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!