Calling on Mr Abbott: More bicycle infrastructure funds, please!

Dear Prime Minister Tony Abbott,

As an Australian family who are committed to leaving a safer, better, greener world for our daughter, I was rather dismayed to discover that funding for bicycle paths was not included in the 2014/15 Infrastructure budget. We need more people on bikes now! Reasons for this include:

1 -  63% of Australians are inactive.

2 -  Inactivity costs us a staggering 13.8 billion every year (in health and associated costs).

3 -  59% of Australians want to ride a bike but they're concerned about cars and trucks.

4 -  Separated lanes will overcome that concern.

5 -  If 59% of people take up riding we'll save at least $8.1 billion - every single year.

6 -  $7.5 billion will buy 7500 kilometres of separated bike lanes and paths.

7 -  It will transform Australia into the most bike friendly and physically active country in the world!

8 - Once word gets around that Australia is the most bike friendly country in the world, the tourists will flock like crazy. Everybody loves a country full of cute bike riders. Just ask the Danish and the Dutch!

So on behalf of bike riders everywhere, I humbly ask that you reconsider the Infrastructure budget, and find some money for bikes. $7.5 billion should do the trick in not only making us the envy of the world, but will do wonders for reducing obesity, pollution and a huge range of lifestyle cancers (how much do we spend on that each year, huh?)

Yours sincerely,
Jorth

PS Imagine that you did spend the money on creating safe bicycle lanes for one and all. Every time a cute bike rider pedalled past, you could think "Hey! I did that!". I'll leave you with that thought, Tony.

You can follow the Bicycle Network's Please Tony campaign here.

View from a bike path

Really, it's the only way to travel!

Bike paths traversed: Outer Circle Trail, Gardiners Creek Trail and Yarra Trail.

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Today has been filled with so many of my favourite things!

And I'm told by a reliable souce (ahem, Grumbles) that there is still lemon meringue pie to come. Hooray! This day just gets better and better.

PS Don't forget to enter the Liberty Fabric Birthday Giveaway.

Ride To Work Day!

Don't forget, fellow Australians, that tomorrow is Ride To Work Day! You can bet that I'll be proudly mounting my faithful blue steed (hmmm, that sounded rather wrong!) and pedalling in to work after scoffing my FREE BREAKFAST organised by the good folks at Bicycle Victoria.
If you see me pedalling along, feel free to wave - although I will be honest: I will put the heels in my bike basket and pedal safely in my daggy old sandals.

So that is how you shall know me - I'll be the one with the cool dress but awful shoes, replete with distended stomach doing free coffee/muffin/croissant/fruit salad burps as I ride maybe not so gracefully into work. Still, it beats being stuck in traffic or wedged into somebody's armpit on public transport. Viva la velo!

Vogue 8511 - The Shorty Short Version

It was a beautiful sunny day, and Jorth was riding her bike to work wearing her new Vogue 8511 when she heard the tell tale siren of a police car behind her, warning somebody to pull over. With a shock, Jorth realised the siren was for her. In a panic, she quickly gave her bike the once over. Lights present and flashing? Check. Helmet on? Check. Reflectors in all the right places? Check. What could possibly be the problem?

As she pulled over and dismounted from her bike, the police slowed down, rolled down their window and said "Nice legs there, short skirt!" and then drove off in a puff of exhaust fumes and macho chuckling.

"Nagdammit!" said a red-faced Jorth, climbing back on the bike in a huff. "I knew I shouldn't have shortened the skirt by 16cm. What the heck was I thinking?"

She then rode off, all too aware of the breeze freely circulating around her nether regions and promising herself this would be the last time she wore such a short skirt whilst riding her bike.***



***I'd just like to clarify that this didn't actually happen. I am well aware that our policemen (and woman) are hardworking people doing what can be at times a ghastly job, and not only do I take my hat off to them but regard them with nothing but respect. I just let my imagination run away from me when writing this post in the hope that blog readers would get a chuckle out of it. Sorry for any confusion caused! It truly is nothing but a piece of fiction. However the sad chopping off of 16cm of fabric? That, alas, is the truth...

Project Details
Pattern: Vogue 8511
Fabric: 1.6m Japanese cotton from Tessuti Fabrics
Notions: 22" zip, hook and eye

Well, as regular readers will know this is the third (oh the shame!) version of this dress I've made. Really, I promise I will stop now. Even though it's so easy to whip up, and is super comfy to wear, and - apart from issues of public decency and self-modesty - is rather easy to ride a bike in.

What can I say? I like to get my money's worth out of a pattern!

I'd like to get home in one piece, if that's not too much to ask

I have made the executive decision not to ride in the city anymore. My ride into - or rather toward - the city is fine - usually trouble free and rather enjoyable - but once I hit the CBD it feels like I am taking my life into my hands, and since I'd rather get home in one piece to the Grumbles and Galumph, it's not a feeling that I am relishing.

Now, I don't want to start a cyclists vs drivers debate (you know how it goes, both groups griping about how the other is worse) - all I will say is that I see of plenty of bad behaviour from both groups. But since winter has set in, and it gets dark so early, there seems to be a different mentality on the roads. Everybody is in such a frickin' hurry, which means that when they try and do that hook turn in front of the tram they don't necessarily look to see if poor old Jorthy is pedalling along.

I had such a near miss last week that the look of shock on the driver's face will forever be etched in my memory, as will the fright I felt as I realised that she hadn't seen me at all until I dinged my bell at her, and if I didn't slam on my brakes in a hurry then there would be a nice Jorth-sized crumple in her door, and me probabily in traction for a few weeks (if I was lucky). Then two blocks later, almost exactly the same thing happened. I was beginning to wonder if (a) I was invisible and (b) if I would ever make it home in one piece.

I'm not quite sure what I can do to make myself more visible to motorists. I ride - following every road rule perfectly, I must say - properly in the bike lane, give drivers plenty of indication and warning when I am going to make a turn, don my super daggy but highly visible yellow fluro bike vest when riding, and have uber bright lights on both the front and back of my bike. Yet it seems that as soon as I hit the city I am surrounded by some sort of magic fog that renders me completely invisible to drivers.

Part of me feels bad about walking my bike along the footpath instead of riding on the road, as the current wisdom says that the more riders there are on the actual road, the more drivers notice them and therefore drive with their safety in mind. But when you have so many near misses despite doing everything right, and you'd like to stick around to see your daughter grow up, then it seems that one has no options but to remove yourself for safety's sake - at least until you are out of the confines of the CBD.

UPDATE: Just like to say I'm not quitting riding my bike - ugh, that would mean waiting for the tram, and I'm far too impatient for that - I'm just not riding the last four blocks of my commute which are smack bang in the middle of the CBD. Give up riding? Never? I love the feel of the wind in my hair too much!

Punctures become obsolete!

After getting two nasty glass punctures within a month on my bike (thank you, inner city dudes who smash beer bottles on Saturday night!) I decided to bite the bullet and get some snazzy puncture-proof wheels for my bike.

If anybody is wondering they go by the name of Schwalbe Marathon Plus, but that's all I'm going to tell you because I don't want to become one of those people who know waaaaaaaay too much information about each and every component of their bike/car/rocket ship and will spend hours droning on about it to anbody who is daft polite enough to listen, and then wakes up at 3am one lonely Tuesday and wonders why they don't get invited to parties anymore.

Especially the ones where you smash beer bottles on a Saturday night, because those are fun!