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.