#30DaysOfBiking Part II

With our bike handling skills returning and the nights growing cooler, Ginger and I continued with 30 Days of Biking on our quest to once again become Bike People. Returning to bicycling after so long was a treat, there's no other way to describe it. I knew I'd missed it but I didn't realise just how much until we moved somewhere it was possible to get the bikes out of the house without a team of Sherpas. Every day I tried to think of an errand or appointment to complete by bicycle and if I couldn't, we simply rode around the neighbourhood. Recording and hash-tagging our adventures gave me extra motivation, as did seeing the collected pictures and videos of all our fellow cyclists in both hemispheres. Whether it was around the block or a marathon, you could take a daily trip around the world on two (or three!) wheels by visiting the hashtag. As a bonus, Google Maps for bicycle routes is finally reliable here. It took me around all of the hills instead of up them and had accurate time estimates for a sweat-free journey. Here's a sample of the rest of our April:

Nice.

I laugh in the face of gym when I have BIKE.

Basil Basket still the most useful accessory.

The Stranger Things edition.

Out of the whole month, we missed 3 days due to being 200kms away from our bicycles. And we felt it keenly! 30 Days of Biking was an excellent way to get back into bicycling for transportation & pleasure. Now I just need a new headlight, as the Knog Boomer is on the way out…

Bigger, Backer, Biking-er?

🎶RETURN OF THE BACK(side)

once again

RETURN OF THE BACK(side)

bottom of the world🎶

I was gone so long, emojis became a thing. And because I am forever your Cool Aunty who can name three out of four of the kids who used to be in 1 Direction, I am using them to herald my return to the bicycle blogosphere. It's been a while. Through illness and bicycle unfriendly geography I grew estranged from my wheels. But a move to a less mountainous area of Tasmania, one with shared paths (!) awakened the need. The need for transportation cycling speed. That's approximately 9km a mother-effing hour, baby.

This need also coincided with the month of April, which is 30 Days of Biking month. I couldn't think of a better way to get back into Bicycle Land than forced goal setting and hashtags, so without further ado, here's Part 1 of my glorious return to bicycling, shamelessly backdated:

April 1st - Hello. It's me.
Day one started off rough because there was a gin festival near our new house, and it turns out that those tiny little sample shots will take you down when you have 10 in a row. So I had to sober up before we could get on our bicycles for the first time in years.
P.S. I have Snapchat now because what kind of Cool Aunty would I be if I didn't have a way to broadcast my day drinking BUT WITH A FLOWER CROWN FILTER?

Before Gin Festival / After Gin Festival

By nightfall, Ginger and I were ready to roll on the salubrious shared path infrastructure of Devonport, Tasmania. Our new home and also the home of The Spirit of Tasmania ferry.

Filled with foolhardy enthusiasm, we bicycled to Devonport Bluff and back, never once considering the consequences for our car-seat-softened undercarriages.

Spoiler: I felt it.

It was so good to be back, I don't even have a self deprecating thing to say about it. Bicycling is fucking fun. We threw ourselves into dutifully hashtagging the first quarter of the month, bicycling around the block, to the shops, to appointments, to dinner (where we saw some weird shit), and to a great community market event at Hill Street Grocer where the bike racks were blocked so we couldn't park properly but we got to eat a hotdog in a carpark while a jazz band played. Yes, hipsterism has finally reached Devonport and brought with it a late night dessert bar, a gin distillery, a boutique beer bar that sells alcoholic ginger beer and has espresso martinis on tap, and a grocery so fancy that you can buy a $30 German made dish brush while you wait for your professionally arranged flowers to be decoratively wrapped.

Despite all my rage, I am still just Sous Vide in a cage.

Antidote.  The new late night dessert bar.

We were fatter of bottom and compromised of fitness, but dammit we were back, ready to ride into a bicycle heavy future on flatter land. Welcome to Devonport!

Burnie Bicycle Picnic - Summer Edition.

What better excuse for a summer bicycle picnic than owning a picnic basket and a bicycle? How about perfect Saturday weather and a new floral dress? Honestly, any reason for me to eat egg sandwiches. Yes, I was THAT kid who always ordered smelly egg sandwiches on canteen day. Fortunately it didn't result in ostracism, it just meant nobody ever wanted to share my lunch. (Good! My lunch is mine! Back off!) But my love for egg sandwiches is so bordering on the unholy that I probably would have defiantly borne any loneliness regardless. Anything for that sweet, sweet, mashed up egg and mayonnaise. EGG SANDWICHES 4LYF. What was I saying? Oh yes, new dress:

And perfect summer weather. Burnie shared path is short but smooth.

It was a warm, direct sun sort of day so Ginger and I sunscreened up and made the brief trip to Burnie Park for frittata, the blessed egg sandwiches and little cakes from the Farmers Market. Burnie Park is surprisingly interesting for its diminutive size. It has a pleasant display of roses, war memorial, a tree trail, the original tavern building, plenty of playgrounds, some peacocks (sadly in an enclosure due to the highway being right next to the park), ducks on the loose, a lake and a hidden waterfall best viewed on foot, only a hundred metres or so into a rainforest. The picnic area is actually the most boring part, being next to the car park. But the trees are large and shady, the grass is soft and you can see the ocean sparkling in the sunshine. Plus everything is great when there's egg sandwiches, RIGHT?

Very briefly considered designated picnic table.

Post picnic we managed to run into another West Australian transplant so we all adjourned to nearby Makers Workshop for coffee by the beach. It's very easy to segue into these kinds of lazy afternoons in North West Tasmania. Just another reason why summer here is superior, egg sandwiches or no.

Admiring my new yellow straps outside Makers Workshop.

Last of the Summer Whine.

I am not a hot weather human. It has taken moving as far away from the baking pavements of Perth as I possibly could without changing countries for me to view the sun as something I may occasionally enjoy rather than constantly fear. Unfortunately, Tasmania had a record breaking heat wave in January with Hobart sweating through 42 degree, bush-fire-filled days while I was down there. Fortunately for me, ordinarily I live in the magical weather bubble of the North West Coast where temperatures never exceed 30 degrees celsius nor drop far below zero. So once I was back in my bubble, I declared we should take advantage of the kinder, gentler summer and embark upon a lazy ride complete with copious refreshments, minor photography and incidental product review.

The 'incidental product review' was the Memories Bottle baskets.

They proved quite excellent.

Doing my part for Tasmanian population growth, I imported my immediate family from Perth in October 2012 and left them to ferment in the North coast splendor of Ulverstone. Once they were sufficiently boozy, I forced them to join me and Ginger on a summer ride to Le Mar café at Turners Beach. This was our first high summer in Tasmania and we made the trip on a deliciously temperate mid 20s day with barely a cloud in the sky. My Mother, Father and Brother all brought their bicycles with them from WA and had a history of two-wheeled transportation so I did not anticipate any problems. Cue problems.

It seems the family that rides together, gets a sore backside together. I forgot that it had been some years since my Mother had used her bicycle for daily transportation, she also had a wrist injury that day which made squeezing the brakes difficult. My Brother was primed having already explored the path alone. My Father approached it with the enthusiasm of an excitable Boy Scout, albeit a Boy Scout with an aged pension. Ginger and I drove our bikes (it always pains me to type that, we never had cause to in WA because of a more comprehensive infrastructure) to Ulverstone and were greeted by the cheerful sight of a rag-tag bunch of family cycles waiting in the sun.

After a fair measure of both dilly and dally about tyre pressure, helmets and attire I led the charge to the nearby path, freewheeling gleefully down to the Leven River. With a sea breeze blowing, the cloudless sky yielded perfection. My only complaint at that time was that my brimmed hat could not be worn. The sad little visor on my helmet did nothing to keep the sun off my face, I had to hope sunscreen was enough.

Green lingered in some fields, others were completely yellow.

Ginger's Classic Al by the River Forth.

Brother, bicycles.

The caravan parks on the way to the main path were full of caravans, a thing we had never before seen. Lots of families were camped right next to the beach, revelling in the hot sun. When the wind dropped, it was indeed hot. Not Perth hot, not 40+ record breaking hot but enough that you started wishing for the wind to return. I knew that when we stopped we'd actually have to cool down, something I had not needed to consider since we left WA. We arrived at Le Mar with minimal fuss and everybody ordered a cold drink and a hearty lunch. Anywhere with an all day breakfast is my kind of place and the pancake stack was monstrous, piled high with Tasmanian berries.

Father wears his helmet by the River Forth, dares the environment to give him a head injury.

Dry fields, fat bottoms, plenty of sun.

A quick stop at the public toilets near The Gables and then we set off for home. This is where saddle fatigue and sun caught up with us. Once you've passed it, it's very easy to forget the buttock adjustment period from the first couple of times you exceed a few kilometres. Even with a cushy seat (on bicycle and yourself!) the sitz bone will eventually have a say. And it will most likely say, "My ARSE!" Thus began an increasingly slow journey home with a rest stop at every bench along the path so that my Mother could take time off from her saddle and my Father (despite not being as sore or tired) could remind us that he was over 70 years old. Of course at every rest stop I became subject to the sun as the lack of movement and shade made me overly toasty. Ginger and Brother were given leave to go on ahead while I dutifully stayed behind, vowing to revise my acceptable maximum temperature to 22 degrees on cloudless days. Eventually the town was reached but the jolly air with which we'd set out was in danger of souring so I made a lone detour to the supermarket where I took full advantage of my new baskets and gathered afternoon tea supplies.

Pictured: Mood souring.

Solution: Food as reward.

A round of turkish delight flavoured cupcakes and a pot of tea soon had saddles a distant memory. My parents even declared they'd like to do the path again which just goes to prove that sugar cures everything.

Ring My Bell.

Until I became the owner of a Pashley Princess Sovereign, I'd never really thought about bicycle bells within any context other than practicality. A bell is just a bell, right? It warns people that you are behind them and that's that - or so I thought. Riding the Pashley showed me that your bell can actually have a significant influence on your ride quality and impact your mood.

As cyclists we all try (at least I'm pretending that is the case) to be courteous users of any shared paths we have the privilege of using. I know I'm not alone in feeling some minor dread when I see a pair of headphones in the ears of the person I am about to pass because it invariably means they will not hear my bell regardless of tone or volume. In those cases I always try to pass them a bit slowly and VERY predictably, hoping that their peripheral vision will sense movement in time for me not to startle them. For all other shared path traffic the bell is your first impression, a polite cough clearing the way for your dick-move: Overtaking.

You know how it goes: You wait until you're in hearing range, you ring your little bell, the person hears and then reacts. You pass, you thank them, they might have a facial expression about it, you might have a facial expression about their facial expression. Either way, the sound of your bell can soothe their inconvenience or enhance their annoyance and I did not realise just how much until I owned what is gloriously described as a 'Ding-Dong' bell.

Interpret this how you will but 'traditional' women's bikes are generally more likely to come with a bell included. Road bikes of course come with nothing (a massive oversight considering their potential speed) because the weight of a bell might add milliseconds to a Roadie's Strava. We all no doubt recall the bicycle bell of childhood, your basic 'Ring Ring' sound with mysterious rotating bits internally providing noise and eventually rusting to impotence. Since then bells have levelled up and you may purchase anything from the cheap Ring-Ring kind to crazy-pricey but elegant Japanese copper bells that sound like they should signal the end of an intensely expensive meditation retreat. Rather than the Ring-Ring variety, included bells on modern entry level bicycles now pretty much all look like the bell that came with my Schwinn Jenny:

It's a thumb strike style, no internal moving parts to get jammed like the bell on my childhood bicycle. You thumb down, the plastic bit strikes the metal and you get a trifling 'Ting Ting' of perfunctory politeness, like so:

Thus I never thought about the effect my bell was having on the mood of the people I was passing. Some smiled, some remained neutral but they didn't end up in my spokes so I was happy. Then I experienced the Pashley Ding-Dong bell:

The first time I took it out for a ride on a busy Perth shared path, I noticed two things. 1. It was a lot louder and clearer as an indicator of my presence so I could signal earlier and, 2. I received a marked increase in pleasantries from the strangers I was overtaking.

Astonishingly, a few people even THANKED ME as I passed. And I only had one tit out! It made my passage through the city so pleasant that I felt suffused with community spirit even after my journey ended. This happened over and over every time I was on the Pashley. Most uncharacteristically, I started to feel like a ray of sunshine every time I rang the bell. It was like having a magic wand to make everybody more amenable.

After the success of the ding-dong Pashley and after moving to Tasmania I was excited to find a similar bell in unique Latrobe situated gift shop, Reliquaire. Imagine if the cleanest, most organised hoarders in the world owned a delightful gift shop and let you go on treasure hunts through it - That is Reliquaire and all visitors to Tasmania should check it out. (You're welcome, Tasmanian Tourism.) Thinking it would be an excellent upgrade for the Jenny, I ponied up just under $30 for the splendid bell and looked forward to gracing my fellow humans with some ding-dong magic. (Not to be confused with 'Dong Magic', which I think is what Harry Potter was about?)

The German 'Liix' Ding-Dong.
Electra also make giant ding-dong bells.

And for the most part it worked just the same. People would hear the pleasant ring and I would be greeted with surprise and sometimes a smile or even a 'thank you'. But for some people, the bicycle bell is a declaration of war. I don't think of the bell as being primarily a car-horn substitute - after all, you don't honk your horn when overtaking. But halfway through writing this post I was forced for the first time to use my bell as an immediate warning to a stranger who consequently viewed it as an offensive act of aggression. It was a man I had noticed standing still just next to the start of a shared path, staring intently at his phone. Suddenly, without looking up he stepped out 90 degrees to the flow of people and bicycles, timed perfectly to collide with my moving front wheel. I was startled and had a split second to react - reflexively, I almost braked but stopped myself as it would have created a different collision involving me and a car. Meanwhile, my thumb made it to the bell trigger even as my mouth opened to exclaim an, "Oh!" of warning/surprise. I hated to shock him but I hated even more to risk breaking his toes. His peripheral vision was alerted when we were about 2 inches apart and he looked up just as my lovely new bell was ding-donging (I could not un-press it at that point), stopping just in time to avoid my bike and for my bike to avoid larger prey. But from his point of view his awareness happening a microsecond before the bell meant I should not have used it and he shouted, "You don't have to ring your bell AT me!"

Actually, Dude. This one time? I think I do.

Bad Moon Rising, Good Bike-Riding. (Bike Hour)

I didn't think I was going to make it to the first Bike Hour of 2013, after a completely normal day I suddenly felt terrible around 4pm with sinus pain clouding my mind and a very strong lunch time coffee leaving my body feeling strung out (Which is why I rarely drink coffee). Ginger was engaged elsewhere and couldn't participate so I didn't even have the motivation of peer pressure to get me out of the house. Despite this I really just wanted to ride my bicycle and I especially wanted to try out the bell I had just installed on the Schwinn so I struggled through a 'Nanna Nap' but did not expect to feel able at 5:45. I predictably failed to achieve the perfect power snooze but I did manage to doze long enough for various nasal sprays and tablets to work their respiratory magic and enough caffeine to dissipate so that my heart stopped pounding like a gavel-happy judge. During this quasi-rest my phone had been buzzing with some frequency and on rising I was surprised to discover multiple weather alerts for approaching thunderstorms. My app assured me that the storm wouldn't hit until after midnight so I put my faith in technology, put some tights on under my skirt and headed out into the golden Autumn dusk to embrace Bike Hour.

Wool Modesty Tights? Check. New Bell? Check.

Dork Head and Narcissistic Selfie? Check.
Let's Bike Hour this bitch!

Deciding to take it easy but also target the 'visibility' element of Bike Hour I determined my route based upon the bike path as well as foot/car traffic in my town. I glided past some early diners in a local eatery and sailed towards the beach which is skirted by both a boardwalk and main road. The weather warnings might have scared motorists into hibernation because the usually busy highway was all but empty. People on foot seemed to have an entirely different attitude to the changing weather and I saw the usual amount of dog walkers, joggers and boardwalk strollers, though the playgrounds were curiously abandoned. It was temperate and there was no immediate threat of rain so in the end the only effect of the coming storm was dynamic and stunning scenery with constantly changing light. Next to the skate park I was literally brought to a halt by a spectacular 'Fingers of God' display. My phone could not really capture the clear delineation of each shaft of blazing light, or the scale of it.

To the West, Nature's Majesty.

To the East, surly teens and some of the only bicycles I saw during Bike Hour.

The sea air put me in excellent spirits so I smiled at everybody I passed and was pleased to note they all smiled back. I figured if nothing else, my Bike Hour could be labelled a success for the mere giving and receiving of goodwill. I had a big and bright "HELLO!" and a wave from a toddler as I exited the boardwalk and a lot of smiles from people who heard my new bell. I saw exactly one other bicycle outside of the skate park scooter/bmx posse, a Very Serious Roadie who was blazing along the bike path in lycra-cased sweatiness. I was sorely tempted to shout, "Happy Bike Hour!" in a cheerfully deranged fashion and confuse the hell out of him but I am not innately cruel and I could see he was thinking deeply about whether bike paths count as 'junk miles' so I didn't break his concentration. Instead I simply smiled at him as we passed like two ships in the night - Me, the plucky blue tug boat of the Schwinn and He, the kind of ship where your balls stick to your inner thigh. Thus ended my only encounter with a fellow cyclist during Bike Hour. The rest of the path out of town went exactly like this:
 

A couple of cars,

Leaning on a bench to check my phone,

And then taking a picture of myself once I realised nobody could see me.

Then I made a video of an ugly sand dune because I am nothing if not too lazy to check if I have actually videoed something interesting:

Around the bench leaning, phone checking portion of my Bike Hour I received a message from my Brother saying he was in a newly opened pub in town. Infused with a sense of purpose and the promise of a refreshing non-alcoholic beverage, I ordered him to stay put and eagerly bicycled back to town…with a quick stop on the boardwalk to document my highly important journey and the ever more turbulent sea, of course.

"There's a storm coming…" TERMINATOR CLOSING CREDITS SONG

Once I arrived at the pub I discovered the streetscape was completely bereft of items to which a person may attach a bicycle. I wondered if I should have used the multistory car park bike lockers some blocks previous but in the end I chose immediate gratification/foolhardy trust in strangers and parked next to the entrance. Fortunately, my Brother was sitting within view of it so I could easily keep one eye on the precious and it was because of this I discovered that my laziness had actually resulted in the most successful part of my Bike Hour. As I sipped my lemonade and lime I had a perfect view of multiple people pausing to admire and comment on the Schwinn. Some were pub patrons, some were merely walking past but I did not see a single person fail to contemplate the obviously-being-used-for-transportation bicycle. Their interest gave me pleasure although I admit I tensed up when people came close to stroking it. (That's what HE said.) I was far enough away from the Jenny that nobody could tell which person in the pub had been so radical as to arrive on two wheels. My helmet was left in the basket and I was sweat free and dressed in a way that left no clues. The Schwinn appeared a free agent and so I had accidentally provided a blank canvas for the potential bicycle dreams of my fellow (wo)man. It probably helped that the Jenny looked rather delightful against the building as the light faded. I hope everybody had a safe and enjoyable Bike Hour and I look forward to a little more Bikeception at the next Bike Hour equinox in September!

"I'll just lock up on the…um…bastard."

"Eh. I can see the back wheel from inside."

I'm Blue (Da-boo-dee-round the bum) AKA How to Clean a White Bicycle Seat

The Schwinn Jenny 7 speed is a cute looking bicycle. A large portion of this cuteness may be attributed to the crisp, white contrasting details of the saddle and grips. Unfortunately, white saddles on 'every day clothes' bicycles come with a major flaw: Everyday clothes are not as colourfast as athletics specific ones. Particularly if you ride in jeans. The Schwinn saddle was holding up well against my rear denim attack…until I bought a new pair of jeans. After one ride, the formerly still white-ish saddle of the Jenny transformed into a mouldy looking Smurf bukkake. E.g.

Think about it.

So how do you keep your white bike seat clean?! I tried cleaning it with a soapy damp cloth. I tried dish washing detergent. I tried gentle, non-destructive, non submerging methods of cleaning. No dice. Remembering my distant, childhood time in the 1980s when all sneakers (trainers/kicks/tennis shoes/what ever you kids are calling them) were made of vinyl, I recalled the existence of 'Sneaker Whitener' and wondered if it might help my poor saddle. I bought a sponge-tipped applicator of horrific smelling chemicals and went for it. (I'm not a 'patch test' kind of gal.) It stunk out a room of my house, made me cough and worst of all - did nothing to erase the mental image of Papa Smurf getting his freak on. I figured I was stuck with the mottled look and hoped that if I rubbed my denim clad butt on it enough, it might at least even out.

After moving to Tasmania - and long after I had stopped caring about the whiteness of my saddle, I was propping up the Jenny outside my local fish and chip shop when a passing stranger did a massive double-take at the state of my saddle. By this stage the blue had spread to the back of the seat around the 'S' (Fat bottom, hello.) and it really gave the visual impression of 'moistness' despite being dry. I could see them glance at my groin, attributing all sorts of yeasty horrors to my undercarriage. I wondered if perhaps it was time to revisit saddle whitening.

Since my first attempts I had fallen in love with a cleaning product called 'Magic Eraser'. Ostensibly marketed for removal of juvenile creative self expression from the walls of your lounge room, Magic Eraser is a thing of beauty and grace which I found had many unofficial applications relevant to my quest to see our bond returned when moving from Perth. (Which it was in full, the Landlady even asking if we had hired professionals, such was the sparkling condition of the house.) Magic Eraser. Learn it. Love it. This is not a sponsored message. Anyway, I decided to put its magic to the test and give the saddle another pass. As close to a patch test as I'll ever get, I started on the back around the 'S'. Immediate success. So I moved to the top. There was smearing and some drips from the eraser as the indigo dye lifted away, I ended up using a dry cloth to immediately wipe areas as they became clean.

I did this in the middle of the night, hence the awful phone pictures.

I used two small blocks of Magic Eraser, from an 8 pack.

Both blocks ended up disintegrated blue blobs from the friction.
(Aaaand we're back to the Smurfs again.)

Once I had finished two little blocks of eraser, I wiped the seat over with a plain cloth dampened with tap water (I didn't want eraser residue to linger) and left it to dry. But not before taking these last two pictures. I was impressed with the results. Though the saddle is not back to a factory whiteness, it now simply looks vaguely used rather than festering. I may try another pass in the future to see just how white I can get it. And I now no longer fear my bottom wreaking havoc on the snowy seat of the Jenny.