Cycling in Melbourne Australia
Smile you miserable bastards!
Opinion piece/grumble in todays Age: Fellow leisurely riders: beware the hoons on two wheels
Exercise is a good thing. So why do these cyclists look so miserable?
Now that Le Tour de France is over, I have been undertaking my own Le Tour de Chambre. It involves an exercise bike in a spare bedroom, nothing else, and it certainly lacks the splendid background visuals of France's great two-wheeled scenery plug.
I do, however, live quite close to Melbourne's own two-wheeled scenery plug - Le Tour de Beach Road, which, due to its life and limb-endangering qualities, would better be dubbed the Charge of the Lycra Brigade.
Like Britain's Light Brigade, which charged into the annals of military disaster, and turgid poetry, in the mid-19th century Crimean War, the charge along Beach Road and any other Melbourne thoroughfare can be a grim, joyless affair.
There are lesser individuals who ride bicycles on cycle paths such as the one along the Yarra or beside Beach Road who seem to be enjoying themselves. But what is it about the deadly serious on two wheels? Only 1.3 per cent of Melburnians, according to the census, ride daily to work, and an unknown number do it for recreation and exercise.
Given so few use bicycles for actual transport, I did hope that the State Government's free bike scheme for the central city would take off and relished the prospect of peddling around, as they do in places like Amsterdam, Paris and Tokyo. Imagine people in this city peddling for transportation rather than desperation.
But the French outdoor advertiser JCDecaux, which has promoted similar schemes in similar cities, has walked away from the project, leaving it in doubt.
Australians delude ourselves that when it comes to physical activity, it must always be grimly competitive. Even riding a bicycle we must go for gold, gold, gold! In mental matters we don't care so much. We can import doctors from Africa to staff country hospitals, but poor sporting performance can almost spark a royal commission. Thus cycling often morphs from a pleasant, healthy means of getting around to being fiercely competitive.
It doesn't have to be like this. Last year, in Tokyo, I noticed that although the Japanese are dominant in the car industry and produce about 80 per cent of motorcycles, large numbers of people seemed to ride bicycles everywhere.
People rode on footpaths if the road traffic was too heavy, they rode with umbrellas if it rained, and their urge to cycle was never impeded by needing to find a helmet to wear, because these are not mandatory. In contrast with frantic perception of the Japanese in everything else, once on a bicycle they seemed to move around at a leisurely pace, transporting their shopping or sometimes even taking their dogs for an outing in the front basket.
Almost all Japanese bicycles ridden by men or women were what we would call fairly daggy, old-fashioned women's bikes with lowered centre bars. Such hardware is virtually unknown in Melbourne. When I went into a cycle shop a few weeks ago looking to replace my pedal power clunker, there seemed to be three distinct categories - racing bikes, mountain bikes and what they now call flat bar racing bikes, the latter being the closest thing to a sensible do-anything commuter bike. I wonder how one would look with a basket full of shopping attached to the front.
One cyclist I met some years back told me he was straddling $15,000 worth of Italian carbon fibre racing hardware; this is the price of a small car.
It is not clear who invented the bicycle. The great Italian genius Leonardo da Vinci was credited with drawing a bicycle-like machine at the end of the 15th century, but bicycles as we recognise them now have been around only since the end of the 19th century. Initially they were a toy, sometimes called velocipedes, for the wealthy, but technology allowed them to become cheap transport for the masses.
But in this country it's a different matter. The unpleasant exchanges between cyclists and other road users have been documented. A few weeks back I had one of these. I was in the left lane attempting to pass some stalled traffic on the inside when I stopped, thinking it was not safe. A group of cyclists behind started abusing me for blocking their way. The point of recounting this is that I was not in a car but on a motorcycle. Perhaps some cyclists should display a sticker proclaiming ''my other bicycle is a four-wheel drive''. Criticism is out of the question to such Lycra-thin skins.
Geoff Strong is a senior writer.
Exercise is a good thing. So why do these cyclists look so miserable?
Now that Le Tour de France is over, I have been undertaking my own Le Tour de Chambre. It involves an exercise bike in a spare bedroom, nothing else, and it certainly lacks the splendid background visuals of France's great two-wheeled scenery plug.
I do, however, live quite close to Melbourne's own two-wheeled scenery plug - Le Tour de Beach Road, which, due to its life and limb-endangering qualities, would better be dubbed the Charge of the Lycra Brigade.
Like Britain's Light Brigade, which charged into the annals of military disaster, and turgid poetry, in the mid-19th century Crimean War, the charge along Beach Road and any other Melbourne thoroughfare can be a grim, joyless affair.
There are lesser individuals who ride bicycles on cycle paths such as the one along the Yarra or beside Beach Road who seem to be enjoying themselves. But what is it about the deadly serious on two wheels? Only 1.3 per cent of Melburnians, according to the census, ride daily to work, and an unknown number do it for recreation and exercise.
Given so few use bicycles for actual transport, I did hope that the State Government's free bike scheme for the central city would take off and relished the prospect of peddling around, as they do in places like Amsterdam, Paris and Tokyo. Imagine people in this city peddling for transportation rather than desperation.
But the French outdoor advertiser JCDecaux, which has promoted similar schemes in similar cities, has walked away from the project, leaving it in doubt.
Australians delude ourselves that when it comes to physical activity, it must always be grimly competitive. Even riding a bicycle we must go for gold, gold, gold! In mental matters we don't care so much. We can import doctors from Africa to staff country hospitals, but poor sporting performance can almost spark a royal commission. Thus cycling often morphs from a pleasant, healthy means of getting around to being fiercely competitive.
It doesn't have to be like this. Last year, in Tokyo, I noticed that although the Japanese are dominant in the car industry and produce about 80 per cent of motorcycles, large numbers of people seemed to ride bicycles everywhere.
People rode on footpaths if the road traffic was too heavy, they rode with umbrellas if it rained, and their urge to cycle was never impeded by needing to find a helmet to wear, because these are not mandatory. In contrast with frantic perception of the Japanese in everything else, once on a bicycle they seemed to move around at a leisurely pace, transporting their shopping or sometimes even taking their dogs for an outing in the front basket.
Almost all Japanese bicycles ridden by men or women were what we would call fairly daggy, old-fashioned women's bikes with lowered centre bars. Such hardware is virtually unknown in Melbourne. When I went into a cycle shop a few weeks ago looking to replace my pedal power clunker, there seemed to be three distinct categories - racing bikes, mountain bikes and what they now call flat bar racing bikes, the latter being the closest thing to a sensible do-anything commuter bike. I wonder how one would look with a basket full of shopping attached to the front.
One cyclist I met some years back told me he was straddling $15,000 worth of Italian carbon fibre racing hardware; this is the price of a small car.
It is not clear who invented the bicycle. The great Italian genius Leonardo da Vinci was credited with drawing a bicycle-like machine at the end of the 15th century, but bicycles as we recognise them now have been around only since the end of the 19th century. Initially they were a toy, sometimes called velocipedes, for the wealthy, but technology allowed them to become cheap transport for the masses.
But in this country it's a different matter. The unpleasant exchanges between cyclists and other road users have been documented. A few weeks back I had one of these. I was in the left lane attempting to pass some stalled traffic on the inside when I stopped, thinking it was not safe. A group of cyclists behind started abusing me for blocking their way. The point of recounting this is that I was not in a car but on a motorcycle. Perhaps some cyclists should display a sticker proclaiming ''my other bicycle is a four-wheel drive''. Criticism is out of the question to such Lycra-thin skins.
Geoff Strong is a senior writer.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Cory on -
I'm always smiling. And I'm rarely in lycra.
Also, I would not block the way of smaller road users behind me (last para) - but perhaps that's just me? :Þ
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Permalink Reply by Alex 4.0 on -
Dear Geoff,
If you'd gone cycling in Italy, July-before-last, and not farted around on a scooter, maybe you'd have a different attitude to cycling. Just because you can't see yourself in a pair of knicks doesn't entitle you to belittle those who can. Don't let one Beach Road encounter colour your appreciation of Melbourne's thriving cycling culture - they're hardly the only group out there, albeit among the most easily ridiculed - so why not peruse the calendar at http://melbournecyclist.com and find out for yourself?
"... only since the end of the 19th century"
Is it that hard to peg 'bicycle' or even 'velocipede', as you yourself noted, into Wikipedia? Benz's Motorwagen didn't appear until 1885, the same year bikes evolved from front-wheel-drive 'bone-shakers' to the 'Safety Bike' rear-wheel-drive via pedals and chain. Don't forget Kirkpatrick Macmillan invented the first pedal bicycle in 1839 - and ran! over! a girl! in 1842 - she suffered a graze, and I'm sure Benz suffered a graze or two when he ran his demo model into a wall. (It took him two further revisions to get it right and the Model 3 wasn't displayed until 1887, and only commercially available in 1888 - and it was his wife, Bertha Benz, who came up with the idea of gears!)
One source of the respect I have for cycling is Keith Dunstan's 'Confessions of a Cycling Nut', in which he explains one interesting aspect of early cycling in the UK: the availablity and relative affordability of the safety bicycle allowed men to court women much further afield than by walking - (and I'm sure this experience wasn't just confined to England) - so if you're Anglo-$random like myself and many other Melbournians, and if your grandad winks when you ask him if he rode a bike as a young man, you may well owe your existance and genetic fortitude to the humble treadly.
So roll all that up in your broadsheet and smoke it - just don't use the Drive section, there's too much ink from all those full-page ads ...
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Permalink Reply by Alex 4.0 on
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Was it the left lane - or a bicycle lane? If a motorbike couldn't get through the gap, it was probably the latter, and perhaps he should have stayed out of it in the first place. Motorcyclists regularly argue they're entitled to be at the front of a queue of traffic for visibility's sake - and so they can roar off at the lights by virtue of their power/weight advantage over cars.
He should hand in his Underwood until he's prepare to cover an 'issue' properly. Five cents and a cigarette lighter from the gutter to the person who can tell me what the issue he's covering is - "Cyclists are dickheads and shouldn't be on the road"? "Cyclists are mean to motorcyclists"? "Scooters are better than bicycles"? "Bikelanes are an optional service lane"? "Cyclists get too many perks on the road considering they don't pay any rego"? Zzz...
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Permalink Reply by LongLoad on -
I agree, if he was in a bicycle lane he shouldn't have been there, if he was just in an ordinary lane, he is technically entitled to sop as close to the curb as he likes. However he was "attempting to pass on the inside" a manoeuvre which is permissable for bicles, not scooters (probably because they don't fit).
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Permalink Reply by Alex 4.0 on
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In retrospect he was probably 'road-trolling' ... probably passed the cyclists earlier on the road, and thought, 'hey, this'll get a rise'. Rather like the entire article.
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Permalink Reply by WalkingMelways on -
From a senior writer, incorrectly spelling "pedalling"... twice? Just what are we being "peddled"?
Keep smiling. I'll definitely keep left.
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Permalink Reply by Alex 4.0 on
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Re-reading this I'm embarassed to have missed the 'plea for help' in the top line. He's getting fit on an exercise bike in the spare room - 'with nothing else' - who was the writer that couldn't get started unless he locked himself into a room, naked? Ah, Vivé Victor Hugo, thankyou Wiki. Geoff clearly needs to get in touch with his local BUG!
"Almost all Japanese bicycles ridden by men or women were what we would call fairly daggy, old-fashioned women's bikes (...)"
I'm almost glad he's unaware of Japan's wonderful Keirin culture - and the slavish adoration the West has for the bikes and componentry it disperses like ... some kind of fragmented metal Gojira. Their velodromes are temples to cycling. *sigh*
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