Goal Setting – Perth Ride to Conquer Cancer

The big ride that I am gearing up for is on the 20 & 21 of October. I still need to raise $1,500 so if you haven’t sponsored me yet, please go here and chip in. Back to back centuries are not to be sniffed at, so I have decided that I need to start ramping things up. My aim is to ride 1,000 ks in June, or 33 kilometres a day. Last June I was touring in Europe and managed over 800, but this time I won’t be towing all my gear behind me, though I will be obliged to sit in the office of my employer for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week instead of just riding all day between quaint European towns…. but it should be doable.

My daily commute to work is only 17 kilometres, though I have a couple of entertaining extensions to my route which will help me rack up some routine ks, with superb views. The weekends will be for longer and top-up rides.

I’ll do a weekly redux here and a more sparse summary on my profile page (where you can donate money, hint hint). 

 

Xtracycle Sidecar – Finally a solution for my 30kg dogs!

Yes, you heard it right, xtracycle is offering a sidecar, which will be available in ‘fall’. It’s a pretty vague delivery date, so instead of preordering I have signed up for notifications that it is in stock. I have been thinking about trying to build a sidecar myself to provide a transport solution for my dogs. The other option, buying a Gazelle Cabby or a Bullit, was going to be out of my budget for quite a long time.

The xtracycle sidecar is available for $149USD. For more info you can check out this blog entry on Go Means Go or see Xtracycle for preorders or to set up a stock notification.

 

Perth Cycling Infrastructure – Middle Swan Road

I have to start training up for the Ride to Conquer Cancer in October, which is 200 kilometres over two days (if you would like to make a donation check out my profile page here). I decided to go for a little ride through the Swan Valley out to Bells Rapids, though this time of year there really is not much water out there, and so I am going to call them Bells Dry Rocks.

The Bikely map of the route I took is here. I could have ridden up Great Northern Highway, but I decided to check out the condition of the shared path that is along Middle Swan Road – which is mainly there as far as I can tell, to encourage people to ride to the various wineries. I also wanted to try out some back streets, hence rode along Railway Crescent up to Cathedral Avenue. Railway Crescent is a quiet country road and I think I only saw two cars as I rode along there.

I had my new Gopro Hero 2 on my bars, but I need to make more room for it as I had clamped it over my bar tape, and the bar tape is too squishy to provide a rock-steady mount. Anyway, I did a video of the West Swan Rd section, which illustrates how poor the shared path actually is in places. It looks alright when you drive past it, but from a cyclist’s perspective, there is a lot of dirt on the path, the surface has some pretty bad cracks in places, there is a section with a bunch of power poles right in the middle (with no reflective treatments), and there is a lot of glass. I got a flat after riding this section, a thin piece of glass put quite a significant slash in my rear tyre. It’s easy to see why serious cyclists would prefer the road to this path. The video is sped up to 2x speed, and the fastest I sat on along here was about 27kph.

There is also a cycling/pedestrian only bridge at Maali Bridge Park – it’s the nicest cycling only bridge I’ve seen in Perth. It comes out at Sitella winery, which is one of my favorites – perhaps because it was where I went for my birthday? We drove out that time though, and I ate way too much food!

Anyway I will be making my way out to the Swan Valley more often in the coming months, perhaps to go wine tasting! Despite the path being a bit frustrating, I think it will be good as a slow/social ride. Next time I aim to go as far out as Bells I’ll probably go via Great Northern Highway which has a nice wide, smooth and fairly new bike lane.

 

Random Bike Builds – Single Speed MTB urban commuter

I have done a few bike builds lately, basically I start with a frame that gives me some inspiration and seek to make something of it. Most of the stuff I have is what serious roadies consider obsolete trash. This new project makes use of the Cromoly steel frame and fork from my first real mountain bike. It has an old style 1″ threaded steerer, but it’s not heavy, and because I am short it’s actually quite hard for me to find frames that are the right size for me on the second hand market.

I stripped this frame some time ago and I put a coat of primer on it, mainly for storage. I did an order with Wiggle for some bits and pieces.

I decided to lay all the parts down to help with the motivation process

So here we have a Halo Combat wheel with a 10T driver, SRAM Truative cranks, Wellgo platform BMX pedals, Token lock on grips, Clarks brake cables, the frame of a 1999 Malvern Star Vertigo, bars and stem from the Repco out the back which I picked up off the verge, a seat post from the Vertigo…. and a cheap saddle.

I’m going to paint the frame/forks/seatpost/bars/stem flat black. Tomorrow I will acquire some paint. I have some nice Halo stickers that came with the wheel to put on the fork.

The budget for this bike is $250. I am going to get pretty close to it. A lot of people would say ‘why bother, you can get something for $350 and not have to do any work’.

I am just attached to the frame & fork, and I hate to see things go to waste. Old road bikes make good singlespeeds because of their horizontal dropouts – the problem is that old road bikes that fit short people like me are very few and far between … so this bike is kind of an alternative to the hipster singlespeed for short people. We shall see how it turns out.

 

Perth Charity Rides: Freeway Bike Hike for Asthma

I have done the Bike Hike many times since it’s first roll up the freeway in 2005. This year it was organised by a different mob, and sponsored by the RAC. Apparently the City of Joondalup did not want the ride to finish in Joondalup as it has for all previous years, so they decided to make the Perth Esplanade the finish.

There has been a lot of criticism of the ride from cyclists, calling it a ‘demolition derby’ and ‘dangerous’. While I have seen a few crashes over the years (and there are a couple of videos on Youtube), I don’t think there is anything inherently dangerous about the ride. If you don’t treat it as a time trial then not much is going to happen!

The Bike Friday got a lot of attention.

I decided that the best way to do the Bike Hike was to get a group together, do it in fancy dress, and just have fun. The idea of prison jumpsuits came from someone who ultimately piked out on riding with us.

The convicts making an escape.

There was a choice of 2 start locations if you wanted to ride the 30k – we decided to start at Currambine as it was then a possibility for our team members to ride to the start. We decided to catch the train to the start, though some of the team rode. We didn’t arrive until after 8am, which was when the marshalling was supposed to be finished and the ride was starting. As we were in the ‘middle of the pack’ some of the faster riders had left by the time we got to the marshalling area.

The group (minus one who had decided to make a breakaway)

It was a great ride, and we got our free icecream and cup of powerade at the end. The stalls were a bit dull. Neither of the RAC members in the group wanted their free massage, so we sat in the shade for a while, and then head up to the William Street Festival in Northbridge. It was too hot, and we were hungry, so we went to the Moon Cafe for lunch, then parted ways and rode home.

Total kilometres for me and the Bike Friday: 48.

 

 

Car vs House – Greenfields Western Australia

OK, so this one isn’t technically in metropolitan Perth, but these poor people have had their house ploughed into TWICE. They feel like they have nowhere to turn, and have not been allowed to build the perimeter wall of their house closer to the road, presumably to preserve sight lines for motorists.

In October, a Ravenswood man crashed his utility through the front bedroom of the family home after failing to negotiate a bend.

The car landed on the couple’s bed and it was a fluke no one was killed.

A 19-year-old was charged with dangerous driving, drink-driving and driving without a valid licence. He was fined $1450.

On December 4, a car involved in a high speed police chase rolled through a fence and landed on its side. Ryan Norman Bishop (25), of Greenfields, was arrested at the scene.

He was charged with failing to stop, reckless driving, no authority to drive, driving an unlicensed vehicle and possessing a controlled weapon. He was fined $2950 and lost his licence for 18 months.

The article is here in the Community News.

From the charges it is clear that the Police have taken these seriously, but fines and license suspensions really do not seem to deter these chaps. I suppose there will always be that one percent that really shouldn’t be on the road. If we didn’t have such a car-centric city, maybe some of them wouldn’t!

Notably, the City of Mandurah say that:

“It should be noted that for the average road user, the road design is quite satisfactory. But for speed and alcohol/drug-related motorists, the City finds itself having to engineer additional traffic calming and traffic barrier safety.

“This obviously adds to the costs of the city’s road works budget, which in turn impacts upon ratepayers.”

It sounds like a bit of a moan to be honest. I don’t see them doing anything to encourage alternative transport options. There are almost no bike lanes and people are expected to ride on concrete jointed footpaths (shared paths) which follow the curve at every corner and have to give way at every junction and driveway. I have ridden down to Mandurah a few times, and drivers seem to be courteous during the very limited amount of time I spent riding there. Then, I ride on the road a fair bit and don’t have the ‘subjective safety’ issues with riding on the road that a lot of people have, so it’s pretty clear I am an outlier there.

 

Ride to Conquer Cancer: Let the fundraising begin!

We had all of our fundraising chocolates delivered to N’s office, so I had to go and get my half. The xtracycle comes in handy again! We will probably be shifting a lot of these chocolates in our bid to raise money for the Ride to Conquer Cancer.

The Xtracycle loaded with 7 boxes of Cadbury fundraising chocolates

After moving the chocolate from her office to mine, the Xtracycle and I went shopping. As I was trying to leave a guy asked me about it. I don’t want to be rude, but sometimes it’s a drag being a public relations officer for cargo bikes!

The good news is that in the first day of chocolate sales, I sold 19!

 

My Bikes: Upgrading the CRX2

The CRX with shiny new hoops

The CRX2 was looking and feeling a little bit tired, so when I saw someone selling a set of very lightly used DT-Swiss 1800s off their Giant TCR I decided to snap them up. I am fairly happy with the performance of the DT1800s on my TCR, so I thought they would have to be better than the R500s the CRX came stock with about 13,000kms ago.

The DT1800s roll smooth like butter and it’s really given the CRX a new lease on life. It’s my favorite commuter again. They also have a unique kind of hum when they are rolling – it is amplified by the fat tubes on the TCR, so they are a bit more subtle on the aluminium CRX.

It’s amazing the difference a wheel upgrade makes to a bike that is feeling a little tired.

The R500s will go onto a gaspipe Repco Mixte that I picked up off ebay for $10. The Mixte came complete, except for wheels. I stripped it last autumn, but it’s been too cold and wet to actually paint it, since I have to paint outside. I enjoy painting frames, so decided I would rattle can this instead of sending it to the powdercoaters. Hopefully I will get a chance to actually paint it in the next month or so!

The Repco Mixte

 

Reasons to Ride: The place where we live

The Bike Fridays on a ride along the coast

There’s certainly no doubt about it – Western Australia has some nice places to ride, for both casual and serious cyclists. What it lacks in hills though, it makes up for in gusty wind – which is good when it is behind you, not so good if it’s in your face.

The South Perth foreshore

The South Perth foreshore now has a dedicated cycling path so that the pedestrians and cyclists don’t have to share. It makes it easier to cruise along and enjoy the view, one still has to be aware of the unleashed doggies and meandering pedestrians who do not read signs.

A bridge near Rivervale

Of course, aside from puttering around the river, I use my bike for errands and transport. Unfortunately, bike racks are not always available at the destination. As long as there is some kind of pole though, parking is possible. Bikes really do not take up much room.

A trip to City Farmers for doggie treats

 

Car vs House: Car smashes through a fence and into a cubby house in Kardinya

The original story is here.

This one is more of a car vs cubby house, but I thought that it was worth adding to my collection on the blog. It happened in broad daylight so the likelihood of the kids being out in the yard was pretty high! It seems a bit odd that the laneway didn’t have bollards to stop the vehicle from entering. As irritating as bollards can be sometimes, especially when towing the Bike Friday trailer, I think in those kinds of laneways they are preferable to this kind of thing happening.

TWO Kardinya families had a lucky escape this morning when a car smashed through a laneway, ploughed through their backyards and came to rest against a cubbyhouse.

Witnesses said the driver was being followed by police when the car mounted the curb and into a winding pedestrian laneway.

Kidson St resident Jacqui Mooney, 39, said her kids often played in the cubbyhouse and her 11-month-old had been near it only moments before the vehicle crashed through her fence.

“It’s just shocking. We’re not even near a main road,” she said.

“Any of us could have been out here. My husband’s always out watering the vegetable garden.

“I actually thought our neighbour was under the car for a moment because she’s normally out doing her washing.”

Neighbour Hazel Paterson said when she first saw the police she thought there was an armed robber.

 

“I looked out the window and I just couldn’t work out where the car had come from,” Ms Paterson said.

“I thought I heard someone say `gun’ and I ran two houses up to my neighbours.

“I’m usually out doing Saturday’s washing and it was only because I’d had a new lounge suite to set up that I was inside.”

Sergeant Greg Woodward said police were called about a suspicious person in a vehicle.
The chase began when the man refused to stop for police, he said.

“We followed him through the streets when he smashed through the laneway,” Sgt Woodward said.

“The car was not stolen that we know of but it did have false number plates.”

A man was arrested and was yesterday assisting police with their enquiries.