cycling interrupted by work

White noise backdrops Sydney nights. Maybe twenty minutes sometime around four in the morning is not peak hour. In Bendigo peak hour lasts twenty minutes.

We have not travelled together before and Sydney is no place for hicks like us from down south. I’m from a regional city; Liz is of Macedonian extraction; Sandy’s card says she’s a lunatic and insanity consultant. We’d be out of our depth anywhere.

Getting out of Sydney airport is beyond us. We gab away and pay no attention, walk past the lift suggested by the uniformed person we ask for help, and mistake the entrance of a toilet for the concourse exit.

Sydney’s domestic airport train station demands payment of a surcharge—an access fee, a toll on travellers. Liz buys the tickets—they're on 'the tab'—if there proves to be one. I pray to my atheist god for a tab because the ticket price is extortionate.

We alight at Central Station’s platform 21 and swim against the human tide down a tiled tunnel to platform 23 before about-facing and bobbing through the late afternoon jetsam to platform 18.

Our eyes roll into the backs of our heads following station names as they scroll up the information board. It's clear that trains to North Ryde depart from somewhere else. Again we change platforms. The second Northern line, the other Northern loop, rolls out of platform 16.

The train deposits us on an empty North Ryde Station, a cavernous subterranean pit smelling of burnt rubber, and far too grand for us three southern souls. We must be close to hell. It takes two prodigious escalators several minutes to winch us up to the surface. The rubbery smell sticks to us.

The fine print on my ticket says it’s valid till four in the morning. Nonetheless, after a one-way journey and with eight hours till 4 am, my return ticket is 'captured' by the exit machine. Ah, that’s what return means. My night on the town ends here.

A narrow Sydney footpath Indian-files us—me under a backpack, Sandy wheeling a case, and Liz toting a shoulder bag—to the Quest Apartments at 92 Delhi Road. Liz checks us in and we are each given an electronic card, which reception calls a ‘key’.

Neither Liz nor Sandy can slide the key in and out of the slot that activates the lift with the requisite timing. Lights on the dashboard flash and it beeps admonishment. Back at reception we admit to being Victorian and plead for mercy.

We are famished and disoriented, but reception provides neither compass nor cut lunch. Hunger enables us to lab-rat our way through the maze of fourth-floor corridors that finally lead us to apartments 409 and 410 in a sterile wing of an alien corporate world.

Navigating the labyrinth we trudge past the entrails of room service, deposited like scat outside apartment doors—white plates of vast acreage smeared with the pink and chocolaty remains of absurd desserts. No rice pudding or two fruits here.

The apartment fridge is fuelled with enough alcohol to put a small rocket into orbit, but not so much as a complimentary dry biscuit graces the sideboard.

It’s 28 balmy Sydney evening degrees outside, but stifling in apartments 409 and 410. My hot-flushing colleagues crank up the humidity. Sandy points and clicks the air-con remote controller repeatedly. Nothing.

She blames herself—thinks she’s jinxed the air-con, the lift, the railway network. Liz pushes the ‘key’ further into the power slot that activates the system and de-activates Sandy’s nascent delusion.

We all feel slightly foolish—we have failed Corporate Travel 101. We are not-for-profit people in a corporate world: the ordered newspaper does not materialise next morning; none of us has any idea how to get breakfast out of the bain-marie.

Fortunately we are not in Sydney to master Corporate Travel 101. We are here to train 17 people to be good presenters of a unique primary school mental health program. On the afternoon of day one Sandy wows them with tales of schizophrenic purgatory. They buy all her books and she returns to Melbourne.

Late the next afternoon Liz and I sit on North Ryde Station and read 17 evaluation sheets. The two-day format that came to me while spinning out to the Whipstick eucy farm on the Cervélo is just right. They love the program: its cleverness, its simplicity, its plain language, its heart. They want to run it in northern Sydney.

The training is a rolled-gold success. Seventeen out of 17 people give our presentation a perfect score. High fives all round.

booked

I buy a book on the 765 bus this morning. And not just any old book, but the current Booker Prize winner, The Finkler question. It—the book and the fact that I can purchase it while on a bus—makes me laugh out loud, even on the bus, en route to Box Hill to buy a mortar and pestle, not a laugh-inspiring task.

It all starts a couple of nights ago. Back pain immobilises me, so I’m sitting bolt upright at my good woman’s kitchen table, bored. My Android smart-phone is within reach so I begin exploring its functions. It’s smarter than I am. I press Camcorder and it makes a 57-second video. I resolve to produce a feature film tomorrow.

Perhaps Flashlight is a film editing tool. But no, it turns out to be a torch. My phone is a torch—with adjustable beam. So much more useful than a video editor.

A Kindle icon I have not noticed tops the page. I know Kindle is an eReader, having read about them, and considered buying one so I don't have to lug a library of books around France for four weeks.

I open the application and it invites me to install Kindle on my Android. Voilà. Three out-of-copyright books with long-dead authors—Treasure Island, Pride and prejudice and Aesop's fables—are in my archive.

Recently I ordered and paid for a book online for my mother, impressing her no end, as intended. So I have an Amazon account, and with one click I buy Dog on it, lightweight Californian crime fiction with a dog called Chet as narrator. Fifteen seconds later my phone zhings and I am reading it. The screen quality is crystal clear. Cost: $9.99.

Next morning I download Kindle to my netbook which promptly syncs with my Android Kindle. I’m no Luddite, nor technophobe, but I am gobsmacked. For many, this is kid stuff. Later in the day I buy Robert Louis Stevenson’s Travels with a donkey in the Cevennes for a mere $2.49.

Meanwhile I’m grappling with my conscience, my scruples, my eclectic ethics, or something deep inside that hasn’t quite come to terms with ebooks.

packing it in

To pack (it) in, vb. to give up, to admit defeat

I pack in my gym membership the other day: no more pump or spin classes for me in this town. No time remains for gym visits in the coming five weeks as I prepare to quit Bendigo and decamp to Melbourne.

To pack up, vb. to pack goods in compact form, as for transportation or storage

I must pack up my little terrace house in Baxter Street and cart my worldly goods to Croydon. I must pack up my desk and move to a temporary work space in the Bendigo Library two weeks hence: eleven of us will relocate while our condemned building is redeveloped.

To pack in, vb. to cram many things into a small space or time

My mind spins, as it has for weeks, about what to pack first, last and in between. What do I transport in my car and what will I load into a truck? What size truck will I hire? Which bikes go or stay where? When do I transfer utilities into my name so I have gas and electricity?

A million things to think about, a thousand things to do. 

I must continue to find the time to pedal mon vélo. I must squeeze many rides up many mountains into a busy schedule and still find 45.6 hours a fortnight to go to work. And I must find time for the small amount of work my one-person business attracts, like last week’s training days in Sydney.
I must pack it all in without packing it in.

To pack shit, vb. to be afraid, to worry to excess about something

I must also pack it all in without packing shit. For months the gloom of impending interruption to my sedate life casts a pall on everything. Now as D-Day approaches, I settle deliberately into a calm space in my head, telling myself that April is just one mountain to climb. April is my Col du Galibier and I have a whole month to meet the challenge. In July I have but one day.

climbing aboard

I ride the day after Lake Mountain to clear the legs—36.62kms at 25.1kph—but I cannot remember where I ride. The next day I race out to Fosterville, flat to gently undulating, keeping both speed and cadence as high as possible—51.46 kms at 29.0kph.

Work occupies the next three days. Daylight saving kills any chance of riding before or after work. Finally on Saturday afternoon after reading the paper, walking the dog, and seeing my grand-daughter after my daughter took her up north for a month, I roll out to Mount Alexander late on a warm afternoon.

It must be close to a year since I climbed Mt Alex. I pootle along for a while then crank it up through Sedgwick and up the gap at Harcourt North. I bolt into Harcourt then start climbing the old Calder Highway to Faraday, hang a left into the Sutton Grange road, climb some more, and finally push into the southern end of Joseph Young Drive.

Both ascents of Mount Alex are cruel. The north is a pig. The south’s special nastiness is breaking into an eleven per cent grade from the get-go. It takes mercy at nine and then seven per cent, before pitching back up to eleven.  There’s a kilometre of downhill then the final three kms start at seven per cent.

All in all the south ascent of Joseph Young Drive rises 270 metres in five kilometres. The north ascent (from the turn-off) rises 350 metres in four kms. I descend the north side gingerly and push for home. The ride is 84.86kms at 25 dead.

I handle the climb much better than Lake Mountain. My weekly total is 240kms. The Carmichael training system is a distant memory. Fuck it! I just need to ride up stuff as often as I can.      

lake mountain

Today, Sunday, I ride Lake Mountain with some of the group going to France. They did Donna Buang early in February while I’m walking in Tasmania.

It’s already warm when we meet and greet in a car park in Marysville. We spin away and drop 100 metres on the 11kms to Buxton, where we turn around and pick up those 100 metres on the way back to Marysville. This is our warm-up.

We are a bunch of nine or ten. I have not been in a bunch for over a year. I feel hesitant, wary, struggle to sit on a wheel.

Mick owns Croydon Cycleworks. He’s 47. My good woman says cyclists all look ten years younger than their real ages. In Mick’s case this is spot on.

Mal and Kathleen who came to the Pyrénées two years ago look in good shape. Mal’s racked up the kilometres: there’s no belly; he’s whippet-thin. Kathleen, a novice two years ago, is no longer: she’s leaner, tougher, there’s now an athletic-looking gap between her thighs.

Frank is a friend of Detective Darren: he accosts me in the car park, says Darren has told him all about me. Frank is every inch a gun: he races; he’s mean, muscular, and not to be messed with. I’m unlikely to see much of him because I couldn’t stay on his wheel for 30 seconds.

Adrian is closing on 40, a free spirit from the Isle of Wight, a former racer freelancing his mechanical talents—and the thing between his legs—around the globe. He’s doing six months at Cycleworks. He’ll join us in France from the UK. The two of us chat as we pedal side by side to Buxton and back. When we start to climb he’s gone.

Big Nick Thompson works at the bike shop and has done for seven years. It’s a surprise to both of us that we’ve never ridden together. I tell him this at the top of the mountain, and point out that we still haven’t done so. 

Ard (his real name but lengthened to Aardvark) and his mate Mick are older and bigger. Older than me? I can’t tell. Bigger than me? Yes. My fears that I’ll be last up Lake Mountain slide away. In fact I am second last: Katleen is behind me and Ard and Mick don’t make it.

There’s one more bloke: the other guy. I guess I’ll meet him another day.

I have never pedalled the 21kms from Marysville to Lake Mountain before and wrongly assume any tough sections will be near the top. But no, the first seven klicks are the hard part—seven, eight and ten percent grades, maxing at 13.

My lack of climbing finds me out. I don’t want to use the triple but when the going gets tough I click the left shifter. Nothing happens. I try again, then resort to getting off the machine and dropping the chain manually. I remount but the chain falls off the third ring. Again and again. I push it up to the middle ring and struggle to push off.

A bit further on I happily stop for a leak. Then to watch Mick fix a puncture, his first for years he tells us. On the steepest ramps I could get off and walk past myself: I’m barely turning six kph.

When the gradient subsides to five per cent, I stop to wring the sweat out of my headband so my eyes are not stinging. Mick catches me about eight clicks from the top and I keep him talking so as not to grind my weary way up there alone.

Three years ago I descend like a maniac, but I have descended nothing in those three years. Mick, Nick, Adrian, Frank and the other guy are soon out of sight. They’re off the bikes and stripping off sodden jerseys when I hit the car park. Only Mal and Kathleen are behind me.

I decline a visit to the bakery. I’m happy to have climbed a mountain, modest though it is. Mick gently let’s me know that I have many mountains to climb before I climb the Alps in France. He’s right and I know it.

Today’s ride is 66.7 kms at 22.5kph.  

riding not writing

January was a doddle. Riding and writing have little competition in January. In February they compete with work, my one-man business, injury, diminishing daylight, a holiday, and apathy.

March sees me back on the bike but not at the keyboard. The first ride for so long is out to the eucy farm—47.2kms at 28.9kph. I feel good, spin the pedals, but it’s dead flat. The next two days I do a couple of half-loops of Bendigo town—35.6kms at 26.4kph and 30.23kms at 26.9kph.

A couple of days later I spin out to Mandurang South—42.09 at 27.1kph, giving me a weekly total of 155kms. It’s short of the 200 I’m aiming for, but after a February’s lay-off, I’m happy with it. And happy that I’m getting back into the riding groove.

But I’m not at the keyboard. I am walking the dog and writing pieces in my head every day, but I can’t find the time to write and they don’t make it to print. All those great ideas, the bon mots, the nice one-liners, and the pithy bits of philosophising. They vanish.   

blue february

After stating at the end of January that my training is paying dividends, February is a depressing write-off. I manage only two training rides.

The first two days of the month I’m busy logging excess hours at work so I can spend the next five days in Tasmania. On the eighth day I ride up into the Dandenongs. Days nine to eleven I’m professionally engaged, presenting mental health promotion training and attending an all-day youth mentoring meeting in Melbourne’s CBD.

None of this can be helped, but what comes next is a bout of apathy. I’m back at work in Bendigo, but I lose my passion for training for six days until I go to Friday morning pump class at the gym, resulting in the previous posts on back spasm.

On the twenty-sixth I ride to the eucy farm and then my back relapses. It’s a training train wreck. I’m made miserable by my back, depressed that my legs and the bike have done bugger all, and blue with embarrassment, although much of my failure is circumstantial. 

It’s not all blue: time with my good woman in Tassie is a delightful highlight, and so is an exhilarating chat around my kitchen table on 22 February. More of that later.