Author: Mischa

Ain’t no menace, yo

Andy pointed out this little gem of cycling advocacy in The Age.

Well written and full of truth, it’s great when articles like this are published in the wider media. Get on yer bike!

The Cycling Promotion Fund has also just released a bunch of information and fact sheets with heaps of details on the benefits of cycling to health, fitness, life, and even the bloody economy. Download ’em from Wheels of Justice.

Now the next time some smarmy bastard sneers that you should be paying registration if you want to ride on the road, you can hit ’em with the cold hard facts, rather than your U-lock.

Spit’n’polish

If you really want to know your bike back to front, from bottom bracket to top tube, spokes to seat post, there’s only one way to do it. Nothing is quite the same as doing it yourself. Piece by piece, bit by bit. Everything scrounged, Ebay’d, bargained and found before being lovingly scrubbed, cleaned and polished into a machine with no twin, neither on the streets nor in your heart.

Cleaning the frame

Is started with a $50 frame and ended as a chrome beauty. In between was a hell of a lot of waiting. The results are always worth it.

Pictures of Nic’s track bike coming soon, after the grit and grime of the streets has been cleaned off it again and it’s fit for some glamour shots.

Gettin’ down and dirty

Saturday dawned at 10am. Not a bad effort considering Friday night had ended at about 5am, preceded by a suitably foolish amount of wine, beer and punk rock. It was meant to be a 9am rise, in order to shower and breakfast before hitting the mountain for the first time in way too many weeks. Naturally, that wasn’t to be the case. 10am, struggle out of bed, pop two hits of paracetamol out of the foil and jam them into my gob, hoping they stop the shakes that kicked in as soon as my toes hit the freezing floorboards. Wipe sleep from my eyes and do my best to figure out what exactly I need to jam into the camelbak to survive a ride down hill on dirt.

Lots Continue reading “Gettin’ down and dirty”

Breakfast

The whole thing about breakfast being the best way to start a good day is completely true. Which is why I’m sitting here at 2:30 on a Tuesday afternoon, having not yet eaten breakfast or even showered. Safe to say, it’s probably not going to be a brilliant day, but that’s to be expected given the looming presence of my upcoming four hour shift at a supermarket. Fun times? I think not.

When breakfast actually happens, there’s one thing that guarantees a good start in winter. Porridge.

Porridge

Hot porridge. Creamy milk. Spoonfuls of brown sugar that melt into a glorious syrup. When the winter cold really sets in, it’s guaranteed to get your belly full and your body warm. Can’t beat it.

Summer time’s a different story, but you’ll have to wait a little while for that recommendation.

More words

I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tanhauser Gate. All those … moments will be lost in time, like tears…in rain. Time to die.

-Roy Batty, Blade Runner

I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

-T.S. Elliot, The Waste Land

Slow news days

Low on updates around here. There’s a digital camera sitting on the coffee table here at BnC HQ with a bunch of photos due for talking about, but they’ve yet to make it onto the digital communications device that passes for a computer round here. Safe to say bikes have been ridden, on road and dirt (it had been too long). Liam is scouting out Melbourne, seeing amazing bands and drooling over luminous bikes. The rest of us are dragging ourselves through tedious days at work and all-too-brief commutes, followed by a few relaxing hours in front of the tour.

The sun was shining in some kind of mock summer today, and it’s done a fair job of increasing my lust for warm weather and blue skies. It’s been a long winter already and it’s not over yet, although we’re definitely over the summit and onto the plateau. Let’s hope the descent is fast and crash-free. No climbers jersey for any of us here, but it’s finishing the race that counts, right?

Here’s something worth getting excited about come summer time. Will they actually make it to the country this time, or is it yet another tease? Fingers crossed!

Double UGH!

There’s nothing quite like a bad mid-90s sitcom with a single set and a laugh track. Watch it and cringe, it’s difficult not to. It does feature Ted from Scrubs though, which is always a chuckle-worthy pleasure.


I’ll take a track bike over a laugh track any day “HA HA HA”.

And who said guys wearing pink was a new trend?

Read more for something a little more laugh-worthy.

Continue reading “Double UGH!”