It started well. I’d booked a hotel that offered bicycles for cruising around Canberra. I thought, Great! I’d received an email confirming a bicycle was reserved for me and that maps for riding from the hotel to the venue for the HARDCOPY workshops would be waiting for me. This is impressive!
Then I met my bike.
Friday morning, having checked the weather (sunny and seven degrees), fuelled with a hearty breakfast and wrapped in layers of wool from tip to toe, I present myself to the reception desk to collect my bicycle. I sign a disclaimer, am given a bike helmet (compulsory in Canberra) and a coiled bicycle lock with key; and ask which bikes are available.
The reception worker looks over my shoulder. My eyes follow. She says “there are only two adult bikes to choose from.”
On arriving the night before, I’d passed four bikes standing garishly in the foyer, two suitable for adults and and two for children. It looked rather cool to see bicycles so prominently displayed with encouragements to ask at reception to ride them. At the time I’d thought they must have others that would be suitable for my needs. After all they knew I needed to ride 7.1 kilometres to my venue, and back. However, it seems they didn’t. These bikes were it.
So I went to meet my ride – one dark blue Cruiser with red rimmed wheels, a wide beige faux leather seat and elongated chrome handle bars topped with beige handles. I grabbed the handles, flicked the side stand up and wheeled this monster to the footpath outside.
Some people love Cruiser Bikes. These distinctive bikes hint at a laid back, Californian cool, coastal lifestyle, surfing… you get the picture. I can see the attraction but admit the thought of riding one of these bikes has never appealed to me. They always look so unwieldly with their long squat frame and oversized handlebars. Watching others ride them, I’ve always thought the bike looks awkward to handle.
Nonetheless, I was determined to make friends with it.
Nonetheless, I was determined to make friends with it. I thought, I’m fit, seven kilometres is a distance I often ride, it’s mostly flat and there are cycle paths to follow. It shouldn’t be a problem. But it was. The Cruiser bike had only three gears so any slight incline was very hard work. I worked so hard moving this bike along, sweat started to seep through every layer that I was wearing.
Canberra is cold. It’s Australia’s coldest city and during the week before I arrived, Canberrans were rugging up for mornings and evenings of minus 2 degrees Celsius with maximums staying in single figures. Even though it was seven degrees on Friday, I wasn’t taking any risks. The cycle way to the venue took me around Lake Burley Griffin (a central feature of the Canberra landscape) and as any bicycle rider knows, wind over water makes a very cool breeze and seven degrees might feel much cooler. I was wrapped to stay warm but with the Cruiser demanding so much effort I began to overheat.
Then I got lost. Oh yes, how can you get lost in Canberra, it’s such an organised city. Maybe it was just that I was starting to worry about being late or maybe it was the discomfort of overheating, or maybe the signs just weren’t there but I sort of got lost in the gardens of Commonwealth Park amongst all the happy little seedlings waiting to flower in three months time for the city’s wonderful spring festival Floriade. I knew I had to take a right turn out of the park at some stage but where and when wasn’t clear.
The bike commuters who’d been whizzing past me earlier on the wonderful wide concrete cycleways along the lakeside had disappeared. Being late for the first day of workshops was not going to be a good start. So I asked an elderly couple strolling along the lakeside who with thick accents mentioned a pedestrian bridge further ahead. When I came across a groundsman tending some gardens, I hurriedly asked him for directions. He pointed ahead, shaped his arm into a curve and told me to then make sure I take a right hand turn and I’ll be on the bridge over Parkes Way and in the city centre.
Not long after, I found it! and then pedalled into a lovely “bicycles-only” lane along Allara Street, arriving with time to spare and walking into the workshop with thighs that felt like jelly from having to pedal so hard.
And the HARDCOPY workshops that took me to Canberra? They were brilliant! Being immersed for three days in my manuscript with 25 other writers immersed in developing theirs, with expert advice and collegial support sowed many seeds of inspiration and community.
So from my brief visit to the nation’s capital, I can confirm that Cruisers are best avoided for commuting, Canberra is cold for cycling at this time of year and there are some lovely seedlings waiting to bloom.
My ride – the blue Cruiser…
Crossing Lake Burley Griffin via Kings Avenue Bridge.
Riding by Lake Burley Griffin.
Commuter kitted for the cold.
Crossing the pedestrian/cycle bridge that I had to find.
Last week I learnt a new word. It wasn’t just a word from the dictionary that I hadn’t seen before. It was a new, new word.
Back in January, an exchange on Twitter between a citizen and a politician in New Zealand saw the politician tweet: “the very idea that people lug home their weekly supermarket shopping on the train is fanciful”.
To which the citizen replied “I get groceries on my bike”.
The politician, Dick Quax, thought the citizen was joking (he wasn’t) and tweeted a flippant reply.*
In the Twitter-sphere, people started posting photos of themselves shopping by bikes, trains and buses identifying their posts with the hashtag “Quax”. The hashtag started trending in New Zealand and globally, to the point that a definition was assigned**. This is the new, new word that I learnt last week:
“Quax, [verb; past: quaxed, present: quaxing] — to shop, in the western world, by means of walking, cycling or public transit.”
Over the past five months, I’ve been regularly quaxing. I’ve been collecting photos of my shopping journeys with a plan to write about it but to just call it shopping seemed so uninteresting… Enter this new, new word… and shopping just became a whole lot more exciting to talk about!
As a result of my bicycle experiment, the groceries for our household are predominantly transported by bicycle.
Someone said to me a few months ago, “how do you get your shopping… you must do a lot of small trips.” Well not really although we do buy from a few different locations. We gather supplies from our local Saturday markets, from two speciality organic shops and also some items from the local shopping centre. My return journey to these destinations ranges from less than one kilometre to just over nine kilometres.
Importantly, our bikes have panniers – they’re the yellow and black saddle bags that you see attached to the side of my bike – which carry quite a good volume of groceries. It is an acquired art though to successfully arrange groceries in the hollow of a pannier and this adds a little time to my shopping excursions. Also to cater for fridge items, I carry one or two small soft coolers each with an ice brick.
Two weeks ago, I managed to carry this bundle of shopping in my two panniers: 2 litres of milk, 1kg of potatoes, 3kg of oranges, a bunch of kale, a tin of coconut cream, 1 dozen eggs, 400gms of beef, 500gms butter, a bunch of celery, half a kilo of grapes and a litre of yoghurt. Yep! that was a slow 4.5km ride home and perhaps my biggest load ever but no real worries.
There are a few tricky items that have needed some imagination to carry home. There is no way a twelve pack of toilet paper will fit in a pannier (in a Dutch cargo bike it would and I can’t wait to see more of them getting around the streets in Australia). Neither does a 15 litre carton of spring water fit. And when it comes to mango season in the summertime, carrying a tray of mangos home is definitely an adventure. Yet all of these groceries, while awkward or delicate to transport, have been transported home by bicycle, safely.
So I can happily report that quaxing at Currumbin is alive and well!
12 pack of toilet paper secured for the ride home.
Groceries waiting to be packed into panniers.
Panniers packed to the max with kale peeking out.
A tray of mangos becomes…
this… the mango tray is emptied and fruit placed delicately in the panniers with bags for cushioning.
Heading home from quaxing 🙂
*The full twitter exchange can be read here.
** NZ tweeter @ByTheMotorway
An invitation arrived by phone. We’re heading south this weekend to go camping at Woolgoolga. Do you want to come with us? We’re bringing our bikes.
My mind imagines Northern New South Wales with clear autumn skies carrying cool starry nights and sun basked days, mixed with comfortable conversations with long-time friends, a good dose of fresh sea air and maybe a meal from the White Salt fish and chip shop that I’ve heard so much about – yep! that’s worth a road trip.
So we organised the car into camping mode, loaded the bikes on the bike rack (the one that brought an unexpected turn on Day 2 of my experiment) and pointed the car south. Being its beautiful self, Northern NSW delivered all that I’d imagined. What I hadn’t anticipated, however, were the bicycle trails that Woolgoolga and this region have to offer.
As we drove into the township of Woolgoolga, I noticed obviously new signposts with the familiar bicycle icon printed in blue and placed strategically at junctions to give cyclists directions. I asked the woman at the campground office about bicycle trails, thinking I might get a few vague directions about where to head. Instead, she looked under the counter, quickly scanned the office walls lined with brochures and said “there’s a bicycle trail book but I think we’re out of them,” while simultaneously picking up the phone. “Are you heading back toward town?” “Yes” I nod. Returning to her phone call, she then arranged for the other council campground to set aside a bicycle trail book that we could collect as we rode by.
You don’t have to be a large metropolitan city to be cultivating a cycling culture.
At the campground in town, I was handed a booklet, about A5 size, printed on semi-gloss paper, stapled and sturdy, for free. “Explore Our Living Coast” it read. “Popular cycling routes.” It had colour coded maps for five districts – Woolgoolga, Orara, Coffs Harbour, Sawtell, Bellingen and Nambucca – and relevant track notes. There were safe riding tips, a safety checklist, a list of local bike shops and just in case anyone was thinking of opting out, a list of compelling reasons to cycle.
We started with a short ride up to the Woolgoolga Headland for some fantastic ocean views. Then pedalled north to follow the “Woopi Wander” – a ride from Woolgoolga township, affectionately called Woopi by locals, to Arrawarra Headland. The ride is written as 17kms return but our meanderings, which included the short ride up to Woolgoolga Headland and a detour onto a rough bush trail coupled with moments of being lost because we couldn’t find the right street back to the main trail, saw us clock up 25kms for the afternoon.
The trail takes in three pedestrian/bicycle bridges which connect the small communities that perch on headlands between Woolgoolga and Arrawarra. It travels through bushland, over wetlands, along suburban streets, around the school oval, beside a golf course where kangaroos laze grazing in the afternoon sun and, where the local traffic is busiest, there is the comfort of a dedicated bicycle lane. There were some decent hills thrown into the mix but the trail notes gave good warning.
I’m impressed with this region’s commitment to getting people on bikes. The cycling route booklet is funded in part through the Our Living Coast initiative which directly promotes ways of living sustainably in this region. It represents a collaboration by three local government councils (Coffs Harbour, Belligen and Nambucca). In addition, Coffs Harbour hosts a festival of cycling each August with the premier event being the NAB Coffs Coast Cycle Challenge, one that caters for competitive and recreational riders.
You don’t have to be a large metropolitan city to be cultivating a cycling culture. It’s really about whether the community and its governments have the combined will to make it happen. I’m sure cyclists local to the area will have insights into what this region still needs to do better, but as a visitor and someone who likes to ride my bike around, I’m liking what I see.
A bike lane between from the campground and town. The bike lane was a bit bumpy – but it was there.
After a steep climb, even achievable for a newbie bike rider, we head towards the Woolgoolga Headland for some superb views.
We roll over the headland’s crest and around its front. I’m not sure if this is intended as a bike trail but with few people around, we take the opportunity to enjoy the view! It may look like a path to nowhere but it turns left just before the edge.
Heading north, a pedestrian bridge takes us across Woolgoolga Creek.
We detour from the main trail along a narrow bush track with plenty of tree roots and edges to negotiate. It was fun but better suited to the mountain bike than my Vivente touring bike. I was glad to know the Vivente could weather such a rough track.
Back to the ease of concrete and blue gravel as the trail runs along the golf course contrasting manicured fairways on the left with the wilds of a melaleuca forest to the right.
Acres of manicured grass is a dream come true for this mob of kangaroos.
Photo-shy skippy bounds away to the next fairway.
Bridge over inlet from Woolgoolga lake. We saw an Eastern Whipbird amongst the Banskia branches nearby.
Signposts to mark the cycling route are situated at key junctions.
Where the local traffic is busiest, there is the ease of a bike lane for cyclists.
Arrawarra – our destination. Bikes resting while riders picnic (see lead photo)
a bike for all seasons 