweat to wash off when you get to work.

Second, the really fit and serious guys probably don't bother recording their commutes as they aren't "proper" training rides.

Third, who can be bothered recording their commute every day? Are people that anal about it that they record even the boring and mundane rides?

Fourth, I don't think the pros are using this particular app. Strava seems to be the favourite app for the really serious cyclist.

In other words, it's telling me that I'm a really fast hubbard. Which is like saying you own the best looking Ford.

Mise en place

Mise en place - frog for "everything in its place" - a particularly important concept when working in the kitchen.

It's always used in terms of prepping to cook. However, it struck me the other day that whilst lots of emphasis is put on getting ready to cook, no effort appears to be put into minimising the amount of washing up that any given meal produces.

The catalyst was getting up at 0600 and finding that Junior had cooked himself a midnight snack of bacon and mee goreng. The evidence was all over the kitchen - splattered fat on the cook tops, dirty dishes, pots and pans in the sink and a slab of uncooked bacon left sitting on the bench top. He'd managed to feed himself, but the effort of putting away the unused food and cleaning up was clearly beyond him. Poor petal. I was so caring and considerate of his weakened physical state that I waited until 0700 before booting him out of bed and putting him to work at the sink.

I'm not a big fan of washing up, so I do my best to generate the minimum amount when producing anything to eat. When I cook something, after I've done it the first time, I think about how I can do it then next time with less washing up. Can I order the way I prepare and cook the dish to ensure there isn't a sink full of muck at the end?

This stuff is never covered in any cookery books that I've ever read. It's like the people writing recipes have never done any time and motion studies into how to make them more effectively. I need to minimise the amount of dirty stuff I produce because we've got a small kitchen - we simply don't have space to pile up masses of used pots. It's a bit like cooking in a submarine galley.

Here's a simple example. I made semi-fredo not long ago. The recipe tells you to separate eggs, whip the yolks with sugar over a double boiler then whip the cream, then whip the whites and then fold the whole lot in together. It such a simple thing, but if you whip the whites first, you don't have to wash the beaters before moving onto the next items. The whites won't whip as well if the beaters and contaminated with egg yolk or cream, so if you do them last, you have to wash them. If you do the whites first, it doesn't matter if a bit of egg white ends up in the cream etc etc. That simple change in steps saves a bit of time and means you don't have to stick your hands in the sink during preparation.

I do this with all my recipes, trying to save a dirty bowl or two for each dish in a meal. If you're putting something together that involves multiple dishes, it can save a lot of washing up. I think some people say they dislike cooking not because they dislike the cooking part, but because they dislike the cleaning up afterwards part. To me, it makes a lot of sense for recipe book writers to reconstruct their recipes in a way that creates less muck and havoc.

Cold

It's summer down here. And it's cold. How cold?

I downloaded the Bureau of Meteorology stats for daily max and min temps for Sydney.

Today is the 4th coldest 2nd of Feb on record - since 1859. Here's the other stats:

1899 - 13.7 degrees
1919 - 13.9 degrees
1933 - 13.9 degrees
2013 - 14.1 degrees

These stats were taken from the Observatory Hill station, which these days is surrounded by concreted and tarmac roads - which is only of interest if you think the urban heat island effect has any impact on recorded temperatures.

The max temp for today was 21.3 degrees - the 14th lowest on record since 1859. The lowest maximum for Feb 2 was 17.5 degrees in 1909.

It was the 4th wettest Feb 2nd also with 48.6mm so far - and the day still has 4 hours to run.

1868 - 83.8mm
1934 - 54.9mm
1980 - 54.8mm
2013 - 48.6mm

Interestingly, the BOM says we got 0mm of rainfall yesterday, even though I almost drowned on the way home it was raining so hard.

Gold

Thanks Minicapt, this is gold.

http://assets.amuniversal.com/d2c73fc02b5f01300649001dd8b71c47

Clearly, a horrific injury

WTF?

Getting some attention ... a cyclist is treated by ambulance officers after breaking a pedal during the Tour Down Under in South Australia. Photo: Kathryn Watt/www.wattshotz.com

Treated for breaking a pedal?

Knob of the day

The idiot driver of this Audi gets my "knob of the day" award. I was going to present it to them personally (ie, bang on their window and ask them in which cereal packet they found their driver's license), but when I pulled up behind them, I noticed a dangly thing hanging from the rear view mirror.

We all know what dangly rear view mirror things mean.

They mean a clueless, incompetent moron is at the wheel. Someone so far down the evolutionary scale, it's no point even trying to engage with them on the short comings in their driving skill set.

So I just took a photo of their car and posted it here.

Their crime?

They weren't parked across a bike lane, or something silly like that. The driver went straight through a Stop sign and nearly bowled me over. A bit of emergency braking was required to stay off their bonnet. It's not like they stopped, looked through me and then took off. They just didn't stop at all. It was peak hour, so I guess they were in a rush and were desperate to take any gap in the traffic they could get. Just one problem - I was in that gap.

We really need some open carry laws in Sydney. I would have improved those four rings in the Audi symbol by putting a 9mm round through each of them. Or perhaps made a smiley face. I have done the smiley face at the range - with two nostrils instead of one.

I think I busted a tit

Because it's a bit hot at the moment, I'm carrying two bidons - just in case I get really thirsty on the way home and need a bit more to drink. Which is what happened tonight.

The thing is, I rarely have to extract the rear bidon, so my muscles aren't used to the action. When I pulled it out at the lights tonight, I ripped the pectoralis minor (I think) something wicked. I almost fell off my bike with the pain of it. It was agony from nipple to armpit.

The pain subsided after about 5 minutes - for a while there, I was riding with my arm across my chest like I had a broken collar bone. I couldn't bear to grab the handlebars or pull on the brakes.

The stuff that happens to you as you get older.....

What's wrong with chocolate milk?

What's wrong with it?

Absolutely nothing. I often make myself an icy Milo when I get home from a long ride. If the kids have not consumed every banana in the house, one goes into the blender with lots of Milo, milk, ice and a dash of honey.

In fact, it might be described as the perfect sports drink.

Common sports drinks such as Gatorade supply those carbs, as well as fluids and electrolytes lost through sweat. However, more recent research suggests that adding protein to the mix may further hasten recovery. Hence the new wave of drinks such as Endurox R4 that include protein as well as higher doses of carbs.
In the study, nine male cyclists rode until their muscles were depleted of energy, then rested four hours and biked again until exhaustion. During the rest period, the cyclists drank low-fat chocolate milk, Gatorade, or Endurox R4. During a second round of exercise, the cyclists who drank the chocolate milk were able to bike about 50% longer than those who drank Endurox, and about as long as those who drank the Gatorade.

Go read the rest at the above link.

This video is well worth watching - just to see how a modern athlete gets enough energy into them to keep moving.

The.worst.iced.coffee.ever

I don't see the point of drinking hot coffee in the middle of or after a ride. You're already bloody hot - why make yourself any hotter? So for me, iced coffee is the drink of choice. But it must have the following properties:

1. Iced
2. Coffee

The third ingredient of course is milk - otherwise it would just be cold straight coffee, which would be awful. Some people like to fill them with sugar - I detest that. I just want:

ice
coffee
milk

You'd think that would be nigh well impossible to fuck up. Well, you'd be wrong, as cafes manage to balls it up no end on a regular basis.

For starters - ice. In order to be icy, you need a requisite amount of ice. Not too much ice - otherwise there's no room for the milk and coffee. But there still needs to be plenty of ice - otherwise it just won't get cold enough.

Second - coffee. Coffee means coffee. As freshly made shot of coffee from a coffee machine. Coffee syrup, or a shot of coffee that was "freshly made" 4 hours ago and tipped into a jug is not fresh. Syrup is not coffee.

Third - milk. Use full cream milk. Not soy. Not low fat. I want milk. Proper milk. You think I give a shit about a few grams of fat after riding 50 kilometres? No. Bring it on, baby.

So let me explain how to make the worst iced coffee ever.

First, pour a small dash of syrup into a tall glass. Use just enough for the milk to discolour slightly, but not enough to impart even the smallest hint of coffee flavour.

Next, fill it almost to the brim with milk.

Lastly, add two ice cubes - small ones at that - because there is now no room to pour a good sized handful of ice into the glass.

Then serve.

I was at a work function when this was dished up to me, so I didn't want to make a fuss. I walked around for 10 minutes with this abomination in my hand, anxiously looking for a pot plant to pour the contents into and a table to dump the glass on. In the end, I found a drain and got rid of it that way - I wasn't in the mood for killing an innocent plant.

But I was in the mood for killing whoever trained the person that made that coffee.

Why the Greens are the real mysoginists

Who hates women the most? Clearly, it's the Greens.

Which is weird, because apparently a lot of Green voters are young women. Yes, I'm confused too. But obviously not as confused as those young women.

I had this revelation when I was hanging out the washing yesterday. I'd told Junior to hang out an earlier load, and he complained and said we should just stick it in the drier rather than using the heat of the sun to dry the clothes. I quickly filled him in on how much electricity the dryer uses, and how expensive electricity is these days. I told him that if it rained later in the day, and his clothes hadn't dried, he could carry them down to the local laundromat and pay them 6 bucks to dry them. That horrified him enough to get his arse out of his room and to hang the stuff up.

It was at that point that I started thinking about how electricity has eliminated a lot of the drudge from our daily lives - or more particularly, the lives of women. We use electricity (or gas) to remove much of the hard work from washing clothes, from cooking meals, from heating water and cleaning the house. Even though men are doing a bit of housework these days, survey after survey still finds that women do the bulk of the labour around the house.

If you think that modern women have it bad, try washing your clothes and sheets by hand for a week, or walking down to the local park to collect fallen sticks to make a fire to cook all your meals over (no cheating and ordering take away), and using the same fire to heat water for washing and cooking. Electricity has been the greatest liberator of women. Not the pill. Cheap power.

The same goes for cheap petrol. Imagine the drudgery of walking to the shops every day to shop, and then lugging it home. Or walking young kids to school, or wheeling them to day care. Sure, I do this from time to time, but walking to the shops - or walking the kids to and from school - is a choice, not a necessity. Imagine being forced to do it every day.

You can walk to the shops each day quite easily - if you are a single person and live in a small inner city apartment close to shops. I did that myself for years. However, it becomes a lot harder when you have kids - particularly more than one kid. Once the kids start coming, you need all the labour saving devices you can get your hands on. A lot of women don't have the luxury of choosing to walk the kids to school (or sticking them in a cargo bike and riding) - they have jobs to get to, so they need to drive to school, drop the kids off and then drive to work. Choice is a luxury that some people have - most don't. I have the luxury of being able to choose to ride to work - I'd hate it though if someone forced me to do it.

This of course is what the Greens want to do - they want to force you to act a certain way by making it unaffordable for you to do it the way you want to. Yes, the peace loving Greens are using force. Try stealing electricity or gas and see what happens. Force will be used against you, either to remove some of your income or wealth (via fines) or to remove your liberty (via prison).

Why would anyone want to make electricity more expensive if it has the potential to make the lives of women harder and more miserable? The only reason I can think of is that the people doing it hate women.

Which is why the Green vote is concentrated amongst young women with no kids. As soon as they have a family, the Green vote tends to decline. And the other Green constituency is the rich - those that don't have to worry about falling into fuel poverty.

The Greens - hating women more intensely than any other political group.

Riding in the heat

There was much hoo-ha about the heat here yesterday. It went over 45 degrees in the CBD for a while, and it was hotter out in western Sydney. I went outside the office when it was 45 - it was pretty hot, but not unpleasant as it was a totally dry heat. Really different from the usual Sydney humidity, which leaves you in a very sticky mess.

I was told the ambos treated a lot of people for heat stress - I even saw a motorcycle cop being treated for it during the morning.

So why did I ride in that heat?

Well, by the time I finished work, the cool change had started coming in. The first clouds were overhead, and the temp had dropped to 37. I had a magnesium salt replacement drink before getting changed, and made sure I drank plenty of water in the hour or two before leaving. I stupidly left my bidons on the bike in the morning instead of putting them in the fridge - when I went to have a drink, I found the water in them was  about 45 degrees.

And when I hit the road, I took it easy. At least I tried to take it easy - the body is programmed to go at certain speeds or a certain level of effort, so whenever I stopped thinking about going slow, the programming took over and off I went. I then had to consciously slow myself down. This happened a lot.

There were still plenty of bikes on the road, but when I got to the Bay, there was not a single pedestrian. It was a ghost town.

It was around that time that the rain started coming down. I thought we'd get a brief shower, which would do  nothing for the heat but everything for the humidity, but instead it started bucketing down. The rain drops were so fat and cold, they hurt. I was waiting for it to start hailing, and was keeping an eye out for likely spots to stop and shelter. At one point, it rained so hard, I almost had to pull over as I could barely see where I was going.

The worst thing about the rain is that I totally forgot about the impact of water on bike braking performance. I almost over ran a stop sign by braking for it as if it was dry. Duh. I was so fixated on it being hot, the brain just ignored the fact that it was also wet.

Here's an odd thing - because I took it easy, I reckon I sweated less than I do on a ride on a cold day. Either the sweat was drying up immediately, or I just wasn't sweating much. I'm used to having sweat dripping off my nose and running down my arms, but instead, I was pretty dry. I certainly wasn't cooking when I got home. The nice thing about being on a bike is the air flow cools you down quite effectively.

I got home to find a barrage of complaints from friends and family about how awful it was catching the bus or train home, or how unpleasant it was to drive with cars breaking down here and there. I don't know what all the fuss was about - I had a comfortable and easy trip home.

More on the wrong trousers

I have one concern with buying trousers that will fit around my thighs, and then having the waist brought in.

Hammer pants.

The wrong trousers

The holidays seemed as good a time as any to shop for some new work clothes. I desperately need some more trousers - I have a tendency to wear holes in the crotch rather quickly, and there are few things worse than wandering around town with your arse hanging out of your pants.

There's just one problem with trouser shopping - I can't get my bloody legs into most of the trousers cut for my waist size! My thighs have grown fairly substantially since I started cycling, and it appears they are now quite abnormally large. I tried half a dozen pairs of trousers on - I couldn't get half of them over my thighs, and the rest gripped them so tightly, I know I'd burst a seam the first time I bent over, squatted or so much as sat down.

This shrinking waist/growing thighs is a problem. It would be so much easier if I was built like a lot of other blokes my age - stick thin legs and pot bellies.

This commuting business is tough

I'll get back to the beer one day. I promise.

I think I finished the holidays a bit thinner than when I started. I guess that's a surprise to most of you, who are probably rolling around wondering if you can finish that last wafer thin chocolate mint.

The secret? Lots of miles on the bike. These have been the first holidays in years - in fact since I got the bike - when we've been at home over the holidays and I've been free to ride almost every day for up to 6 hours.

Although I've done a lot more kilometres per week than I usually get commuting, I've been nowhere near as tired and sore at the end of the week. It's easier to do say 4 x 80km rides than 10 x 15km rides. The long, sustained rides have been surprisingly comfortable. Because I've mostly been going west, I've had lots of sections where I haven't stopped for ages - the ride into town is punctuated by lots of traffic lights, making it a very stop-start affair.

I'm not going to give up the commuting though and switch to doing a few long rides per week - that would mean catching the bus to work, and that would be a fate worse than death. I'll just have to put up with passing out on the couch at 7pm on a weeknight.

Which is probably one reason why I haven't watched any TV in quite a while. I haven't seen any live TV so far this year, and can't remember the last thing I did see on TV - it was probably at least 3 months ago.

The wisdom of kids

From one of the kids tonight:

"Big people do big farts".

Got no idea how he made that observation.

Bikes

I haven't put up a photo of bikes in ages - can't think what has come over me. I've seen more and more of these lately - I think they fold up and fit in the back of the car pretty easily. My initial thought was that these would be slow and uncomfortable, but I have since done a 40km ride with a bloke who was on one, and he had no trouble keeping up and made no complaints about comfort or handling.

I'm still about as likely to buy one as a pink handbag though.

Pub crawl?

Pub crawl? How on earth can 4 drinks in 4 venues be classified as a "pub crawl"? The promoter of this event should be prosecuted for false and misleading advertising.

When I was at uni, there'd be several pub crawl contests each year. I wouldn't be surprised if they've been banned since then - binge drinking and all that. If memory serves me correctly, we'd form teams of four:

• A drinker
• A navigator
• Two scouts (or buyers)

The job of the drinker was pretty obvious - they were the competitor. They had to be able to run between about 20 pubs, scull a beer in each and keep it all down until the end (vomiting brought instant disqualification).

The job of the navigator was to get the drinker from pub to pub. Obviously after 10 beers or so, the drinker would be heading off in all directions, so a reasonably sober navigator was required to finish the race in the correct pub.

The buyers would leap frog from pub to pub, ensuring that when the drinker and navigator arrived, there was a beer or two waiting on the counter for them - no time to waste buying drinks!

The last pub would invariably be one that served dark and ghastly brews - like the Sail and Anchor in Fremantle. After drinking middies at all the previous pubs, the finale would be the drinking of a pint of stout or dark ale - something guaranteed to turn the stomachs of unseasoned teenage bingers. After downing that, the drinker wouldn't be allowed to vomit for half an hour. 

By that time, things would usually be pretty blurry for me, so I have no idea who won these races. You could chart the course between the latter pubs by the puddles or streams of vomit along the footpaths or gutters. Some drinkers would vomit as they ran, hoping that they wouldn't be spotted and disqualified - hence the long streams along the footpaths. After each race, the local papers would be full of indignant letters from local residents complaining about the intolerable behaviour of us young louts.

I have a photo in my collection of a mate with beer vomit pouring from his nose. He protested that because it came out of his nose, it wasn't really chundering, so he should be allowed to continue.

That was pub crawling! Not four measly pubs. The young these days - they really have no idea.

Why we drink beer from bottles at home

I have been thinking about writing this for a while. It's going to be in quite a few parts, so be patient. It's all about how the bicycle can help us to understand the modern economy and how we live. Freakonomics has been done - and I'm not going to call this Bikonomics.

This brain fart started when I recalled that a much skinnier and fitter mate of mine used to ride to Canberra every year with a group. That's a pretty good ride to do in one day - around 290km. I shudder just thinking about it. I reckon I could make it to Goulburn in one day, and no further. In fact, plenty of riders were collected by the sag wagon around the Goulburn mark, which is 200km. They just ran out of puff, and wouldn't make it to Canberra in time for the big dinner and piss up which marked the finish. I simply couldn't ride fast enough over a long distance to do Canberra in one day. Goulburn - maybe. Canberra - no way.

Apart from drinking lots of beer at the dinner in Canberra, what has this got to do with why we drink beer from bottles?

Stay with me.

Consider the logistics and technology that goes into that group of 30 or so doing that ride. For starters, they're riding on a good quality tarmac surface all the way. The worst grades have been leveled off with cuttings and bridges (although there are still plenty of nasty climbs to do on a bike). The road has at least two lanes in each direction the whole way, allowing plenty of traffic to move quickly. Imagine doing this ride 150 years ago when it would be nothing more than a dirt track through the bush.  It would be really tough and slow, even on a modern mountain bike. It would probably take a few days.

And what would you eat over those few days? How would you get your food?

The modern bunch riders carry all sorts of energy gels, energy drinks and snack bars. On a long ride, I go by the rule of thumb that you need to eat something every 20km. Most of these fancy food things didn't exist 20 years ago. On a long, supported ride, you don't have to weigh yourself down with stacks of them either - the support bus that follows the riders can carry hundreds of kilos of them (and icy cold cans of Coke), so you just need to carry enough to get you from one pre-arranged stop to another where you can top up.

Now take away all those fancy space age foods and think about how you are going to get enough food and water in you over that 290km journey. According to this calculator, I'd burn about 11,000 calories riding to Canberra at about 22km/h. Crank that up to 26, and I'd need to take in closer to 13,000. Yes, you could stop at McDonalds and feast, but you'd still need to scoff a lot of Happy Meals in order to ride without collapsing - or 8 Combo Meals. At 400 calories per litre, the alternative would be to drink 32.5 litres of Coke.

Ugh.

In the old days, there would have been roadhouses all the way along the track to cater for travelers so you wouldn't have to pack too much food or water. But the food they served would have been very limited - when your means of transport is a horse of bullock cart, you're pretty much stuck with what's grown in the region or what you canned or preserved from a previous season. You wouldn't be getting out of season tomatoes and lettuce on your steak burger.

Baked Beans keep pretty well and were a staple food for a long time. At 70 calories per 100 grams, you'd need to eat 18 kilos of baked beans just to get to Canberra.

I wouldn't try that on a group ride - not when you're riding close to the bum in front in order to minimise wind resistance.

So we've looked at food and roads. In short, you're probably thinking that cycling is a pretty lousy option. Hot, painful, tiring and possibly gassy as hell. Now imagine cars had not been invented yet, and you had to go everywhere by foot, horse, bullock cart or perhaps a train (if you had a train line nearby). Transporting goods (and yourself) is no longer fast, convenient, cheap and easy. It's slow, uncomfortable, inconvenient and expensive.

Which is why as soon as people get rich enough, they throw away their bikes and buy a car. Until they get really rich, when they go out and buy many expensive bikes and spend their free time riding off their waistlines.

Give me a few more days, and I'll get around to the bit about beer. We've got a few miles to ride yet.

Beating the heat

It hasn't been as hot in our part of town as other parts of Australia. Mother in law reported today that it was 46 down her way. Thank goodness she has a top notch air con system.

It only made it to just over 30 over our way, although it was reading 34 on the bike thermometer when I went out this morning. It told me it was 39 a few days ago, and I didn't believe it - although I did get home with a slight headache from the heat. One downside of helmets in hot weather is your brain cooks just a little bit more.

Here's the funny thing - I don't feel any hotter after a long ride as after a short ride (say 15km vs 70km). And I don't really feel the heat for the rest of the day either. I've been mowing the lawns etc in the noon day sun whilst the neighbours have all been hiding inside with the air con going full blast.

Maybe cycling is conditioning me to being hot?

The amazing thing about home grown tomatoes

I've had better luck than normal with the tomato crop - most of the plants that I put in survived my indifferent attention and have yielded a reasonable amount of fruit. One of the varieties that did well was the roma or plum tomatoes. They're crap to eat raw, but they make a good sauce.

I've made tomato sauce before, but not an old fashioned passata. I did a bit of googling and found half a dozen recipes that described making it in six entirely different fashions.

No matter how I cooked it, I wanted the skins off. I didn't want little chunks of skin messing up my sauce.

In years gone by - before I started growing my own - I'd venture out to the Flemington Markets and buy cheap tomatoes by the box. One memory of that time is how hard the little buggers were to skin. I was dreading having to skin a few kilos of the home grown variety. I almost had to use a potato peeler on the ones I bought at the markets.

However, when it came to skinning time, the skins just fell off after doing the X thing across the base with a knife, plunging into boiling water and then into cold water. I couldn't believe how easy it was.

I'm wondering if that's because they were actually ripened on the vine in the sun rather than in a dark shed full of ethylene?

The sauce turned out pretty well too. I can see the attraction at making up a huge vat of it in one go though, and having the entire extended family over to do the skinning, de-seeding and pot stirring.

Etiquette

The thing about lycra knicks is that they slowly fade away. Or wear away. With every ride and wash, they get a little bit thinner.

Until you can see through large patches of them.

Here's a question for you - you're riding along and you catch up with another cyclist, and as you close in, you discover that you can see their entire bum.

Do you:

1. Tell them about it
2. Look away
3. Follow them for the next 20 km

Gammy legs

Took the legs out for another spin this morning - I can now see why the pros don't stop riding in the days before a race. After just a week off the bike, my legs are seriously rooted. It's like they've forgotten how to spin up to speed. I feel like the captain of a coal fired ship yelling into the speaking tube, "Engineering - turns for 30 knots please" and finding that the stokers have all gone on strike.

Aborting the food baby

Like me, you've probably finished Christmas with a fridge full of left overs (hello turkey sandwiches!) and a "food baby" (a tummy resembling a six month pregnancy).

I knew this would happen, so I have been preparing for a solid round of cycling over the holidays.

Except that sleeping in has been much more enticing - especially as the weather in Sydney has been absolutely crap.

But come this morning, there was no choice - the food baby was starting to resemble twins. So off I went.

Normally I go east. I don't want to go anywhere near work for the next few weeks, so the first place I went was west - I thought a lap or two of the Homebush Olympic precinct would do the trick.

Just one problem - every man and his dog was passing me. That doesn't usually happen. Sure, a few speedsters on TT bikes will blat past me, but I can generally hold my own against most cyclists, being passed by only the skinniest and speediest blighters.

Not today. Every person on two wheels went past me. I was giving orders to the legs to give me turns for 30-35km/h, but they simply refused. I was lucky to be doing 26 - going downhill. After a week off the bike, the legs had completely gone to sleep.

On my second lap, I was passed by a young lady with a nicely developed set of glutes. I thought, "Blow this - I'm not getting overtaken by a woman", and suddenly the turbo kicked in and off I went.

There's life in the old dog yet - you just have to know which buttons to press. And the oldest and most basic buttons work best.

Ford gets makeover

Aaah, that's better.

Coming soon

I'm collecting my thoughts on an interesting topic - how the bicycle can help us understand the economic history behind why we now drink a lot of beer from bottles.

How does that sound?

Fatigue

I'm not suffering from blogging fatigue - it's pure physical fatigue that has flattened me lately. I've lifted my mileage on the bike by 75% over the last few weeks, and the sudden shock of the extra work has laid me out each night. I know, I know - you're not supposed to lift your work rate that suddenly, but it's hard to add say another 10% to my ride the way I do it. The best way for me to add more miles is to ride on the weekend, and if I'm going out on Saturday morning, I might as well ride 50km as ride 15. The immediate impact was that I took the belt in a notch this week.

I'll be used to it soon. Or I'll get on the turps over Xmas and that will limit my riding. One way or another, I shall be back more regularly.

Crash

It's never pleasant seeing (or hearing) a cyclist hitting the deck with a thump. But that's what happened this morning.

The day started much earlier than usual - I was awake at 0500, staring at the ceiling and listening to the wind howling outside. I was in no mood to get up and go anywhere - I spent half an hour trying to get back to sleep, and then gave in and got up. There are times when you just have to face the day.

I hadn't heard any rain falling, so I was a bit surprised when I opened the door to find a wet world awaiting me. The rain had stopped, but the roads had clearly had a good soaking overnight.

Things were miserable enough to convince about 95% of the usual dog walkers and fitness junkies to stay in bed. Rather than the usual shoal of cyclists heading into town, I saw only 3 other blokes on bikes.

As I was slogging up one of the hills that litter my route, a bloke when whizzing down the hill in the opposite direction. I thought he was moving pretty quickly even for ideal conditions - that hill has a couple of sharp corners, and the road surface on each corner has been minced by trucks grinding their way round the bends.

Sure enough, a few seconds after seeing him tear by, I heard a crunch behind me. I looked back, and there he was, picking himself up in the section where the tarmac goes from smoothe to lunar. He would have made it if it was dry, but he had no hope in the wet.

There endeth the lesson.

Wonder if they booked him?

On the ride into work yesterday, I came up behind a bloke who was wobbling all over the bike lane. As I overtook, it was pretty clear what was causing the wobbles - he had one hand on the handlebars and another was holding a cup of coffee. Some people can ride pretty cleanly one-handed (or even no-handed), but this bloke couldn't.

He also wasn't wearing a helmet. Not that I care too much about that, but if you're going to increase the risk of crashing because you're carrying a cup of coffee, it would make sense to take more measures to protect your noggin.

I went belting past him, and then zipped up a hill. As I crested the hill and went around a bend, a police car went past in the opposite direction.

I couldn't be bothered doing a U turn to see if they booked him. I reckon they did - I've seen plenty of cops out lately booking motorists with gusto.

Another bloody car in a bike lane

What can I say? Someone really screwed up on the way to work this morning. On the right we have the City West Link, which is one of the main ways of getting into the city from the west. Flat road. No bend. Dry surface. Light traffic. Somehow, the car sitting partly on the grass has managed to slide across the nature strip, through all the bark chips, over the shrubbery and spin through 180 degrees without ending up in the water. There were two police in attendance, and they had the driver sitting in a fold up picnic chair next to the car.

How did they do it? No idea. But it was a pretty spectacular looking mess at 0630hrs. The car was pretty beaten up for such a short trip through some scrubby bushes. Might have been a bit different if they'd gone head first into the power pole, or one of the thicker trees along the water's edge.

It wouldn't have mattered if they'd gone over the edge into the water - it's only about six inches deep.

Amazingly, it was not a Ford.

Speeding

I'm told there was a gaggle of people using a radar gun on cyclists on the western approaches of the Anzac bridge yesterday. The were standing at the bottom of a long slope, where a speedy cyclist can hit 50km/h if they so desire.

My guess is that they are irked by cyclists doing 50 whizzing past pedestrians doing 5km/h.

How long until we see a press release from Harold Scruby and his fax machine bemoaning "reckless" and "dangerous" cyclists putting pedestrians at risk?

Here's a thought, Harold. Cyclists go down the path pretty quickly because some idiot engineer at the RTA decided to design the path as a "big dipper" instead of creating a long, flat slope. Go blame Bob Carr - he was in charge back then. Ask him to fix it. He's got more chance of fixing this particular footpath than say the problems in the Middle East.

It actually gets slippery when it rains

Amazing as it sounds, some people don't seem to get this concept. Actually, I didn't really get it when I first started riding. I have some nicely faded scars on the fingers of one hand as testament to my belief that tyre grip didn't diminish when confronted by liquid water.

Happily, I am not the only one to bask in the warm inner glow of stupidity. I was taking it easy as I went around The Bay, being careful not to pile into sharp corners at a high rate of knots. A cyclist behind me got a bit impatient with this cautious approach, and he went around me with the sort of huff that I usually make when I overtake slow coaches.

Less than 100 metres later, we approached a bend that I know to be a menace - it is surrounded by pine trees, and their needles get exceptionally slippery when they get wet and squished by traffic. He leaned into the corner slightly, hit the needles, and I watched with amusement as his back tyre started going sideways.

He managed to stay upright, but he ran off into the grass looking mighty upset. He was very lucky to slide off at a point where the path was not lined with a high concrete kerb. I cruised on past, feeling very nonplussed.

It was actually a beautiful morning for riding - the rain was falling as a very fine mist, which was enough to keep the temperature down nicely without falling hard enough to be running down one's face. It was certainly enough to keep all the wimps indoors - I rode for 15 minutes before I saw another cyclist or a jogger. I pretty much had the paths to myself. I felt like the last human on earth there for a short period.

Tasty

With the eventual return of some hot weather, I've dusted off a favourite summer dish - jewelled couscous.

Until I googled it, I had no idea there were so many variations on how to make it. I've been using a single recipe from one cook book, thinking I was pretty fancy. Thanks intertubes - for making me feel like a right goose.

Here's some variations:

Something similar to what I make

A really short version of the recipe

Five different ways to mess around with couscous

Beetroot - why didn't I think of that?

Olives and tomatoes and other stuff

Here's how I do it. Since no one else in the house likes it that much, I generally make up enough for me for two meals on its own. However, it goes really well with lamb chops, fish and chicken cooked just about anyway you like.

1 cup couscous
1.25 cups of water or stock - or water with a stock cube in it
knob of butter

Get yourself a  nice big bowl - you've got some mixing to do, and you don't want couscous flying all over the kitchen.

Put 1 cup of couscous in the bowl.

Boil the water or stock. Add the butter (so that it melts).

Pour stock/water and butter over couscous, mix it a bit with a fork and go away for 10 minutes. Or go away for 5, fluff it with a fork again, and then go away for another 5 minutes.

When I put the water on, I go and sit somewhere and peel pistachio nuts. Once it's boiled and poured over the couscous, I peel some more. The amount of pistachios that I end up with after 10 minutes of peeling is how many I throw into the bowl when the couscous is cooked.

You can add any nuts and fruit that you like. I usually fill a dessert bowl with raisins, toasted almonds, pistachios, toasted pine nuts and dried cranberries. Now that I have read the recipes above, my next version will probably include dried apricots and chopped dates - and a pomegranate if I can find one.

Whilst the couscous is taking 10 minutes to absorb the stock or water, you can also use that time to toast the pinenuts and/or almonds. If you've got three hands, you can peel pistachios and toast the nuts at the same time.

Zest an orange, and then juice the orange. Don't do this the wrong way round.

Once the couscous has had 10 minutes and you've fluffed it with a fork, throw everything into the bowl and mix it around. Splash some olive oil over the top and mix that in too.

I usually don't add any herbs or spices, except for coriander (if I have some in the garden). However, I like to chop up some mint, add it to natural yoghurt and have that on the side.

My comments:

Chicken stock is better than water - with water, it's a bit bland.

Just remember the ratio of 1 couscous to 1.25 water/stock. Make as much or as little as you like.

You can add as little or as much fruit and nuts as you like. I reckon I added about 1.5 cups in total last night (I wasn't bothering to measure).

The orange juice along with the orange zest adds a nice sweet zing to it. If you prefer lemon, go for it.

Couscous on its own can be a bit dry after a while, so I like to eat this with something juicy. Last night, I chopped up a tomato, doused it with salt, balsamic and oil and had that on the side. I didn't throw in any basil, as basil tends to contrast badly with this dish (in my opinion).

I don't like eating this dish hot. Warm is good. Cool is fine. I just ate the leftovers straight out of the fridge - they were good too, but a bit cloying when cold.

Sucks to be this bloke

See the rather forlorn bloke on the right leaning against the fence? He's the rider of the motorbike parked on the footpath.

The motorbike that's parked in front of an unmarked police car (you can see the flashing blue light in the windscreen).

He looked most unhappy. Sucks to be him.

Lost in thought

I forgot where I worked this morning. I found that I had missed my usual turn off once I reached the city and was heading for an old office. My brain is going soft.

When I was at uni, a friend who will remain nameless decided to drive home after a party and he ended up forgetting where his current house was and started driving towards his old one. He eventually figured out the mistake, but was too drunk to turn around and make it to his new place. So he pulled over on the wide grass island between two major roads and had a nap. I think he woke up about 8.30am. When he stuck his head up, he found he was surrounded by several lanes of amused commuters trapped in traffic on either side.

At least he had the excuse of consuming too much of my double strength home brew. I'm clearly turning into a doddery old fart.

A load of cobblers

I cooked a peach cobbler for dessert tonight. Incredibly, it turned out almost like this photo - a first for me. I've made the Jamie Oliver version of a fruit cobbler on many occasions - his version uses buttermilk in the topping. I reckon this version is much better - I prefer a drier, crunchier topping.

Comments:

1. Delicious and crunchy
2. Easy to make
3. Don't leave out the rum and nutmeg - they go really well with peaches
4. I gave it 50 minutes in our pathetic oven
5. Great way to use up early season peaches that are as hard as rocks

What sort of people can't keep left?

If there is one thing I now look out for all the time, it's pairs of female walkers who present a continual threat to safe navigation.

Picture this. You've got a path that's wide enough for 4 people to walk abreast. It's quite safe for two people to walk abreast and a cyclist to overtake them at speed in either direction - provided the pedestrians stick to one side of the path or the other.

That rarely happens.

For some reason, many pairs of female pedestrians walk right down the middle of the path, denying everyone the ability to get past them in either direction.

The really amusing part is when you ride up behind them and ring your bell. A sane person would expect them to both move to the left and safely get completely out of your way. An experienced rider like me knows however that in many cases, the one on the left will veer right and the one on the right will veer left and they'll crash into each other in the middle of the path and then rebound in confusion - which means they'll be blocking the entire path again.

Which means you never tear up behind two women. You always brake and get ready to really stand on the brakes. It's ok with blokes - almost all of them will break left; and if they are walking with a female, they'll usually grab the female by the arm and drag her in the correct direction.

I really don't understand why so many women totally fail to grasp this simple concept.

I guess that makes me a misogynist.

I ride, therefore I blog

Yes, I've been quiet of late. No, I haven't been knocked over by a car (again). It's just that I've been busy with a lot of things, and blogging is something that I only ever get to do after a long list of daily chores is completed.

The muse has also run a bit dry of late - and I blame a lack of riding. Writing a blog entry for me is something that happens in two distinct stages. The first (and longest) part is the thinking. The second (and fastest) bit is the actual typing. I do most of my thinking on the bike (when I'm not dodging idiot drivers). Therefore, if I'm not riding, I'm not thinking. And that means no writing.

Or as they put it in the army - "if you don't eat, you don't shit. And if you don't shit, you die". Substitute riding and thinking and blogging for a few of those words and you'll get what I mean.

Regular riding should recommence shortly. If thinking also manages to kick off again, then so will the blogging.

In the meantime, speaking of eating and shitting - try this recipe for breakfast. Instead of blogging, I'm going to retire to the kitchen to make some in preparation for tomorrow.

As for riding and thinking, have a read of this post on mountain bikes - and why they are the work of the devil.

Palisade Hotel

I had one of those "WTF" moments last week when I took a bit of a detour through The Rocks. I've ridden under the Harbour Bridge a few hundred times - it was time for something new.

My detour took me past the Palisade Hotel - to my shock, it was boarded up. Apparently it closed for renovations in 2009, but by the looks of things, it has never re-opened.

What shocked me is how many years have passed since I was last up that way. I had a few lunches and dinners there in the old days - it had a great restaurant with fabulous harbour views. To see it boarded up rammed  home how many years it's been since BK (before kids) - we used to come into town to see a play every few months, and this was a favourite place for a meal and drink before the show.

Sheesh. Time has moved on. No wonder my knees hurt.

How's your maths?

Test your knowledge - take this excellent test.

A sample question - but my favourite is question 12.

Q7. You have 7 direct reports (staff), 3 of whom are expatriates; and you have 11 direct reports (contractors) 3 of whom are locals; and you have an overall organisation of 42 people, 6 of whom are secondees from a contractor, 1 of whom is a student intern, and they are all drunk.  What is the probability that you are in Russia?

The horror of the Kent St bike path

You might expect that as a cyclist, I'd have nothing but wonderful things to say about the bike paths that have been springing up (or laid down) around the Sydney CBD.

Well, you'd be wrong.

It's been a long time since I rode up and down Kent St (which leads to that Harbour Bridge), so on a whim, I decided to give it a go this week. I wasn't going anywhere in particular - I just added a few miles to my journey to increase my workout.

As an aside, I work with a bloke who has a 20 kilometre commute. He'll sometimes leave home really early and actually ride 40km to work, or leave work a bit early and take a 60km route home. He's nuts by the way.

I used to live north of the harbour, so trundling up and down Kent St (pre-bike lane) and onto the Harbour Bridge was a daily occurrence. The bike lane was built years after I moved to the outer limits of the civilised world (the inner west). Kent St was never a pleasant place to cycle - steep hill, poor road surfaces, merging traffic, hordes of idiot pedestrians crossing in the wrong places whilst yapping on their phones and not watching where they were going and angry drivers suffering in grid lock as they waited to get onto the bridge approaches.

Not much has changed, except that there is now a two-way bike lane down the eastern side. The hill is still there. The idiot pedestrians are still there (although their phones have mysteriously gotten larger, as have the hordes). The poor road surface has been painted over with some extra-super-slippery green paint. The angry drivers and grid lock have gotten worse.

The big plus is that cyclists are no longer funnelled into a bad place to be by merging car lanes - we have our own green lane now. However, the bike lane is crossed by the drive ways into numerous office blocks, and on the day I rode through there, a driver was either parked across the bike lane (waiting to get into the grid locked traffic) or one drove furiously out of the car park from my left without considering that cyclists might be trundling down the hill on the green painted bit of stuff out of the front of their office.

I hated it. I really, seriously hated it. I reckon I would have been safer riding on the road for most of my journey.

Which is why I avoid Kent St entirely and take a much longer route around the western edge of the city. It's flat, it's fast and there's 1/10th the number of traffic lights. Did I mention that I spent more time waiting at red lights on Kent St than riding along the bike path?

With cycling, the direct route is not always the best. I quite often find that the indirect approach is easier, safer - and in this case - probably a lot faster. Going from A to B in a straight line can often be the worst possible option. And in my case, I like taking the longer route because it means more calories burned.

Glorious way to start the day

Enough said.

Monday photos

These photos are dedicated to some dedicated followers of fashion. For starters, the bloke above is riding in a nicely ironed business shirt. However, unless you're also wearing a tweed suit, I don't think this is a good look on a bike.

Next we have a ladies fashion house in Pyrmont holding an outdoor fashion parade. It was a nifty idea, except the best place for the photographers to stand in order to snap the models appeared to be the middle of the bike lane - not the most sensible place to stand when heaps of cyclists are in a hurry to get home at the end of the day. As I went past at the tail end of a gaggle of bikes, two photographers stepped backwards off the footpath (with their eyes glued to the view finder) and were pretty lucky to avoid being run over.

I didn't stop for long enough to check out the chi chi frou frou that was on offer.

Sod's law

I cleaned my bike this week. I really did.

Well, not all of it. I didn't actually bother washing it or anything silly like that - I just degunked the drive train and re-lubed it.

I have two types of lube in the tool kit (stow it, those of you with filthy minds) - a dry lube and a wet lube.

Why different types of lube?

The dry lube is designed for dry conditions - it's a lightweight product that provides excellent lubrication with the downside that it washes off easily in the wet.

The wet lube is much stickier, so you chain doesn't end up as a rusted blob after a few weeks of winter. The downside is that it attracts mud and grit like shit attracts flies. The drive train needs a very thorough scrubbing with degreaser to get rid of it and the caked on gunk after a bit of winter riding.

And although my ride home is on sealed roads, if it hasn't rained for a while (like a long drought), the roads are covered in a goodly amount of dirt, tyre and brake dust and oil. After the first rain, you have a tendency to look a bit like this.

So, what sort of lube did I select after my spring clean? The dry lube.

Meaning it rained for the next two days.

Toughest bridge in the world

Hat tip: Castle Argghhh!

Sunday morning parody

I haven't seen the original ad, but there's already a few funny parodies doing the rounds. Ain't social media amazing?

Did Obama just let them die?

BIGGER THAN WATERGATE: PROOF THAT THE PRESIDENT IS LYING ABOUT BENGHAZI?


You won't read about this in the mainstream media, so you might as well read about it here.

The security officer had a laser on the target that was firing and repeatedly requested back-up support from a Specter gunship, which is commonly used by U.S. Special Operations forces to provide support to Special Operations teams on the ground involved in intense firefights. The fighting at the CIA annex went on for more than four hours — enough time for any planes based in Sigonella Air base, just 480 miles away, to arrive. Fox News has also learned that two separate Tier One Special operations forces were told to wait, among them Delta Force operators. Everyone is reporting this but they are missing a key point.  From the retired Delta operator: Having spent a good bit of time nursing a GLD (ground Laser Designator) in several garden spots around the world, something from the report jumped out at me. One of the former SEALs was actively painting the target.  That means that Specter WAS ON STATION!  Probably an AC130U.  A ground laser designator is not a briefing pointer laser.  You do not "paint" a target until the weapons system/designator is synched; which means that the AC130 was on station. Only two places could have called off the attack at that point; the WH situation command (based on POTUS direction) or AFRICOM commander based on information directly from the target area. If the AC130 never left Sigonella (as Penetta says) that means that the Predator that was filming the whole thing was armed. If that SEAL was actively "painting" a target; something was on station to engage!  And the decision to stand down goes directly to POTUS!
This is far bigger than Watergate.

Explaining American beer

Another excellent read - although rather long and full of financial stuff.

Thanks to Tim Worstall again.

I used to like Beck's. Unless they're importing the real stuff into Australia from Germany, I won't be drinking it anymore. This stuff is important.

Brian Rinfret likes imported beer from Germany. He sometimes buys Spaten. He enjoys an occasional Bitburger. When he was 25 years old, he discovered Beck’s, a pilsner brewed in the city of Bremen in accordance with the Reinheitsgebot, the German Purity Law of 1516. It said so right on the label. After that, Rinfret was hooked.
One Friday night in January, Rinfret, who is now 52, stopped on the way home from work at his local liquor store in Monroe, N.J., and purchased a 12-pack of Beck’s. When he got home, he opened a bottle. “I was like, what the hell?” he recalls. “It tasted light. It tasted weak. Just, you know, night and day. Bubbly, real fizzy. To me, it wasn’t German beer. It tasted like a Budweiser with flavoring.”
He examined the label. It said the beer was no longer brewed in Bremen. He looked more closely at the fine print: “Product of the USA.” This was profoundly unsettling for a guy who had been a Beck’s drinker for more than half his life. He was also miffed to have paid the full import price for the 12-pack.

Bike pumps and comedy gold

My eternal gratitude to Duncan, who did what I should have done - he looked up Yonel Watene and found that he started work in September as a.....bike courier!

I'm glad that Yonel is working and making an honest living. And thanks Duncan, that is gold. From what I've seen and read, couriers deliberately ride the simplest, most indestructible bikes possible. Many go for single speed or fixed gear bikes because there are fewer parts to break - and when things on the bike break, you can't work. Which means no income.

However, it does put a slightly different perspective on his statement to the Daily Telegraph:

Cyclist Yonel Watene walked his bike to the pump from his home nearby to pump his flat tyres yesterday.
"I'm broke so I don't have a pump," he said.
"It could be the difference between someone getting to work on time or not.
"I guess they waste money on other things."

Unless Yonel had changed careers by the time he spoke to the Telegraph, he was still working as a bike courier - and what sort of worker goes to work without a proper set of tools? Does a plumber leave for work without a set of wrenches? Does a chippie go to work without a hammer, tape measure and circular saw? No. Not unless you're a right twat.


Cyclists tend to be a pretty social bunch in the main. If they see another cyclist in trouble - like on the side of the road with their bike upside down - they'll slow down or stop and ask if they need any  help. "Help" might involve letting the cyclist with a flat use their pump.

It happened to me once - I was halfway home from the Blue Mountains when I got a flat - about 15 miles from home. I changed the tube, and when I tried the pump, I found it had filled with water over time and the seals were rotten and useless. A few minutes later, a cyclist happened by, saw I was in trouble and he lent me his pump. Problem solved. No need for government intervention and the expenditure of tax dollars from non-cycling tax payers.

If you're on a busy cycle route, there are cyclists buzzing past all the time - help is never far away.

On a final note, I have noticed that bike couriers like to gather at a particular spot in the city at the end of the day and drink beer out of king browns (that's a 750ml bottle for you foreigners). You can buy a cheap pump for the cost of 6 bottles of VB. So the question for Yonel and his ilk is this - if you are part of the after work beer drinking bike crowd, are you willing to forgo six bottles of VB in order to be self sufficient on your bike, and not a burden on the rest of us? Are you wasting money on other things, like beer, instead of buying things that are essential to your job?

Why every generation runs out of mineral reserves

Very interesting read, if you're interested in this sort of thing.
.

Free bike air costs $21,000

When I first heard about this story in the Daily Telegraph, I thought they must have been pulling our legs. $21,000 to install 5 bike pumps alongside a bike lane in the city? If they cost that much, my first thought was that they had installed pumps with a compressor, so you wouldn't have to do any actual pumping.

Then I read the story and saw the accompanying photos.

I can't believe it cost $4,300 to install that pump. Sure, it's a flash pump, constructed from stainless steel to avoid rusting, but it's not much different otherwise from the $100 upright pump that I have at home. All the Council had to do was buy these and then bolt them into the concrete. How on earth could that cost $21,000?

Why did they install them in the first place?

it was necessary because so many cyclists were getting flat tyres

Getting flat tyres is an unfortunate fact of life when you have pneumatic tyres. I get up to half a dozen per year on the bike, and average one every two years on the car. Since it is a fact of life, I have a spare tyre on the back of the car, plus a jack, wheel brace, gloves (because it's a filthy job), work clothes (because it is a filthy job) and a tarp (in case I have to change it in mud or snow). Whenever I go for a ride, I carry a spare tube, pump, tyre levers, disposable gloves (because it is a filthy job) and a nifty device for getting the tyre back over the rim. At home, I have a puncture repair kit and half a dozen spare tubes, because installing patches and replacing tubes is part and parcel of riding a bike.

A council spokesman said because many of the riders were new to cycling, they were being caught out without a bike pump - adding the CBD lacked service stations to pump up flat tyres.

Show me a bike shop that sells you a bike without accessories like a pump, and I'll show you a useless bike shop shortly to go out of business. The margins on accessories are pretty large - the markup between online shops and physical shops can be 100-200%. There's plenty of profit to be made from things like pumps, so a sensible salesperson will flog you one.

And what sort of idiot buys a bike without a pump? Do we buy cars without spare tyres and tyre changing kit? (Let's not get started on the debate about space-saver spares). My shirts come with a spare button. The Lego sets we buy the kids come with spare bits. There are some certainties in life apart from death and taxes, and these are that bikes will get flat tyres, Lego bits will get lost and shirts will lose buttons. We prepare for these eventualities if we're sensible and grown up.

Cyclist Yonel Watene walked his bike to the pump from his home nearby to pump his flat tyres yesterday.
"I'm broke so I don't have a pump," he said.
"It could be the difference between someone getting to work on time or not.
"I guess they waste money on other things."

Do us a favour Yonel - just fuck off. You are a twat. Grow a personal responsibility gland. It's not the job of  taxpayers like me to make up for your short comings. You can order a pump on line for less than $35. Get your spending priorities sorted out.


Riding a bike to work is cheap, but it isn't free. Bikes are a mechanical device - they wear out, and they require maintenance. I've been riding mine for over 8 years, and I do 6-8000km per year. That creates a fair bit of wear and tear. Hard wearing tyres might last 6000km - and they cost $50 a pop. Chains and group sets (the rear gears) wear out. Brake and gear cables wear out and snap. Brake pads need replacing ($25 a pair - and commuting is very hard on pads). Wheel rims and bearings wear out (just like the brake disks in your car wear down, the rims on bike wheels wear down every time you use the brakes. Eventually you run out of metal and have to replace them). Lights and computers eventually fill up with water (if you ride in the wet) and die. My first pump got full of water and the seals corroded and failed. Bits get damaged through crashes. Pedals and cleats wear out from clipping in and out.

You need to degrease and oil the drive chain on a regular basis - that requires degreaser, oil and a scrubbing brush. Degreaser for bikes is not cheap - and you never use the cheap stuff (made that mistake once).

Even your clothing takes a hammering. I'm on my third pair of shoes and my sixth set of gloves. I've gone through at least four pairs of knicks - they wear down through rubbing to the point where they become see-through (not a pretty sight from behind). You can wear your normal clothes if you trips are short, but cycling wears them out too.

All this costs money. Not as much money as running a car, and not as much as a $35 per week bus pass. But it still cost something - at least a thousand bucks per year on average for me (and that doesn't count the cost of buying the bike in the first place).

If you're not spending anything on keeping your bike running, either you have a magic-pudding bike, or you aren't actually using it seriously. Or you just steal another one every time your current bike breaks down.

As for the stupid bloody council staff that made this decision - it would have been cheaper to have rounded up every twat like Yonel and given them a free pump. You could have bought 1000 pumps in bulk at $20 each and given them away. That would have left $1000 over to print stickers for each pump stating, "I am a useless, free-loading twat with no sense of personal responsibility".

You have to read this

Past lives and present misgivings.

Can't find where I found the link - wherever it came from, thanks!

Melbourne weather - in Sydney

October weather can be pretty variable in Sydney, but this year, it's ridiculous.

I blame global warming of course.

It was pretty warm on Saturday - it hit 33 degrees during the afternoon. Sunday was overcast, and today was a pig's breakfast.

Riding home was ridiculous - I wasn't expecting rain today, so I had worn the bare minimum of cycling kit. That meant of course that the temperature plummeted just as I left the office and I ran into near-hail partway home. It wasn't solid ice coming down, but the drops were near freezing and bloody hard - they hurt when they hit exposed skin. The maddest part is that when I was riding through this semi-hail shower, I was looking directly into bright sunshine. The clouds hard parted ahead of me, making it insanely hard to see where I was going.

I emerged from the part-hail/part rain into warm sunshine, and then was back into another cloud burst a few minutes later. If I'd taken a spray jacket, I would have been alternating between comfortable and sweating; instead I alternated between very uncomfortable and frozen.

I know Melbourne gets 4 seasons in one day - I got two in the space of about 20 minutes.

Like I said - it's all the fault of global warming.

The amazingly unfindable report

The SMH carried a story today about the cash economy costing the government millions. The report is by the  left leaning Australia Institute.

The report makes lots of claims about how much money the state government is missing out on each year. I thought it would be interesting to read the report and look at how they reached their conclusions.

But I can't find it anywhere on the Australia Institute website. It's not listed as a publication or a report, and there's not even a sign of a press release. It is a phantom; a chimera.

Let me add my two cents worth - if it was easy and cost effective for the tax man to be cracking down on the cash economy and extracting some more tax, they'd already be doing it. It's really easy for a cloistered academic to say "the institute says a crackdown on the black economy and cash-in-hand work would be more effective." But it's bloody hard to actually do it.

Why the hate?

As someone who is part of the wider "cycling community" (whatever the hell that is), I occasionally mix with cyclists who have a visceral hatred of cars. I don't get it - the car is one of the greatest inventions ever. I like cars. I don't love them like some people do (you won't find me at car shows, buying car mags, joining a car club or polishing the pride and joy on a daily basis). If I was ever going to name any of my cars, I'd name them "Down", as in "Broken Down". Especially if I owned a Ford.

I've yet to meet someone who doesn't form a strong attachment to something at some point in their lives (that is not another human). People variously fall in love with boats, fishing, gardening, music, dogs, art, clothing, shoes, cooking, computer games, books, travel, flying, scuba diving, hunting, politics, scale modelling, parachuting, photography, mountain climbing, marathons, cats, "the environment", surfing, wind sailing, motorbikes and of course, cycling. A quick trip to any newsagent is a good guide to the main things people fall in love with - if people are willing to buy expensive magazines on a regular basis celebrating a particular activity, and there are a lot of magazines for that activity, then you can be pretty sure that plenty of people are in love with that activity. The market has spoken.

As an aside, whilst there is a good market for "competitive" cycling magazines of all types - road, mountain and triathlon - the magazine for the Greenie section of the market recently folded and ceased publication. (Haha - that is not meant to be a pun). You could infer from that event that whilst Greenie cyclists are vocal and annoying, they and either small in numbers or tight fisted - or both.

A common theme amongst the Greenie cyclist is a hatred of cars. And I mean a passionate, total hatred of cars. To them, the car is evil and the bicycle is a symbol of good. I don't think it's a rational hatred - in some cases it seems to smack of well hidden envy and jealousy. They can't stand that the bloke over there has worked hard and made enough money to afford a Merc, whilst they are stuck on an old bicycle stolen from outside the Marlborough Hotel in Newtown.

This hatred then extends to motorways - a great blessing for all city dwellers. Anyone who wants to go back to the bad old days of entering and leaving Sydney via Parramatta Road and the old Hume Highway needs their head read. But then again, none of the haters ever leave Sydney - especially the inner parts of Sydney - unless they are taking the train to Canberra for a protest against a coalition government.

The passionate love of cycling extends the other way, into total adoration of Clover Moore and all that she does. It's quite bonkers. The take the cyclist-motorist hatred to new levels.

And as I said, that's bonkers. Most adult cyclists have a driver's license and own a car or two. Or three. Many cyclists drive their bikes to a spot, cycle out and back to some point and then stick the bike back on the car and drive home. The haters mostly appear to be non-car owners; the types who don't have a family to cart around, live in the inner city and don't have a long distance to cover in order to get to work (assuming they have a job). or the shops. If they do have a job, it's not the sort of job that involves travelling as part of the job (such as going from site to site with a bunch of tools and plumbing supplies).

They might even be afforded the luxury of working from home in some inner city location where it's easy to walk to the local cafe and shops and stroll home with two light bags of groceries; and where there are so many delightful restaurants and cafes within walking distance that you never cook dinner at home. Or lunch. Or breakfast.

I survived for 10 years in Sydney without a car - and I didn't have a bike back then either. I was single, my friends all lived close by - an easy walk or a cheap taxi ride - and all our social events involved a lot of drinking, so you never drove even if you had a car. And you couldn't park where you wanted to go, as parking around places like Paddington is an utter nightmare. I can understand completely how people can get by without a car - live in the inner suburbs, don't have kids, have a job that can be reached and undertaken using convenient public transport and have a whole bunch of friends in the same circumstances.

I think a lot of the hate has to do with wanting to be part of an in-group. When I lived near Bondi and body surfed a lot (and occasionally tried and failed to stand on a surf board), the boogie boarders hated the body surfers. The surfers hated both groups even more - to the point of the occasional punch up occurring. And they really hated the surf life savers. Group membership was reinforced via hatred of others. I can understand wanting to be part of a surfing group - surfers are fit, tanned and athletic and they pull a lot of chicks and have great parties. But who would want to be part of a group of stinky, bearded (and that includes the women), sandal wearring cyclists who define themselves through hatred of cars and motorways?

A lot of these Greens never grow up and have a family, so they aren't forced to make a choice between their hedonistic, inner city life style and exile to the 'burbs with a clutch of kids. They can continue this irrational hatred well into middle age. It's quite sad really.

Friday photos

Haven't done any of these for a while

A pair of fisherman under the Harbour Bridge - with several rods each.

I was wondering how to count these people - were they going clockwise or anti-clockwise?

One for Cav.