This is going to be another one of those ranty posts because it can be and because I want to. And I’m not sorry. If you’re not interested, stop reading now.
This week I have the good fortune of enjoying a week off work and decided that the recently cooler afternoon temps offered a great opportunity to get the road bike out and plot a route around Brisbane’s northside. Lights were strapped on, cycling nicks were slipped into (a rare occurrence for me these days) and I was ready to roll down the tarmac. As I’ve mentioned before, road biking these days for me is a fairly nonchalant affair with mountain bike SPDs, a quick dry tee shirt and bumbag, the only really road bikey thing I have on is the nicks. Any other “performance enhancement” items seem like a waste of time for me now. I’m no racer boy. I go to sight see, to exercise and to enjoy the speed and effortlessness the road bike offers – the Zen of the rhythm. And there’s no mud or dust to hose off afterwards. Kooky, I know.
Anyway, being a late afternoon start, the ride coincided with the afternoon peak hour which wasn’t much bother to me because I was mainly on bikeways so I had minimum contact with the chaos. But the chaos did highlight how ridiculously bad Brisbane’s traffic congestion problems really are. As a I spun along the Gateway Bikeway, it quickly became apparent that, even without much effort, I was moving significantly faster than the traffic on the other side of the fence next to me. That’s a 100kmh motorway over there. Continue reading “Should We Just Ignore That Stench Because It’s Easier That Way?”