My urban bicycle adventure – with sprinkles of travel to other places – has been active for sixteen weeks. That’s about thirty percent of my year of cycling completed.
This blog documents a personal experiment in bike riding and story-telling. I’ve committed to riding my bicycle as much as possible in everyday life. I’m testing the boundaries of myself – my laziness, discipline, fitness and lifestyle – as well as the boundaries of my city – its infrastructure, culture and lifestyle – for cycling with ease.
The project is about the bicycle as a means of transport, the healthy lifestyle it brings, the money it saves, the simplicity, the freedom and the smaller footprint it leaves on the earth. It’s about where my bicycle takes me and where it doesn’t.
Since the experiment started on 1st December 2014, I’ve been using words to share my stories. I’ve also been counting some numbers about a variety of facts. So for this post, here are the first sixteen weeks by numbers.
1284.77 Kilometres travelled (except for the week on Lord Howe Island)
389 Kilometres of car journeys replaced by a bike journey
151 Journeys by bicycle (+LHI)
91 Typical weekly kilometres
83.75 Pedal hours
52.5 Fastest (km/hour) (yep, that’s a new record!)
45.54 Longest ride (kms)
42 Journeys under 5 kms
10 Car journeys (includes 3 weddings & Christmas when riding not realistic)
13.5 Average speed (km/hour)
10.9 Steepest gradient (%)
3 Kangaroos
2 Dead snakes on the road
1 Times I was doubled on Jane’s scooter
0 Live snakes
I arrive home from a morning ride and at the end of the driveway I see my neighbour Bob sitting in the communal car wash bay with his bike. I let my bike roll on along the pebblecrete, curious to see what he’s doing. It’s a sunny morning with high humidity and Bob sits in the shade on a foldaway pine chair. His bicycle stands in front of him, suspended on a small triangular frame, as he focuses intently on it. As I announce my approach with a gentle ‘ting-ting’ of my bike bell, Bob looks up. He’s doing some maintenance on his hybrid bike.
Since having a knee replacement, two and a half years ago, Bob’s been able to ride again. It had been a few years but he has fond memories of riding as a younger man. He used to ride around the Gold Coast in the 1970s on a steel frame Viscount. It was his only means of transport. On one occasion, going on a date meant turning up with two bicycles! Although he was wearing the then Queensland uniform of stubbies and thongs, combined stylishly with a “Jaws” t-shirt, the bicycle ride was just perfect for a certain Danish-born woman. They’ve made a life together that endures still today!
Bob rides a couple of times a week. Most rides are about five kilometres but some are 10 or 12 kilometres. He has a few regular circuits that he rides and uses the Runkeeper app to keep statistics on his cycling. Often he rides with his mate George. They load the bikes on the car and drive to Burleigh Heads to ride the esplanade path or to Bilinga to ride the bikeway to Coolangatta.
I was curious as to whether they ride along Golden Four Drive between Tugun and Bilinga. The Gold Coast City Council voted against extending the bikeway along the publicly owned beachfront land between Tugun and Bilinga due to the protests of a small number of private beachfront residents. This means cyclists have to ride along the busy Golden Four Drive in a bike lane that is often filled with parked cars or exposed to the risk of door crashes. When I asked Bob if he and George ever ride Golden Four Drive… “oh no, I’ve had too many close calls along on there. We avoid it”.
Bob rides his bike for exercise, socialising and the odd errand. I wondered what sort of errands he does. He then told me that last week he cycled over to the Palm Beach vet (about 3kms away) and rode home with three kilograms of cat food – 1.5kg in his backpack and the other 1.5kg on his back luggage carrier secured with a bunge cord!
We swap some notes about cleaning the chain and cogs, and about the hazards of sand, salt and rust. His maintenance regime is much more thorough than mine and I end up leaving with a handful of pipe cleaners – those sticks of wire covered in synthetic material to act like a brush – so I can clean the little divots where water pools and rust spawns.
It’s a shared joy, bike-riding.
Today I drove. Two weeks ago, I had to drive the car so it could have its yearly service. Today, I had to take it back. A warning signal was appearing that said: “Car service due in 800km or 34 days”. The mechanic hadn’t reset the car’s software to acknowledge the service was completed. I was keen to have this dealt with. Visions of the car refusing to run or exploding at the expiry of 800 kilometres or 34 days flooded my mind. Both were unlikely but I didn’t need those imaginings tormenting me.
It was strange driving in the car. I felt so immune to the world outside, which I guess is what some people like about riding in a car, enclosed, protected from the temperatures by conditioned air, no wind to mess up hair, a radio or music to listen to, one’s own little cocoon for travelling. And there once were days when I felt that way, and maybe I will again. But not today.
I noticed the stop, start, stop, start, as traffic lights blink the traffic to a halt and then the slow moving forward as each car in the queue winds up, moves through its gears to travel forward again. Then another stop.
It’s so different to the flow of my bicycle when I wheel along. I go slower than cars of course but I feel like I’m travelling faster. And sometimes I am. The bike paths take me across the waterways in a more direct route than many roads. It’s ironic that my average bike speed might be about 18 kilometres an hour and my car can exceed 100 kilometres an hour with ease yet, around the streets of my neighbourhood and this city, my bicycle gives me a better ride.
It’s the freewheeling feeling of the bicycle that makes the difference. There’s a feeling of flowing. My wheels roll. They use energy that’s freely available. They use energy from the land when I ride downhill, or the wind when it’s on my tail. The food I’ve eaten becomes fuel for pedalling.
It’s also the connection I feel with this world outdoors. I’m not immune to what’s happening in the sounds and smells, the sensations of heat or cold, the sights that travelling more slowly lets me see or the people it lets me say hello to. I can’t do that in a car. It’s all too fast.
As I drive the car today, I see people riding bikes and I want to be one of them. I stop my car at a STOP sign and let a woman walk her bike in front of my car. She waves in thanks and so does the man riding his bike on the adjoining road. I realise that I’m treating these bike riders like new-found royalty that I admire absolutely. And I do. I’m thankful to them for riding their bicycles. And as I sit in my car I’m envious of them. I want to be on my bike, riding, not driving this car.
I love having a car. There are times when I need it. There are more times when I don’t. This is becoming so very clear now.
So I had the choice today of continuing to drive the car on to Robina Town Centre where I had to collect my new prescription glasses but I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to do it. It just felt lazy. I tried to convince myself that it would save time and it would but I don’t really need to save time. So, just like other occasions that I’ve needed to travel to Robina in the past three months, I walked over the road and caught the bus.
a bike for all seasons 