Thankfully this week I haven't actually felt like strangling anyone, so there's a plus. (Except for the usual amount of times I get stroppy with the kids, but that's nothing out of the ordinary.) Possibly I've just hit the next stage on the hormonal rollercoaster, with this last week being defined more by introspection than anything else.

My lower back decided last weekend it was time to give me a bit of curry. It does so from time to time for no apparent reason. A chiro visit on Monday helped... but in the early hours of Thursday morning my left arm decided to get in on the act and go the whole nerve-pinching pain thing, so I haven't been on top of the world. A chiro visit yesterday has helped that - but I'm not quite myself again yet. (And I keep thinking that I'm certainly contributing to the chiropractor's superannuation fund, if not a new car or two.) I've not exercised all week because of the back and arm, and so a happy little vegemite I am not.

At TAFE I'm in the process of deciding what to do next year. It's a part of the course I'm doing to do so, but it's also what I need to do anyway. I've applied to do a one year course in Information Technology (Web Design). I *think* it's what I want to do when "I grow up", but I guess I'm not 100% sure. On Thursday I decided to use the counselling service at TAFE - they do careers counselling as well as the personal stuff. Hell, it's free, why not? My first session was helpful - and I'm going back next week. Perhaps she will help me unearth whatever it is within that tells me I can't do stuff - though I'm not completely sure about the airy fairy stuff.

The oldest teenager is doing the girl with the curl thing, and when she's not being good and helpful and lovely, she is being dramatic, and accusative, (and unhelpful) and we are apparently unreasonable and over protective parents who are going to scar her for life because we are following the 'no computers in bedroom' line as advised to parents. And we won't/wouldn't let her go to a party at a town 2 hours away... She doesn't bring friends around here because we are, apparently, Embarrassing, (because I dare to engage her friends in a bit of conversation it seems), her sisters are Annoying and she can't get away from any of us in 'our open plan house', despite the fact that she has her own room. Pardon me for just BEING, and for not having a house with rumpus rooms/separate TV rooms and the like. I'm not sure what palaces her friends live in.

The biggest challenge (and preoccupation) at the moment is that we are planning a cycling holiday riding, with other tandem acquaintances, down the east coast of Tasmania - next February. Planning and communication with the other parties has to be done online, and that is proving to be ... interesting. I am about to bite the bullet and book our fares on the Spirit of Tasmania - the ferry between the mainland and Tasmania. We are going to drive to Melbourne (2 day drive from here) and then slum it on the ferry. It looks costly, but by the time we weighed up the cost and hassle of plane fares, with camping gear and tandems, extra accommodation for a family of five, and airport shuttles, the overnight ferry experience won out.

Weighing up the pros and cons of shared costs for the ride has been another challenge altogether. However - it looks like it's going to happen, and .. did I mention?... I'm about to make the booking. Today. Sometime. It is exciting and yet daunting all at the same time. I thrive on the planning of something like this, though at the same time it stresses and consumes me. Today I have reached the point where I am saying to Marc 'So? Do I book it?' Point of no return. A financial investment in another family holiday and adventure. I haven't quite done so.. but sometime later today I will. I WILL.

The planning for that will ebb and flow - until it reaches panic stations in February!

Meanwhile I just have to manage the teenage angst, my own angst - and decisions about where I'm heading with the rest of my life...

And finalising the last requirements for this current course. A few pieces of writing, which should be right up my alley, seeing I want to do something with writing to earn a quid or two, yet I am procrastinating over it all nonetheless. (And a First Aid "exam" on Tuesday.)

And Christmas is around the corner, and that stresses me out like not much else can.

I'm not sure where blogging fits into this, but while I work on reinventing myself, I might just need to vent every now and then. (Is it significant that the word "vent" appears in reinvent?)

When I am not venting, I will inevitably be preoccupied.

Labels: bike riding, daily, parenting, teenagers

Around The Bay in a Day. A 210km bike ride around Port Phillip Bay, Melbourne to Melbourne.


There and back from home in five days.

On Friday we drove to Sydney with the kids (around 600km).. left them with the grand-parentals, dismantled the tandem and packed it up into an extended cardboard bike box (ok, so my beloved Bike Mechanic did most of that tricky stuff)... got up early Saturday morning, drove to the airport, kissed the bike goodbye into the oversize baggage section, picked it up in Melbourne, caught a Maxi Taxi to the motel, put it all back together again, did a 12km return test ride in 30+ degrees through the centre of Melbourne.....

..... got up at some very ungodly hour (ie. 4.30am), rode back through the city centre to the start...

did the ride....





















.... and pretty much did it all again in reverse (from the dismantling of the bike bit) to get home again last night.

Fortunately the weather gods sort of smiled on us... instead of heat (it was 30 degrees on the Saturday - and 38 degrees for the same ride last year!) we got a cold southerly - so the temperature didn't get above 18 degrees! (talking Celsius here...).... The downside was that riding along the edge of the bay wasn't as picturesque or pleasant as it might have been on a mild and sunny spring day.

We did it all without too much trouble .. (unless you count my body sabotaging me - I ask you, is it fair for a woman's body to betray her by giving her 'that time' just in time for the next marathon bike ride only three weeks after the last time (and last marathon cycling effort...)???)

Total riding time, about 8 hours. First hour was painfully slow, riding in a big bunch of people from the start - I think we only managed to get about 5km in the first 3/4 of an hour. And we got a puncture about 20km into it! After that we didn't stop too many times, though loo stops were a priority, and by the end my bum had pretty much had enough.

Generally there weren't as many slow and erratic riders as on the Brisbane-Gold Coast ride, so we didn't feel quite as paranoid as we.. I.. might have after the previous weekend! Mind you, we had one near miss when some bystanders with a dog on an extendable leash let the dog rush the curb, only pulling it up at the gutter. There were more than a few 'whoas' in the group we were riding in.

We only heard later about the deliberate injury of bike riders on their way to the ride by some drunk b******s in a car. And the other accident.

Otherwise, we felt that Melbourne drivers were far more courteous than Sydney (or Coffs/Pacific Highway) drivers - I guess they are, in general, far more used to bikes; we were amazed by all the bike lanes, even right through the centre of the city!




























I think I'm looking pretty happy to have finished it, although I knew (after a well-earned beer!) I had to climb back on and ride the 6 km back to the motel!

Strangely today I am still feeling a bit weary. Can't imagine why.

Labels: bike riding

We had a stack.

All 5 of us, both bikes (and a handful of jellybeans) splattered all over the road.

All had been going well with the Brissy to Gold Coast ride. We were about half way - I had been just about to announce the 50km mark to the girls. We'd had a great ride along the dedicated bus lanes out of the city - which had been closed off to buses for the bikes. Lovely smooooth road surface, and the only ups didn't even require the granny ring.

As we got further along, we then detoured onto the service roads that run alongside the motorway, and then some loops on back roads.

After stuffing around with loos, and refilling water at the previous rest stop, we found ourselves riding among slower (and less experienced) riders. You can tell them by the more erratic way they ride along the road. Should have known better. We came up behind a group, Marc was chatting to some guy beside him about the 29 inch wheels on his bike, and I was riding behind him. (We'd lost him in the mêlée of the start, so hadn't managed to actually do much drafting up till then.) We were humming along this flat country road at around 28kph... and I could tell Marc would shortly endeavour to find a way around this group of slower riders spread out across the road.

Suddenly it all went to hell. In a split second, the triple wobbled, then went down, because the girl in front of them - and we're talking right in the middle of the road here - hit the brakes HARD . Because her PEDAL FELL OFF! (We're talking el cheapo K-mart type bike here - probably never been serviced....) (What about coasting, calling out, "stopping"... that sort of thing? )

Marc had nowhere to go - she seemed to go left, so he tried to go right, but then she angled back in front of him. He clipped her wheel, and down they went.

And because I was riding his wheel I had nowhere to go. I could see it happening in front of me, but there was nothing I could do about it. I had barely enough time to register the shock of seeing them fall in front of me (because Marc is pretty competent at handling a bike.)

Then the awful realisation that I couldn't avoid them.

*Crash*....we went down. Bikes and bodies all over the road. Zoe sandwiched between the two bikes, as the tandem had landed on top of her... and crying that 'ow! owwww! owwwwwwwwwww!' cry that sends a mother's heart into panic.

Dazed, we scrambled up, hauled the bike off her, and limped with bikes to the edge of the road. I was concerned about Zoe, but vaguely noticed blood dripping down my left forearm from my elbow.

Marc was relatively unscathed, so he assumed first aider role - thankfully we were carrying our own first aid kit. Mothers patently make shocking patients when their kids are involved, because I kept telling him to look after each of the kids, when it turned out that I had the worst injury - a nasty gash on my elbow - which to him looked a bit drastic, though he decided not to enlighten me too much at the time. He got a wound dressing out, and bound it up. Cait had corked her hip/thigh, and struggled to walk, but didn't feel she'd broken anything. Zoe couldn't quite decide which of her legs hurt, but settled on a twisted ankle on one. All of us had various grazes and bruises already coming up. On my left leg, blood from gravel rash mixed with grease - and I'd also grazed a mole there. Errgh....

Plus a little bit of shock all round.

Official help was all but useless other than the moral support of the highway patrol motorbike cop. We figured we probably wouldn't need an ambulance, but were a bit nonplussed when one came along, and informed the cop that they only stop if they need to take anyone to hospital. Noone bothered to check us out themselves. (Even the cop was nonplussed about that...) Some riders, and a woman in a car, did stop, and she gave us some old towels, and pulled jackets out of our panniers to keep us a bit warm. Other than that, noone else had first aid stuff, and no gloves, so were unwilling to touch us because of the blood! All in all, we were pretty lucky Marc was ok to tend us all.

A bike mechanic guy also stopped, but Marc had all the gear we needed for that. The sag wagon was notified, and we knew it was on its way. While we hated the thought of not being able to finish the ride, none of us girls were in a fit condition to finish (Perhaps I would have been stupid enough to had I not had the girls to consider ... although my elbow was hurting enough to make me realise that steering a bike would be a bit difficult.) Our tandem would fit in the trailer on the sag wagon, but the triple would be pushing it - plus Marc is always antsy about it being scratched, not that it didn't now have a couple of dings in it. The pannier rack was skewed where we hit it...and he's yet to do a proper check on what else might be damaged on it. He had to tinker with the brakes to get it working ok when he decided to ride it on by himself to the next checkpoint and meet us there - at least another 20km or so.

The girls and I were finally deposited at the checkpoint by the sag wagon, and we headed for the first aiders. I asked them to look at the girls first - though Cait kept saying "Mum, you go first, you're worse!" 'I'm right, you girls first" , I said, but she pushed me into the seat before her. Then the girl took off the wound dressing Marc had put on my elbow, and said immediately "That'll need stitches" - while the girls gasped in horror at the sight of it. Kind of glad I couldn't see it myself.

Marc arrived, and we decided that the logical thing to do was for him to get a cab the nearest train station and head back to Southbank to collect the car. It was a long and tedious wait there at Coomera State School - just behind Dreamworld - and the girls were taunted with the sounds of the rides there (Their boring parents have been too tight and too obsessed with bloody bike riding to take them to the theme parks!)

During our wait, Alison and Zoe finally wandered off to the playground, which allayed many of my concerns about how injured they might have been. Cait was sore but stoic.

Marc got back and we got the bikes onto the car, and headed for the Gold Coast by car, still a bit shell shocked and basically spewing that we'd come all this way, invested money in petrol, accommodation, etc, and we weren't finishing the damn ride. Brought undone by an inexperienced rider on a crap bike, basically. We've tried to rationalise it as the risk you take participating in these mass rides... Mind you, it really did rub salt into the wounds to have to drive past the Finish point on the way to the hospital.

A lesson learned regarding riding amongst so many people. It made me wonder whether the mass rides are a good idea, but you do them to take advantage of road closures (and thus a certain degree of separation and protection from vehicles!)

I'd steeled myself for a potentially long wait at Emergency, but good fortune had a 24 hour medical centre just across the road from the hospital. I was seen there pretty much immediately. "Now I have to warn you that you will have a scar", said the doctor. "Not worried." I said. (My husband knows me well. When I told him the doc said that, he said 'You'd be cheesed off if you didn't get a scar out of this! At least you'll have something to show from the day. Battle scars. The rest of them won't.

So we are all healing, and the vivid replaying of the accident over and over in my head is abating. Marc, to his delight, discovered that he did get a couple of grazes after all. On his butt (and in his bum crack! - so he's a bit limited in the sympathy stakes..)

Today I can finally bend up my arm enough so as to be able to do my bra up by myself, so things are looking up. And of course my main worry was being able to ride this weekend in Melbourne, what with the air fares and accommodation booked for that. Heel of my left hand is a bit bruised, but I'll be ok on the back of the tandem. (I'll have to be!) Stitches supposed to come out on Sunday will have to be removed on Monday. Chiro appointment for Cait (and me) tomorrow. The younger two have already been back at netball and swimming, so they have come up ok.

Back on the bike, for me and Marc at least. I'm not too sure how the girls are going to feel about doing so - but as I've just ordered $450 worth of matching cycling jerseys for us all, they may not have a choice! We breed and raise 'em tough around here.

.

Labels: aarrrgghhh, bike riding

Hah... only kidding. (Well, over my dead body, anyway... I may be crazy, but I am not that crazy.)

What he really wants is one of these:

(Image nicked from here)

It is a Rans Screamer Recumbent Tandem. Apparently it goes fast. (Figure that out from the name, much?) And is comfortable.

It gets reviews like this: (A sign a convert has considered putting up on the back of the captain's seat for 'guest' stokers:)

"Warning: Persons unused to riding recumbents are hereby warned that riding on this bicycle may lead to a compulsion to go out and buy your own recumbent. Management assumes no responsibility for dents to your budget that arise from riding on this bicycle. "

and this:

"If you don't want to buy this bike, do NOT let your stoker take a ride on one."

I've never ridden a recumbent - Marc has had a quick go on a couple. (Mind you, he failed spectacularly to even get moving on one he had a quick try of the other day - the kids were in hysterics - "My god, Dad can't do something!!!!" ) But those who do are absolute converts.

So I told him, OK, I'd have a go on one. Given it'd be a bit of a challenge to find one to test ride in Australia, I'm pretty safe, but with this husband, you just never know.

Labels: bike riding

Or: How to get what you want with a tantrum.

On Saturday morning we were back to the family tandem riding. (Nothing like last minute training for the kids for the 100km ride next weekend!) With the Triple, and the Cannondale tandem, we have this eternal dilemma as far as the older two kids are concerned. Riding on the triple with Dad rates much more highly than riding on the other tandem with Mum. Yes, Dad is a better rider.. goes faster... etc. etc. (Nothing like feeling like the loser prize in a 'drawing the short straw' contest - my lot in life, I'm afraid.. *sigh*)

We've tried to make it so the girls can take turns, but the reality is that Ms 15 is (and has been for more than the two year age difference) a better stoker than her younger sister. Put Ms 13 on the back of the bike with me, and we go as slow as a wet week, and I get... frustrated. We can't keep up with the triple.

But it's not just her... she just seems to compound an issue I've had with this bike ever since we got it. I've never liked it.

Hoo-boy... You have to be game to say that about a $2000 bike. (Bought because I was a wee bit envious about how he got to ride the sleek and beautiful CoMotion Triple. Needless to say, Himself has, thus far, pretty much dismissed my grumblings as the ravings of a lunatic. (Or a spoilt brat.) Never mind that Ms 15, who has so far been my partner on all the long rides we have done on it, has always agreed with me.

From the beginning we knew that I was going to have trouble with the frame size at the front. We thought we'd solved it by putting a shorter stem on the headset - to bring the handlebars in closer. The problem with that was it always seemed to make the bike more twitchy to steer, and I've never felt truly comfortable with it.

We had problems with the gears - (the chain falling off and snapping at one point...) He put new derailleurs on it. And a new chain. And new other stuff that I can't even remember. Like new shifters.... Sheesh, how much stuff have we changed on this $2000 bike?

Still, Cait and I always reckoned that it felt slow and cumbersome.

That's impossible! he would cry. It's so light! Just because the tubes in the frame are bigger - they have to be because they are aluminium. But that's what makes it lighter! And you actually do get it moving along. You've just forgotten what the old tandem was like.

It doesn't feel better.. we'd mutter. But what would we know?!

In June he put the old stem back on the headset, and rode it himself on dirt with Other Women (*mutter mutter*) in that crazy adventure race he did, and thought it was great. As did they. They raved about The Cannondale. More proof that Cait and I were just stupid. (Never mind the fact that Cannondale are actually not considered, among serious tandem owners, as being 'up there' with the leading tandem manufacturers.)

Back to this weekend, and the first time I'd ridden it since then. Stokers were swapped - Cait's turn for the triple, in the interests of fairness - and we set out on the early morning community ride.

From the outset I got cranky. When I tried to use the top few gears on the middle chain ring, it would rattle like crazy. Unusable. (So I couldn't use the very gears I most prefer to ride in!) Changing to the big ring all the time made my thumb hurt on the shifter, and we were sloooow. I felt like throwing it into a ditch.

The triple got well ahead of us, and as we passed them going the other way on a loop, I yelled out to him "This is a piece of sh*t". Not the first time I have called it that, I confess. I am classy like that at times.

We took a bit of a short cut on the loop to try and catch up with the group we were riding with... it was a few kilometres later that Marc and the triple caught up with us. (They'd doubled back, but missed us when we took the short cut.)

Why don't you answer your bloody phone? I felt my back pockets for my phone. No phone. Must have left it in the car. One way to put him in a good mood. Not.

He was cranky. I was cranky. He accused me of exaggerating. OK, I did exaggerate.. a little bit. I said I couldn't use the whole middle ring. OK, then half. (Reality... top 3 out of 8). I accused him of not understanding. 'Domestic' time, out there on the streets.

Finally I pouted, I've never bloody liked it.. and I don't want to ride it this weekend. Cait and I will ride our singles.

May as well sell it then. Says He.

Fine.

(Oops, he didn't expect that. Stalemate. )

The "conversation" continued once we got home, in a slightly less aggressive tone. We did agree that unfortunately, Alison just wasn't as good a stoker as her sister. She lacks the intuition that Cait and I have as stokers.. she rides to her own beat, and so you never feel in harmony when you ride with her. And I just don't have the power to 'carry' her. We would always be slower, and the triple would always be impatiently waiting for us to catch up.

He agreed to "fix" the gears, but Cait and I told him we'd still rather ride our single road bikes. He couldn't fathom this at all, never mind the concern that this would spell the end of our family tandem riding. But you'll be slower! and I may as well just sell the triple as well then.

I suggested that he was jumping the gun a bit - he could still ride the triple with Alison and Zoe, till Alison was capable of riding a single for some distance, and then he could ride the Cannondale with Zoe. (Seeing he thought there was nothing wrong with it.) Stalemate.

We discussed buying a different tandem, a less 'mountain-bike' one -a 'small' road tandem. But you couldn't guarantee not having the same problem, plus there was the question of my strength in captaining a road tandem.

Stalemate again.

OK. Can you PLEASE explain it to me. I need something concrete to work on here.

How to explain the ethereal to Mr Practical? We needed a thesaurus to find words for the indescribable. (Think Dr Who with his 'wibbly wobbly, timey wimey stuff')

It's like riding an elephant. But it's light as! OK, an inflatable elephant! It's like paddling an inflatable canoe. Sure it's light, but it just doesn't...go. It's wallowy. It's ponderous. (Caitlin looks at me with a raised eyebrow: "ponderous?") You feel like you are wallowing along.. your pedalling effort just doesn't translate. You feel all... blobby wobby.. or something... You feel like you are boinging along in a jalopy.

Never mind the issue with the steering.. and my reach. I couldn't see how that was fixable. Let's face it, I just don't fit the bike.

I don't care if you sell it, I said. Riding a tandem is meant to be fun, and the truth is we just do NOT have fun riding this. We would have more fun on our singles. We might be slower at first, but we have room for improvement. With this? We just don't feel like we can get anywhere.

I left him to ponder this.

My husband, once he gets over his initial frustrations (and he can be a bit on the impatient side at times - where I feel like killing him, and he, no doubt, feels like killing me) - is a genius.

He decides it has to be 'in the wheels'. They are the only thing on the bike in contact with the ground. And then , just *like that*, he produces another stronger, wheel - one which would flex less - from out of the shed. Replaces the back wheel. It was one he had bought for the previous tandem, but not got around to using. As you do.

He also finds a different seat tube which doesn't right angle back. It will bring me closer to the handlebars without the twitchy issue.

I change the actual saddle for good measure.

Cait and I ride around the block, and we cannot BELIEVE the difference. It grips the road. When we pedal we feel as if you are making headway. No more jalopy-style. It DOES make a difference.

And so we went for a 50km ride yesterday. Cait is resigned to riding with Mum... (she will milk it, I am sure.. for having to put up with the warped consequence of being the better stoker..).. but we proved to ourselves that we can get that baby moving. Definitely faster than the two of us on singles. Which is what a tandem is meant to be.

Family crisis averted.

The moral to the story?

Tantrums CAN get you what you want. Just make sure you have back up - especially when you are dealing with an impatient but clever man.

And.. what a difference a wheel can make.

.

.

Labels: bike riding

It's all a-happening. In 48 hours I can crash and burn and words can't describe how much I'm looking forward to doing that. I will have earned it, I believe, after having ridden around and around a velodrome for 24 hours or thereabouts.

As I've hurtled towards this... this... err.. challenge, I have seriously contemplated my sanity, suggested many times that I must have been drugged when I agreed to do it, and generally started working up into full blown anxiety.

I can't actually remember what I signed up to do first - the TAFE course, or the charity ride, but clearly, in hindsight, it has not been an easy or sensible partnership. Not when I also happen to have three children to wrangle the rest of the time.

As this week has loomed I've been muttering "But I need to ride. I need to ride" whenever I was in class, or sitting here researching stuff for presentations. Throw in a week of ill-health, and the panic begins to bubble. The sort of panic you'd get if you were going into an exam without having studied. (Well, some of us might relate to that.. my 15 year old daughter patently doesn't get that feeling, but I won't talk about that issue right now...)

Throw in another couple of days the next week with a kid (youngest) who is unwell and better off at home than school, thus preventing attending class OR cycling, and the anxiety wells...

I have done the TAFE work I needed to do, and put whatever I could on hold to complete over the holidays. (So in reality, I don't have much time to crash and burn after the ride at all!)

Last weekend we scheduled some serious training rides. 122km on Saturday morning, and .. you know that saying 'hit the wall'? *Smash*, I hit it. Totally and utterly stuffed. The 5.30am start didn't help... We were home by 11.30, in time to get to a netball presentation... and then I stumbled up to bed and slept for 2 hours in the late afternoon.

Sunday morning I didn't want to look at a bike, never mind get on and ride anymore... Much self talk saw me reluctantly and sulkily clambering on the back of the tandem again; we only did 45km, albeit incorporating a 3km hill. Most of that I was brushing back tears; it was only the adrenalin rush of some fast tandem downhills that perked me up any - plus forcing down one of those energy gels.

I decided that it might be wise not to ride this week.

I did go out and buy some very expensive bike nix with the most awesome padding, which I hope will protect not only those pressure points that suffer most, but *whispers* my.. er... front bits which have been suffering in a way I would never have imagined...

Meanwhile, as luck, karma, Murphy's Law... or whatever.. would have it... guess what is due to start anytime...? Which means (especially the way my peri-menopausal body is doing stuff on a random and ad hoc basis these days) that I'm doing the usual emotional PMS-y build-up thing. You know, ladies. That feeling that your menfolk do not have a clue about, do not relate to, do not understand in any way...? That feeling you want to cry for no reason. The rising anxiety over anything... which means that if you have something that's bordering on 'reasonable' to be anxious or nervous about, then... woot! Happy days... er, not.

Naturally, I am a wee bit anxious about my ability to sit on a bike for 24 hours. Minus the breaks of course. Breaks? 10 minutes every 2 hours, and a half hour break in the evening?! (All the riders ride together you see...)
WTF?!! 10 minutes is barely enough time to go to the loo normally.. never mind if I am dealing with you-know-what. (Never mind the added issues thus related...)

Yes. I am anxious. Please, please, PLEASE don't let it start.

Today I am trying to get organised... and I am anxious about all of that too. Anxious for anxious sakes. Because not only do we have to get ourselves sorted, we have three kids to wrangle! We have to take a tent and sleeping gear for them, so they can go sleep while we are riding through the night. We also agreed to take our triple bike down there for a display... so that has to be sorted. I am about to make fried rice so we have some extra food to shovel in, plus something for the kids. Dinner tonight of course, as well.

All in a good cause. This IS to raise money for ROMAC - a Rotary charity that brings kids from developing countries to Australia for life-saving and life-changing surgery. Puts all my anxiety and woes into a bit of perspective. And trust me... I wouldn't be doing this insane ride if it wasn't for charity.

There is no specific online donation method, but if anyone would like to bolster our fundraising efforts, I would love you to bits. I got the required $500 sponsorship from a local company Arc Attack Engineering, who are amazingly generous when it comes to supporting community endeavours. But I'm working on matching that with personal donations, as I'd like to think we could raise $1000 for our efforts. I am a couple of hundred off achieving that.

You'd have to send me a cheque made out to ROMAC, or deposit in my bank account, and I'd send you back the official receipt. (Tax deductions for $2 or over (in Oz anyway..)... but you'd have to make it worth the 55c postage stamp! ) If it's the right timing for you to make a donation to a worthwhile charity, send me an email trace at exemail dot com dot au and I'll send you either my address or bank account details... and get your address to send you back the receipt.

If you can't, no sweat, no pressure. Just pray to whatever goddess, spirit, moon, or whatever for me that 'you know what' doesn't start till after!

See you when I wake up after it's all over...

Labels: bike riding, daily

.. whilst fighting off a throat or chest infection.

I'm going round in circles. Round and round in bloody circles. It would be an amusing metaphor for the ROMAC ride if I didn't find it all just a bit unfunny. So much to do, I don't know where to start -and yet when I do prioritise, things keep distracting me, or knocking me off the rails.

The current priority is, of course, to train the derrière up for 24 hours on a bike saddle, but priorities, schmiorities... they're there to be thwarted, patently.

Friday it rained. Well, never mind, the weekend was approaching and good weather was forecast, thank heavens, unimaginable as it was most of Friday.

Friday night after swim squad and dinner my throat suddenly felt scratchy. No, no, no, no, noooo! I headed for bed early, with fingers crossed. Voices in head: "You don't have time for this! You tried, tried, tried not to think "how good is it that I haven't got sick yet this year" but, looks like did, You Idiot. Waaah! OK.. so just.. don't panic...Sleep...and in the morning it'll be gone. Like magic. You just sleep it, and wish it away, k?"

5.40am departure scheduled - the town-and-back-with-community-ride-in-the-middle ride. And of course I slept like cr*p (husband snoring, weird dreams, etc etc.) One minute the clock read 3am, the next thing I peered up at it, suspicious about the daylight beginning to permeate the room. 5.25. Oh sh*t. Late! It's impossible to get up, get ready and leave in 15 mins. [Alarm setter malfunction. Him.] He reckons we can still ride and 'meet them all somewhere'. But me? Headache. Sore throat still. Damn it, not going then. Maybe a sleep in will help. Probably a ride ("a ride" she says casually ... like a ninety kilometre ride!) wouldn't help. A sore throat is something I just don't need at this point in time (though that's a silly thing to say isn't it? - who ever needs a sore throat at any time?) Better off not riding. Hmmmph.

I wussed through Saturday (and netball finals) on aspro, then had a late afternoon sleep. Note: if Tracey sleeps in the daytime this is Ultimate Proof that she is actually not well (and probably should have served as a warning!) I picked up a bit after that, and got a good night's sleep on Saturday night (in hindsight, further proof, again, that I was not 100% because, like a toddler, the more normal outcome from a dusk hour sleep for me would be rattling around all night!)

Naturally, then, although feeling a bit 'chesty', but no sore throat, and no headache, I determined that I would be ok to ride. (Had to ride.) And so we set off from home at 7.30, and ended up doing 118km! On two weetbix, two scones and half a banana. (We met up with some other riders for morning tea, hence the scones and the drawn out ride - we didn't get home till around 2pm, after then running into more cyclists that we knew, and then helping out another anonymous cyclist who had had a puncture, but forgot to bring a tube!)

Fuel reserves a bit light on perhaps? (And that's the oily rag analogy/reference... k?)

And go on, so tell me maybe I was just a bit crazy for riding at all. (It's not like I haven't thought it)

Would you believe?... Today I'm iffy again... so I've just pulled out of my swimming squad class for this afternoon... and I'm not motivated to push myself in any way aerobically. So much for "I should ride every day."

Meantime, as I've also lamented before, it's not as if I have nothing else to do...

I've got myself dizzy with all the bits and pieces I should be doing, that I don't quite know where to start, or what to prioritise for when. Too many pots on the boil - and I'm the cook having a nervous breakdown - sitting in the corner of the kitchen with my head in my hands, rocking back and forth.

End of season netball stuff. Organising certificates etc. Organising the design samples for the new association uniform (did I actually volunteer to do that?... um, yep.) Redrafting the local rules. Drafting the special rules for the Twilight comp. (Hassling people to send me the information!). Drafting other stuff that I've been asked to draft. Never mind getting the website up to date with all the info and photos that I know it needs.

Bicycle User Group stuff. Design completely new website. Keep up with the ride calendar. Etc.

TAFE Stuff. Two presentations. One due next week. One that could be due after the holidays, except that it would be smart to do it this week, as I've been conned into 'speaking' at a Rotary dinner next Monday with regard to us doing the ROMAC ride, and given I haven't done any public speaking in about 60 years, then it wouldn't be a bad idea to use this TAFE requirement as PRACTICE.

And a science assignment.

Which is the scariest thing of all, because I have no idea at all what I am going to do, and what's more? Gradual dawning that my Care Factor (in regard to science) = 0.

More about that next post, because, dear reader, I am going to call upon a creative thinking brain power resource that I do have at my fingertips. YOU!

Ah yeah, and also there's the usual house and home stuff. Parent teacher interviews this afternoon. And dinner. And washing. And what does a vacuum cleaner look like again?

I don't know that blogging all this has helped - though you might say that at least I've got something off my chest. If only it was this infection.

Labels: bike riding, daily, sick, sooking

It's raining. A lot.

This means I am not on my bike, as was my plan for today.

Given that in two weeks time I am intending to sit on a bike seat for nigh on 24 hours, giving my bum time to get used to the idea of sitting on a bike seat for nigh on 24 hours does seem to be a good plan to have, albeit one not that easy to schedule around my new 'school' commitments, as well as the usual family Stuff. Today was my 'free' day for the week, and ideally I could have ridden maybe 60km, which would have been a reasonable bum toughening distance.

Marc and I did 89km last Sunday, and I managed 30km by myself the day before. On Tuesday, thanks to a teacher being absent, I prioritised bike time instead of study time, but ended up practising my tyre changing instead (not really the top of my list right now!) and thus only clocking up 20km.

Really, it's not enough, and I'm starting to stress just a wee bit about it all, and wonder what the hell I was doing when I agreed to do this.

I'm not so worried about the muscles; at least on a velodrome there are no hills. And the sleep deprivation is not something you can really train for. I'm trying to look at it as a big night out! OK, big day and night out. Reminds me of the occasional overnighters I did at college. Some to get assignments completed - some, of course, of the more social variety.

I'm not quite sure what category I'd put this little adventure in...

(What's that you say?... A category called, simply, "Madness"? Yep, you could be right...)

Mind you I have done a few overnight adventure things in my time: a few overnighter canoe marathons, so I'm not a stranger to overnighter endurance events. (Let's just forget the fact that I was much, much younger then - and we started paddling at 4pm - this bloody ride thing starts at 10am!)

And since then, of course, I have become a mum, and even if, in hindsight, I've emerged relatively unscarred from the battle zone of three babies' sleeping habits (blessed as I have been with pretty good sleepers), I have still experienced a few sleepless nights with newborn feeding issues, and then sick babies - and bigger kids for that matter... (while the Daddy slept through it all, but let's not go there!!!)

So where was I? It's raining. And I'm not riding. Because of all things, would you believe, I can't control the weather. Dammit!

I have, of course, six kazillion, seven hundred and twenty four other things I should and could be doing, and the issues I am having with time management and prioritising and procrastination would fill another blog post. (So I might leave them for another blog post, and perhaps attempt to do some of them now!)

Labels: bike riding, daily

Or Carpe Diem as they say in some circles.

These days we are actually more likely to do a "Seize the day, Harvie", in a booming Statue voice from the film.... how can you not take off Kamahl's voice?! (I wonder if that line has become commonplace outside of Australia, or have we claimed it simply because an Aussie won an Oscar for this quirky little short film..)

Whatever, it would be true to saythat this has become our motto in life - and furthermore an excuse to choose between the things we do and don't enjoy doing. Translation: not much has been happening around here on the household front - indoors, outdoors, or doing anything about the renovations. Instead we are filling our weekends and holidays with- and spending our money on - a range of .. activities... that some might consider slightly batty.

The house may be falling down around our ears, but subconsciously - nay, even consciously - we're working on the assumption that we should strike while the iron is hot... do stuff while we still can. If something "not good" happened to us - in a 'you just don't know what's round the corner' sense, then we *think* that we (or others in the family) would care more about the experiences and challenges that we have shared than living in a house worthy of a House & Garden feature.

So Marc is obsessing with training up for this Geoquest 48 hour adventure racing weekend (and getting fitter and trimmer by the minute, damn him)... Perhaps I am a bit envious that he has this immediate focus and drive which is managing to take priority in the 'free time' that he has.

But on the family front, I've made accommodation bookings so that we can take the kids cross country skiing in July. (We made the decision on this a few days after a local dad died suddenly at age 50... reality check - if you put things off, you might never get to do them...)

And last night we committed to a weekend for the two of us in Melbourne in October.

Now before you think 'ahhh, romantic getaway... how sweeeet...', think again (or browse my blog - or even just the paragraphs above). And if you guessed 'oh probably something to do with cycling some crazy distance, the mad buggers' you would be right.

We are going to go in the 'Around the Bay in a Day' on our tandem. A mere 210km in one day - but with a rest on the ferry in the middle!! (We're leaving something to aim for with the 250km option - for another year!)

The crazy part about it is that we won't be alone. There will be a few thousand other cyclists doing it too; in fact the 250km, and the 210km going the other way round the bay are already booked out!

Part of the challenge will be taking the tandem on the plane! And then it'll have to be maxi-taxi from the airport. The other week I missed some cheap promo fares for the Sydney/Melbourne flights; Murphy's Law will likely prevail - as soon as I buy them at $115 they'll bung on another $89 promo, but if I don't they won't, or worse, sell out. And then, it's the hotel vs the impose on friends question (an old school chum of Marc's lives pretty close to the city, BUT, it doesn't feel right to have to leave someone's house at 5am or earlier, and then collapse, unsociably exhausted into a spare bed instead of using the opportunity to actually catch up on each others' lives. Romance may not get a look in, but lashing out on a hotel does sound appealing.)

The weekend before that, it's the 100km Brisbane to Gold Coast ride, which we are talking about doing with the kids...

And of course there's also the 100 mile ride - in August this year....

All of which appear easier, in my mind, than the task of cleaning up the house today and tomorrow before my parents arrive for a two-night visit!!

Go figure.

Labels: bike riding

Or: "I told you I can't do stupid role play scenarios."

Wondering why I haven't posted for a week?** I've just been doing the Stress Thing. As in Irrational Anxiety Attack - come on DOWN!

What about? About a stupid course. A course that meant nothing in the scheme of things. There was no pass or fail. Just turn up and supposedly learn stuff. That's all. Easy peasy.

To most normal people.

One week and one day before this Ride Leader Training course, we were emailed all this reading material, and the course outline. And it was apparent that the 'course' day was really more an 'assessment' day. Barely an hour of actual course time! We were to plan a ride route, based on the material in the 20 page guidelines we were sent. And be assessed on it. And on the day we would be taken around a short ride route, and then we'd have to 'lead' a group of volunteer riders around that ride route. And be assessed on it.

A group of volunteer riders would be prepped to act out a range of things that can and do 'go wrong' on rides. And you had to roll up, and play pretendsies at being the leader; do pre-ride briefing.. and briefings at each regrouping point as you rode around this 3 km course. During this time you would have to act out dealing with the varied pretend scenarios the actor/riders were going to present. Every possible thing they could think of that could go wrong on a ride. (People falling off bikes, getting chest pains on hills, going the wrong way, riding ahead... you name it...)

Well. I stressed about it. BIG TIME. I have developed, over the years, what you'd have to call a verging-on pathological neurosis about role playing - or hypotheticals. (I don't even have to be in front of a group of people - I once flipped out over an online computer course I started to do, because I had to pretend I was advising on computers to buy for some fictitious school.. and I couldn't do it. Because it wasn't real. I couldn't bring myself to pretend or imagine or assume all these fictitious details!)

Various people, but particularly Marc, talked soothing logic to me - even up to when we were lying in bed at 11pm the night before! (that was Marc, not the various people)- and told me it wasn't really that hard, and I was as smart or smarter than most of the people doing it, and it wasn't rocket science, and it didn't really MATTER anyway. What did I have to lose? Nothing! (Plus the classic role model for the kids thing - about giving things a go, doing your best, facing your demons. Yadda, yadda...)

So, that prevented me from pulling out of the bloody thing beforehand.... and so, despite my misgivings, I turned up on the day.

And then the whole role playing thing threw me completely. You see, if I was going to lead a ride, I would pre-arrange one or two support riders that I could trust to be riding with me. One to be the sweep rider, and quite possibly one to lead off, because I know that I am a hill slug. So my M.O. would be to ride in the middle - keeping an eye on things...

I questioned the course leaders on this, but because I was the third cab off the rank to do the scenario, I couldn't use one of the other riders doing the course with me. (Not until they'd done it.) I had to turn up and use whoever was in the volunteer group - ask one of them to be the sweep rider - and "make assumptions" that they would do it right - whatever the hell that meant.

So this threw me already. I wasn't happy about it, because already it was a totally unrealistic situation for me. And the situation was already in role-reversal, because the volunteer riders were there 'controlling' the situation from the start. They had already ridden the route more times than me, and they were there ready to wreak havoc if they could! (Which is not how a normal ride would be!!)

And then one of the volunteers riders (from BNSW - Bicycle NSW - there were five people from BNSW here to run or to help with this course - ever heard the term "junket"?!) - says "I'll be sweep rider."

And I wasn't happy about that, because I didn't know him from a bar of soap, and so I didn't want him to be sweep rider... yet he insisted again... and, while it pissed me off, I wasn't strong enough to know how to deal with it. The assessor invited me to start, and when I went to start with the pretendsies situation - the "HI! I'm Tracey, and I'm going to be your rider leader for today..." it all welled up inside me, and I felt like I was going to burst into tears.

And I just blurted out "I can't do this."

What do you call that? (Apart from pathetic.) Choking? Stage fright?.... Anxiety attack?

I couldn't even start... and I knew that I'd be totally shit at acting out dealing with people pretending to fall off bikes, and have heart attacks, and do the wrong thing... all in the space of 3 km.

Luckily one of the women doing the course with me (and I consider her a friend) is already a qualified trainer/assessor, and they asked her to talk to me. (Seems I'd thrown THEM a situation they didn't know how to deal with!!)

She was wonderful. Called it a classic case of stage fright. Had seen it before. Suggested some options... trying it again later if I wanted - by then she'd have done hers, so would be available to be sweep rider. Or she could 'assess' me later on a real ride. She deflected the guy who had wanted us to do the course in the first place, and who kept on, unhelpfully, telling me I could do it, he had "faith in me.".

I decided not to do it. I know it would have been 'facing my fears'... but I was (and still am) too much of a mixture of upset and angry - and I didn't want to be given any favours. Either way. Plus, I never wanted to be "assessed" in the first place.

So I am angry that I'd let other people convince me that I could/should do this.. when I knew deep down that I didn't want to. I was doing the course to please others... not myself. Did I really want to be a ride leader anyway? Not really - I am really much happier being 2IC. Was a contrived scenario, based on my ability to act, going to prove I could lead a ride? I don't really know. It seems to be the latest trend; even if you go for a job stacking shelves in a supermarket! - which looks to make me pretty well unemployable then.

I might change my mind, but right now my stance is 'well, congratulations... what this course achieved for me is that I am now ruling myself out of leading any rides.' After all, if I can't face up to a role-play scenario, then I quite possibly can't handle any real life crises that might occur. While they said there was no passing or failing, a 'didn't even do' is a fail in my book.

Personally I think that there are other better ways for people to 'train up' as ride leaders. Be a support rider... and then when you do feel ready to lead a ride, then do so with the more experienced leader as back-up. Sounds logical to me.. but the whole competency/training scene these days is role playing.

And what did we actually learn on the day? Not that much, really. We 'discussed' three case studies of rides where things went wrong. (One of them I did say "Well, frankly, I wouldn't be leading a BUG ride on a wineries tour anyway, because duh! - with unknown participants you're asking to get idiots who want to get drunk!)

I prepared part of a ride route beforehand, with map and cue sheet, as per the guidelines in the reading material sent to us. I opted to be "assessed" for that, even though I had decided the whole "assessment" thing was a w*nk anyway. [Riding around doing that on the Wednesday and Friday last week trying to do that was time consuming. (And on Friday I got a flat tyre - which was good from the point of view of being able to practise changing it by myself without people standing over me - but it left me slightly more stressed and exhausted and with a sore lower back!!)]

So I passed the route planning! WHATEVER!! I didn't really care.. it meant nothing to me. The feedback on what I'd done was fine. "Yep, that's the way to do a cue sheet." But a tick and signature?! Wtf....

So there you are. I guess normal blogging transmission may resume once I've got myself over this little bout of neurosis (which may or may not coincide with the consumption of the rest of the packet of chocolate mint slices that I bought yesterday.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

** Oh, so you didn't miss me? Well, couldn't you just pretend that you did?

.

Labels: bike riding, daily, losing my mind

Some shots of our cycling weekend! [And a couple of videos of us riding the tandem and triplet as well!]







Thanks to another BUG member who has been having some fun with the movie option on his digital camera, we've now also got a record of us in motion!





It is actually quite interesting being able to see ourselves in motion. Already we are doing quite a critique of riding styles.. For instance, Alison's seat is too high, as she's swinging her hips too much.. and it looks as if I am sitting too far back... Marc says he doesn't notice it in 'real life', but watching it here you can maybe see it more clearly. (I've never felt quite right on the front of that tandem.. maybe that's why...)

Labels: bike riding

Leaving tomorrow for a few days cycling in Armidale with BUG people (and more particularly other people with tandems.)

It's almost 10pm and I haven't packed yet. My brain went walkabout today. I don't know if it's because Fragile Week has extended into Fragile Fortnight, or I am experiencing the first stages of early onset dementia, but I haven't got my act together at all, and I have a very worriesome story about how I can't manage to buy the right Italian deli meat for a particular frittata recipe - on an ongoing basis. I mean.. pancetta, pastrami, prosciutto - they all start with a 'p', don't they? (How confusing is that?! )

The girls have created a total bombsite upstairs with their packing, and I'm about to strangle one in particular over items of clothing that she "can't find". I can also sense Marc will explode at some point over what hasn't been done that I should have done today.

I have made a zucchini slice and the aforementioned frittata (with prosciutto instead of pancetta) to take with us for sharing at the place we are staying. For some reason cooking three meals in one night was too much of a challenge for the Planning and Logistics department in the old brain, and it took me all day to figure out what to have for dinner, and what to par-cook to take tomorrow. I finally dragged myself out to the supermarket in the afternoon, (didn't write a list, didn't get the right 'p' meat, didn't think to buy softdrink to take for the kids, probably forgot more things that I haven't realised yet...), and then didn't fully process the fact that the reason we are going tomorrow is that it is ANZAC day, and thus the shops will be closed in the morning at the very least, and therefore it was not a sensible decision to put off the buying of the BYO meat for Saturday night's BBQ till tomorrow - because there will not be any butchers open tomorrow.

While I had the cycling program for the weekend, which includes a ride tomorrow afternoon, I also didn't correctly process the required departure time in order to arrive at Armidale in time for the afternoon ride tomorrow (and to say hello to people and maybe have some lunch, and get our act together...) There's the small consideration of a 3 hour drive to factor in as well you see. I don't know how I thought we'd get there... through hyperspace perhaps.. because when Marc pointed out we needed to leave by about 9.00, I kind of gulped and thought "sh*t... I guess we do."....

Neurotic after all, perhaps.

If I manage not to get lost, or forget who I am and where I live, I'll talk to you all on Monday and tell you all about our weekend!

Labels: bike riding, daily, losing my mind

"Can't wait for the Retrospect". It was a line uttered (by someone else as it happens) on the first multi-day wilderness bushwalk I ever did. The Retrospect did arrive, and it always does, and the expression has become a bit of a family idiom.

I thought this to myself a few times today as we went on our reconnaissance MTB (mountain bike) ride in the State Forest just a few kms from home. A few *other* words (of the *choice* variety) were uttered too. There were more than a few loose rocky patches, which kind of freaked out someone of my meagre MTB skills - I've never done a lot of skidding around on dirt, and loose rocks sending the bike jittering off course give me the freaking jitters. It really freaked me out on a couple of downhills.. but also on the uphills. (As if you don't have enough to contend with grinding your way up - sheesh...) [Can you tell from that last paragraph I was FREAKED ?]

But I made it, so of course, through the rose-coloured specs, it was great!

We even did a bit of cattle herding.... !! (As you'll see below...)


Looking like he hasn't even raised a sweat.



Me on the other hand - albeit after a few more, bigger, hills - face like a lobster.. (and turning sideways to the camera doesn't really make me look any smaller...I really must give up that deluded strategy of trying to make myself more photogenic.)

The forest opened out into logged areas (not so picturesque, but the reality that is "State Forest") .. and after heading down one of the more major forest roads into the area, I was startled by a cow grazing in a cleared area. (And, you'd have to say, the cow was startled by me.) Next thing we'd startled a herd of them, who decided that we were there to herd them. So they set off at a canter down the road...




(Here's a close-up.)

Check the two *white cows* of the herd. (As oppposed to "black sheep"). Heh. Marc Joke, that one.

There were a few who were dragging the chain, and as they didn't know what to make of me as I stopped to take the picture above, they careered off into the bush to the other side of the road, and crashed their way through it, trying to join up with the rest of their mates, but unable to because of a fence.




A few hundred metres down the road, the whole herd hung a left, and trammelled through some foliage, and then up and around (somehow) a gate (maybe through a hole in the fence) and then they stood in the paddock looking back at us. It was hard not to think that they had maybe got out of there in the first place, and their guilty consciences sent them haring back there at the first sight of humans. Naughty cows!


About an hour from home. Looking back from where we'd come...


.. and ahead. About another hour till home, but the "worst" was over in terms of loose-gravelled (rocked) uphills or downhills.

Labels: bike riding

And you think we're crazy:

Labels: bike riding

.. make Trace a tired girl.

Totally self-inflicted of course, but F. I'm tired. Tired and lethargic. Normally it takes more than an 85km bike ride to knock me off my blogging, but I've been unaccountably too stuffed to come up with anything remotely blog-worthy this week - even to do some sort of recount of our ride. No amount of coffee consumed seems to have helped. And as for more 'worthy' pastimes that a SAHM should be doing? Apart from a few loads of washing... pffft....

So, yes, I guess.. the cause of all this... We went. We rode. We conquered. An 85 km ride that actually seemed to tally more on our various bike computers. The ride itself was no doddle - we rated it harder than the Sydney to Gong ride. While 'Loop the Lake', and 'riding around Lake Macquarie' conjures up images of a leisurely pedal around the edges of a lake - the reality took us out and around, and up and down, and up and bloody down... ie. it was fairly hilly. (And we actually didn't get to see that much lake.) For some reason there weren't that many rest stops - or if there were, noone was stopping at them, and so you felt this imperative to keep slogging away. They were supplying a light lunch at the finish - and even though we made that around 1.00pm, a bit of fuel half to two-thirds of the way through might have stoked the furnaces a bit.

The real culprit though has been too many early mornings! I'm not a natural at getting up before the sun, and this early rising lark for bike riding is starting to take its toll. After a 4 hour plus drive on Saturday afternoon, we were up by 4.55 so that we could dress, eat, and leave by 5.30 for the hour or so drive to the ride. (Estimated journey time was probably overestimated - should know that we never take as long as the mother-in-law's estimated driving time.) It only took us an hour, so we were there, and prepped to ride by 7.00.

Next morning we were up at 6.00, and dragging reluctant children up so that we could get back home by about lunchtime. (Then I did a one hour swimming squad... just to punish my body a bit more.)

I was looking forward to a relative sleep-in. School days we can afford to get up as late as 7.30. But Tuesday morning the phone woke me at 6am... one of the kid's friends who had been lined up to help with the paper run (usually done by the older two) because Cait was going to stay at a friend's place. Said friend had apparently turned up with her Dad in tow, to find the house in darkness. Thing is, the paper run is WEDNESDAY. Don't ask me how they got their wires crossed on that one.

This morning we set the alarm for 6.00 again, to make sure that Alison was able to get herself up. She was, but, as I discovered when I got up to go to the bathroom, and peeked out the window, the friend hadn't turned up, and because of daylight saving being extended this year, it's a bit dark and spooky now at 6.15 am, and she was too scared to do it by herself in the dark. I suggested she wait and start at 6.30 - which she did, but then only got 2/3 of the run done before having to get ready for school. (I finished it off for her...)

[A big WTF on the friend, who won't get asked again. They all had had a high school disco the night before, and apparently her mother had said she shouldn't get up early (again). Well, ok, but gee, thanks for letting us know!]

I know many people get up at sparrow's you-know-what on a regular basis, so I know I'm sounding like a complete wuss having a great big whinge here. Problem is I'm hard-wired as a night owl, and if I got myself into bed before 10.30 it's nothing short of a miracle, and I'd probably not fall asleep for an hour.

So, candles burning both ends perhaps?

And so, here's some pictorial proof of Sunday's early morning at any rate. I really really should head for bed now, so I'll upload some more photos of our riding tomorrow.

Labels: bike riding

The next family adventure is nigh - next weekend in fact. We are heading off to loop a lake.

???

Specifically, we are going in the Loop the Lake event. It is an 85km bike ride around Lake Macquarie, which is basically a bloody big lake down near Newcastle. Which is not too far north of Sydney - depending I suppose on your definition of 'not too far.' (It is under two hours from Sydney these days, with the freeway - but more like 5 hours from here. We will drive down on Saturday to Marc's mum's place about an hour and a bit north of the start. I am trying not to think of the early start we'll have to have on Sunday morning!)

By 'we', I mean, as usual, all of us, on the triplet and tandem.

Well, it just seemed like another box to tick!

So a bit of last ditch training was in order this weekend, and so we headed off yesterday morning for a 50km + training ride. The route I chose encompassed parts of other local rides we have done, and all I can say is that I reckon we've done enough hill training.

Marc had, last week, replaced the chain rings on my tandem, because on recent rides I'd had a bit of trouble with what you call 'chain suck' - basically the chain jamming and falling off the smallest chain ring (and on one occasion actually breaking.) Which is slightly inconvenient, as you might imagine, as well as leading to a lot of undesirable language on my part.

Today Cait and I were pretty chuffed to be able to shift up and down with no dramas. (Well, I was doing the shifting, but she was also pretty happy we weren't jamming chains every few kms!)

The only downside of the ride (apart from the 'up' of the hills - and the wretched southerly headwind we rode into for around 30km) was that the triplet got a flat about 3 or so km from the end. We changed that, but then got another one just as we arrived back at the township where we'd left the car! (So an anticlimax to finish, as Marc and I continued the last kilometre on my tandem to collect the car, and then drove back to get the kids and the triplet.)

We were all a bit weary afterwards (and I wouldn't have minded another.. oh.. three hours sleep this morning!) but the 'why the hell do I do this?' factor was of course, as usual, fairly quickly replaced by a certain sense of achievement once we'd finished. [Some call it delusional. We call it 'The Retrospect'.]

Although Caitlin's "COOOOL!" just after we zoomed down, down, down at over 60 kph after a bloody long slog up, up, up, was worth bottling. As was her assertion that said slog up was worth it for that 'yee ha' downhill. Maybe we have our kids hooked on 'speed'.

Sometimes I wonder (and worry) about how much and why they enjoy these big rides that we do. Particularly when we drag them out 'for training'. (And for how much longer they will do so.) Perhaps it is, for them, also the sense of achievement afterwards. Cait does seem to enjoy being able to say nonchalantly to her friends 'We've just been on a 50km bike ride'. Though she backed up yesterday's ride with 2 hours of dance practice for the school musical, so she was theoretically more 'weary' last night than the rest of us.

Perhaps it is that more often than not when we do these rides, we buy them snacks that they wouldn't otherwise get! Yesterday we bought apple pies at a store 20km in to the ride, and then burgers and chips at the pub on the way back (with only 12 km to go.)

Maybe they enjoy (like I do) the smiles and reactions we elicit from people that we pass. While the tandem may or may not get noticed, it's pretty unusual not to get a double-take as the triplet whooshes by (and when Cait and I are riding behind, we get to see the responses. Parents pointing it out to their kids. Boys on bikes exclaiming and saying they want one. Older folk smiling broadly at the family out riding together.

Whatever it is, we'll enjoy it while it lasts.

Labels: bike riding

I'm about to ride my bike into town. Sounds harmless enough doesn't it? It's a new challenge for me however. The distance isn't the factor. 20 km isn't the issue any more, and Marc and I often ride that, another 30km, and then return, on the tandem of a Saturday morning.

It's the first time I'm riding solo down the highway though, with the first part being a bit 'light on' for shoulder.

So that's with a side order of adrenalin. Trucks and cars... please move to the other side of your lane rather than to the left and onto the shoulder!

I'm probably barking mad, but I decided I was ready for this challenge.

One, because it will save petrol on running into town twice in one day - which I already did yesterday. (I'll pick up the car from Marc's work, do my business, then drive home, sort the kids out, and drive back in and pick him up so we can go together to a BUG meeting, and possibly dinner.)

Just call me the eco warrior. Heh.

Secondly - well, we ride it on our tandem - and I suppose I just want to tick the 'I did it myself' box, and be able to say 'I rode into town.'

Future challenge, lobby for a bike path all the way to town, so more people feel they can do it. Yeah right.

Spare tubes. Check. Tyre levers. Check. Waiting till around 9.30 so that traffic has thinned out a bit. Check.

Deep breath. Check.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I made it! Just to make it more fun, I had a bit of a headwind to contend with, as well as the traffic - which is really only an issue in parts of the first 10km, where the shoulder of the road may as well not be there.

I wouldn't have liked to do it with any more traffic (ie. earlier)... and nor would I have liked it without my little mirror that attaches to the arm of my cycling gasses. Best thing since sliced bread! (You can see me 'wearing' it in the picture at the top of this post.) I can see what's coming, and brace myself as a big truck passes, and maybe just edge over to the left a teeny bit more. Or use the actual car lane (which is generally smoother) if I can see the road behind is clear. I can time my run through parts where the shoulder disappears (like over creeks!- Next time you are driving, imagine you are riding a bike along the shoulder of the road, and watch how many times the shoulder itself all but disappears!)

So, I am still on a bit of an endorphin high from doing it... though weariness is starting to set in a bit now. It's a harder ride than the same distance without traffic, that's for sure.

But I'm happy. Mission accomplished. Over and out.

Labels: bike riding, endorphins

Labels: bike riding, daily

From this morning's ride:



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Ed to add: The house is apparently vacant. The cycling friend I went riding with does this route most Tuesday mornings (as she is trying to train herself.. and another friend up .. to do the next Big Ride - or Great Escapade as it is called this year.) The farmer who owns it stops to talk to her often - but never seems to remember her, but one time he did tell her that since the old farmhouse was vacant it had been vandalised.

Yesterday he asked her again where we were going:

"When I told him we were the usual cyclists he saw on a Tuesday and that we were in training for a major ride, he looked me in the eye and said "I've been training all me life. It's never done much for me yet." Smiled and drove on."

Labels: bike riding, daily, photos

I'm not one prone to superlatives, but..actually... I had a bloody good weekend.

Even by Saturday afternoon things were going swimmingly. When I was paying for my petrol at the servo late in the day, the 'kid' serving me asked "Have you had a good day?" I tend to think this is a funny trend in cashier pleasantries - (I even got asked what I'd been up to one day, and you don't really know how to answer such a question from a complete stranger some 20 odd years younger...) but the question on Saturday afternoon did make me stop and think.

I paused, and then said "Well, yes thanks, I've actually had a really good day! A bike ride and two swims down at the beach. Can't ask for much more than that!"

Marc and I got up early and rode to town to the usual Community Ride... and then kicked back for two hours (longer than usual) over coffee just chatting, before a pretty warm ride home (to total 77km ridden before 11.00.) Social fitness. It works.

So then we all went down to the beach - just what Marc and I needed to wash away the sweat, and the girls don't need to be asked twice. The waves were great - just perfect for bodysurfing and boogie boarding. And then in the afternoon we had a cycling friend visit with her daughter, so we dragged them down for a swim at the beach later in the afternoon. Two surfs in one day!

Marc is pretty good at bodysurfing, and he is very much a bodysurfing purist. No fins, or hand planes, or any other such equipment. He still amazes me at how far he can catch a wave into the beach. Caitlin has mastered the art quite well now, too, and in the last few years (with baby/toddler/child supervision duties winding back) I've been able to get out in the water at the same time as him, and he's been able to give me some lessons. Given the right conditions, I can now do a pretty decent job of catching waves in myself, and so it's all high fives, thumbs up, and big grins all round when I swim onto a wave and ride it a decent way in. (Right now I'm working on being able to take a breath and then keep going.)

And when I (occasionally still) freak out at the size of a set of waves rolling in, my 14 year old gives me advice!! "Come out further Mum.. before it breaks." ... "Dive deeper and touch the sand."

Alison still takes her boogie board out, and much of the time is able to put herself on waves, riding all the way into shore. And this year Zoe (now with an ongoing relationship with her boogie board) has floored us all with the request "Dad, can you take me out the back?" This is monumental stuff for our little miss Chicken - there's no two ways about it, Zoe, out of the three, and compared to her peers, has always been a complete wuss with the surf. I think she took brave pills this year, but it's a hoot to see her face as Marc shoots her onto a wave, and she careers down the face of it, and zooms all the way into shore.

So now it's more or less a family affair out there. )Even if I still wonder 'who are you and what have you done with our Zoe?') And when we only have to stroll a couple of hundred metres from our house to do this, we wonder why you'd ever want to live anywhere else! I am also acutely aware and thankful that things have changed so much this year. Marc is home pretty much every weekend now, and so we get to do this sort of stuff, together, on a regular basis.

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Sunday we decided we should go tandem riding, as this friend had made a big effort to fit her tandem in the back of her car (somehow!) and bring it down from Armidale. We chose a shortish loop ride near Coffs that we hadn't ridden before. We heard there might be some waterholes to swim in out that way, so we crossed fingers, packed our swimmers, and set off.

We struck gold...

Labels: bike riding, daily