A jaunt to Watson’s Bay

October 3, 2023 at 20:15 | Posted in bicycles | Leave a comment
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I rode the new bike to Watson’s bay. This is a ride I quite like, although it has become something of a barometer of my fitness. I also realised, reading my older blog entries, that I go on and one about this endlessly. In reality, I’m not as obsessed with either fitness of my age as this blog would seem to indicate. Or maybe I am, and am in denial.

Anyway, it was lovely. The hills rolled by underneath my wheels very satisfactorily, the sun was shining, and everything was good. After I rode back up the hill out of the bay, I wanted to go further, to went along to Bondi, and then did some laps of Centennial Park. I then turned home, and could have happily continued riding further, but I had to do family things.

It is this kind of riding this fancy bike is so good for. You really can just ride all day; it’s very comfortable and easy. For commuting, it’s slightly less than ideal. I mean, it’s good, but actually the fixie is sort of better (gearing aside). The Trek is just a bit twitchy when fiddling around in traffic. But on a longer rider with less slaloming through the urban fabric, it’s marvellous.

Now I need to plan some longer adventures!

Annual jaunt to Watsons Bay…

January 1, 2011 at 09:57 | Posted in bicycles | Leave a comment
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Well, I did make it out for a ride yesterday, and given the time of year thought I should make my annual pilgrimage to Watson’s Bay on the fixie.

Amazingly this is the first recreational ride of 2010 that I have done on my own. Ive been out a handful of times with friends this year, but not on my own. Strange to think it was something I did pretty much every weekend in 2009. How things are changed by having children!

I was slightly trepidatious as I set off; I’ve done a lot less riding this year and even less of it on the fixie. How would I manage? Would I get up the hills?

As I started the first modest hill climbing up after Double Bay, I started to have doubts. It just seemed like very hard work, and the little derailleur devil started in my ear, telling me I should have brought the ‘wife’ out for one last ride before I sell her. I struggled on, however, and it began to get easier as I found my rhythm.

By the time I got to the big hill up to Vacluse I was well into my stride. I just danced up it (well, puffed and panted a bit, but in a fun kind of way). I love my fixie – and was reassured that riding the Radish hasn’t caused all my leg muscles to atrophy! I whizzed down the hill into Watson’s Bay; my one concession to tiring legs was to use the brakes to slow down. Eighteen months ago I’d have used back pressure on the pedals to moderate my speed, but it only felt like cheating a little bit…

After a quick pit stop at Camp Cove, I headed back. The climb out of Watson’s Bay is one of the steeper stretches, but any attempt to get up some speed to attack it was thwarted by a couple of cyclists coming around the roundabout from the other direction with right of way. I had to go past them, as they were pootling up (using, as I understand it, these new-fangled things called ‘gears’…) which gave me an incentive to push on to the top without pausing for a breather!

I took the Old South Head Road back, taking a detour to Bondi to look at beach; the preparations for the NYE party were in full swing and things were a bit chaotic so I continued through and up to Waverley Park and then on to Centennial Park. I scooted around Centennial, but then remembered it was a place with possible ‘H’ issues, so made my way home.

All in all a great ride. Whilst riding with friends is fun, and it’s nice to share the experience, I do like riding on my own. Alone with your thoughts, going at your own pace, pleasing no-one except yourself. Perhaps in 2011 I’ll try to get out more than once!

Taking the wife to Watson’s Bay

January 24, 2010 at 22:54 | Posted in bicycles | Leave a comment
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A friend of mine has just come back from Adelaide, where he spent the summer break with his family. He came back just a bit too early to see any of the tour, but his brother-in-law rode the open ride stage, and had a lot of fun (notwithstanding the stinking hot weather and the headwind!). Anyway, he’s fired up to do the same thing next year, and bombarded me with a bunch of texts about ‘training’.

So, this morning, we hit the road at 6.30am in the drizzle; I suggested my bête noire , the ride out to Watson’s Bay. I had planned to take the fixie, to put my demons to rest, but given that it was raining I took the wife – it was too good an opportunity to experience the swishy goodness of mudguards.

It was all very smooth. Apart from my dry bottom (about which I lost no opportunity to point out to by riding buddy) the hills rolled underneath me quite easily, even with the heavier bike.Yet, yet, it’s not quite the same. To be half-way up a hill, and to drop a gear (which, especially if you’re pushing out of the saddle, involves losing some momentum as you ease off) somehow feels a bit, well, like cheating. And the wife, well, she’s sturdy and reliable, but it just wasn’t quite the same. I love her when she’s loaded up and I’m in full utility mode, but, um, how can I put this gently without hurting her feelings – she lacks excitement on a ride like that.

So next time, I’ll be back on the fixie.

Or maybe I need to invest in a more hard-core road bike…

Hmmm, that one’s going to be hard to justify with a new baby just weeks away!

(PS Where was youse all? Too soft to ride in the rain? We must have seen no more than three other cyclists all morning!)

New bike!

February 19, 2023 at 14:40 | Posted in bicycles | 1 Comment
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It’s new bike time! As you may have gathered from the non-to-subtle hints on this blog, I have a new bicycle. This is very exciting for a number of reasons. Mostly because any new bicycle is exciting, but also because this one is especially fancy. It is the most fancy bicycle I have ever owned.

I was able to get a very fancy bicycle because fancy bike designers have finally figured out how bicycles should be – which is to say they should have at least 32mm tyres, be comfortable to ride and be lots of fun. For years fancy bicycles (or road bikes at least) were super light, twitchy, awkward affairs with horrible narrow tyres that bounced around as you attempted to go in a straight line on Sydney’s rutted streets. I’m sure they were very fast on a new surface in the Tour de France, but for any kind of normal riding they were just very impractical.

But not any more! Fancy bikes have been getting more and more practical, as professional riders slowly realised that wider types are actually faster than narrow ones on pretty much ay surface outside of a velodrome.

But I digress. Enough of the curmudgeonly ‘I told you so’. As it was my 50th birthday, I splashed out on a fancy ‘endurance road bike’. A Trek Domane. Which, as I learned, is pronounce ‘Do-marn-ay’. It does not rhyme with ‘Wayne’. It would be  good to know this before you go into the bike shop.

There were various reasons I had my eye on this particular model, but to be honest it was a lot to do with the fact it has a storage compartment built into the frame. Yes! Actually in the frame! It is carbon fibre you see, so is quite large and hollow.

This is a bike that professionals compete on. Well, not the exact model I got. Same frame, but mine does not have all the crazy expensive components. Which means it is just ‘expensive’. But how many times are you going to turn 50?

The reason for getting it was so I can go out for longer rides. Whilst I still love the fixie, and can blast to work on it, it’s no longer practical for long rides. My days of punching out 100km up into the mountains on a 48×17 gear are, sadly, behind me. I can barely even climb out of Watson’s Bay any more (and that was 2 years ago!). But with this new machine – well, freedom is back.

I picked it up earlier this week, and went out on both Saturday and Sunday mornings. The first jaunt was a spin up to North Sydney via Lane Cove, and the back across the Harbour Bridge, and today I cruised out to Bondi to look at the ocean, before doing a few laps of Centennial Park on the way home.

The bike is super comfortable to ride, and I had a great time. It’s a bit odd going up hills, as I’m so used to getting out of the saddle and mashing up. Just switching to a lower gear is sort of odd! I think there are some different muscles involved somehow. And is is extremely quick coming down the hills. I do now know the brakes work though, as at one point after building up a head of steam coming down a hill the car ahead of me inexplicably just stopped in the middle of the road. I came to a halt literally 2cm off the rear bumper, with my rear wheel in the air. Note to self – watch your speed on this thing.

So now I plan to do some even longer rides as I do that thing that happens when you get older, in that you simultaneously ride slower and also farther.

Happy riding everyone!

PS Sorry for the stance I have in the photo. A friend said it looked like I was doing one of those strange ‘power standing’ poses. I’m not, it’s just my phone was propped up on the ground, and I had to set the timer, grab the bike and run around before it went off, and I don’t think I was even looking at it when it took the photo.

 

New Year’s Day Ride

January 1, 2022 at 11:23 | Posted in bicycles | Leave a comment
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So I did it again. Exactly one year after my last ride, I went for another one. And it does make me realise that I don’t really ‘go on rides’ at all any more. That ride at the start of 2021 was the last time I just went out for a ride, you know, for fun. That’s not to say I don’t ride my bike. I ride to work every day, ride to the shops, do errands and even take the kids for a ride sometimes. But just going for a ride? Not so much. Perhaps I should make it a resolution to do it more in 2022.

Anyway, I took another familiar route, pretty much the same as this other New Year’s Day ride I did in 2015. I am not very imaginative, as it turns out. I didn’t stop for pictures either – just took one wobbly one whilst riding of an almost deserted Sydney Harbour Bridge cycleway. Motorised traffic was also practically non-existent, the weather was warm but not unbearably so, and I had a fine old time.

Well, mostly a fine old time. It’s getting harder to push the pedals around on the fixie, I have to admit. I am now nearly 50, and time is taking a toll. I don’t dance up the hills any more. More kind of grind. Or maybe it’s just that I don’t go out for rides any more. Yes, that’s it for sure. Nothing to do with old age.

I saw perhaps eight other people riding bikes this morning. I’m sure my mate Neil (who annually harangues us all to go for a ride on Christmas Day and New Year’s Day) would be disappointed. I can hear him now. ‘It’s the absolute best day of the year for a ride!’. Well, at least I got out there. See you all again next year!

New Year’s Day Ride

January 10, 2021 at 15:09 | Posted in bicycles | Leave a comment
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I finally got my fixie back! After weeks and weeks stretching into months it is finally back. What a relief. And, it turns out, rather hard work to ride. Two months of electric biking have taken their toll on my fitness, it seems.

So, on New Year’s Day, mindful of the admonishment of my friend Neil Alexander (who has been advocating for bike riders to get out on Xmas and NY mornings for years, as they are the best days on the calendar for riding), I wend for a ride.

I do almost no ‘leisure’ riding these days. Family takes priority, and whilst I rack up a lof of km on the bikes going to work and back, to the shops, and other errands I rarely just ‘go for a ride’. But I did, and I with some trepidation decided to go to Watson’s Bay. This is a route that is quite familiar to me, as it used to be something I did fairly often BK. (Before Kids).

It’s a nice route (when traffic is light – it’s not that great otherwise), as it goes up over a set of ridges, and the back down to water level through a variety of waterside suburbs – Rose Bay, Double Bay, Rushcutters Bay and the like. Up and down, up and down. Some of the inclines are quite steep, especially the climb out of Watson’s Bay. I used to dance up those hills on my fixie ten years ago – how would I go now?

Well, it was hard work. Fun, but hard work. And, dear readers, I have to admit that I stopped for a breather half-way up tine climb out of Watson’s Bay. The reason, of course, was to take the picture of the Sydney Harbour Heads that adorns this blog. Oh yes, I just stopped to take a photo. Nothing to do with aching legs and gasping for breath. Oh no. Not me.

Of course, it was at precisely that moment that a whole group of cyclists went sailing past me up the hill. They were pretty much the only riders I saw all morning, and they were there to witness my shame. But they all had gears, so yah boo sucks to them.

Anyway, I now have a New Year’s resolution, which is to get my legs back working again. I’ll try Watson’s Bay again next New Year’s Day, and we’ll see if there is any improvement…

 

 

First ride of 2015

January 8, 2015 at 13:36 | Posted in bicycles | Leave a comment
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mapWell, I got out on my first leisure ride for 2015 quick smart, going out with a mate on the 1st January for a spin. Such rides are now rare events, since the little ones arrived. Gone are the days of spending Sunday morning pottering around Bondi or going out to Watson’s Bay. Still, my once-regular riding buddy was in town (for some reason he moved to Adelaide…) so I took the opportunity.

It wasn’t a long ride, nor a fast one. This was in large part because my erstwhile riding buddy has gone all soft in the head since moving to SA, selling his fixie, more or less abandoning his road bike and spending all his time on some new-fangled thing I understand is called a ‘mountain bicycle’. So when he called up to see if I fancied a ride, he did say he would be on knobbly tyres, and ‘will be slow’. I was tempted with a rejoinder ‘so no change there then’, but I resisted, in part because my fitness is hardly up to much and I figured there was a good chance I’d be trailing behind, knobbly tyres or no.

As it was we had a very cruisy ride, chatting as we went, taking in some of the parts of Sydney we remembered from our days commuting (we used to work together). Hence the new Iron Cove bridge (this is new, and really quite good), Gladesville Bridge (still terrible), Epping Rd SUP (ahh, the memories!), North Sydney and SHB steps (seriously, they haven’t changed this yet?), the SHB (the best commute ever), Pyrmont Bridge (much improved with no monorail – are there any cops today?), finishing with a coffee in Pyrmont (absolutely terrible, but limited choice of places given the public holiday).

selfieAll very nice, and we took a selfie outside of our old office building – the building we both worked at when we started riding to work. It was a horrible building in many ways, with a stinky shower on the top floor and no bike facilities, but it was working there that got us both addicted to cycling. If you can call mountain biking ‘cycling’…

Getting older…

January 2, 2009 at 22:50 | Posted in bicycles | Leave a comment
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After being admonished for not riding the other day, this morning I made it out for a ride. Because I didn’t get into gear early enough, I ended up leaving after it had gone 9am. I guess it’s for this reason I didn’t see many other cyclists, as you are all dedicated enough to be up and out and have returned by then…

So I meandered around for a while rather aimlessly; after various excursions by the waterfront around Double Bay I ended up heading to Watson’s Bay via the Old South Head Rd. I had a rest when I got there, as I was rather tired, so I sat and looked at the view for a little while.

Then I headed back via the New South Head Rd. The climb out of Watson’s Bay was hard work, but even harder work was the not especially big hill coming into the city on Craigend St; this I really struggled with. Indeed, I was actually finding it hard to breathe going up here; I’ve never had asthma, but it felt (and I sounded) rather like that as I struggled up the hill. I made it to the top, and tried to catch my breath, still gasping away. I managed to get a really good lungful of air into me, and then, almost instantly, the breathless feeling went away, and I could breathe easily again. Very strange; the lights went green and I got going again, and felt much better, and much fresher. Could it have been exercise-induced asthma brought on by the heat and poor air quality? I don’t know, but it wasn’t very pleasant.

It’s also possible that I’m just not as fit was I was. I’m getting older (I turn 38 tomorrow!), and maybe it shows. Funnily enough, I did a very similar route to the one I took today after Xmas last year (or possible the year before; Bikely rather annoyingly doesn’t show the year when a route was added). I did it on the same bike (although it’s possible that at that point I had it set up as a freewheel singlespeed, rather than a fixie), but last time also managed to detour to Bondi and spin around Centennial a few times, and as I recall didn’t really stop for more than a drink and a snack at Watson’s Bay.

Am I getting too old? Is the mistress (as I wondered about at the end of this blog) getting too hot for me to handle? Are my days of blasting up Heartbreaker Hill on a 48×17 gear numbered? Or do I just need to get out and ride more (which, to be honest, I haven’t been doing as much of over the past few months)?

I guess 2010 will reveal all!

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