A week in Melbourne

League of Honest Coffee

Degraves Espresso

I spent some time in Melbourne attending a conference last week and had a fairly jolly time, trying out various beers and coffee and catching up with some far flung colleagues. The conference was pretty interesting with some really provocative presentations. Though I wonder whether the concept of conferences as a source of new ideas is on the decline, given the nature of the interwebs. See people in the flesh though is great and cannot be overestimated.

Naked Espresso

On my agenda was to try out some of the better espresso places in the CBD and my research revealed a number of gems that aren't immediately obvious to the casual wanderer. The most impressive of which have got themselves a photograph.

My favourites included the league of honest coffee and naked espresso. As an aside, I found it pretty cool the way the busier places had a couple of people out front of the counter, co-ordinating orders and directing the traffic and having chats.

I also spent a bit of time researching beers and had a couple of not yet tasted before examples at various establishments. I was in a hoppy frame of mind and found myself gavitating to the beers with the biggest hop flavours I could find. One notable was True South's Clocktower IPA which has to be one of the best examples of the style being brewed in Australia at the moment. Couple of other beery highlights came from Sierra Nevada in the form of their wet hop IPA and Epic's Armageddon IPA .

Movida Next Door

One of my other objectives was dinner at Movida Next Door. It was typically awesome. So many flavours and textures. I was also impressed by the way the team of people worked together. It was not immediately obvious who was in charge, yet everyone was busy and appeared to be having fun. I'm thinking that as well as the great Movida cook books, they could do something on teamwork and management as we.

My cycling objectives for this year is to ride 6000km, which means getting about 500kms each month. January went pretty well but the week in Melbourne was going to set me back a bit. That is until I saw the share bikes.

Share Bike dock

There was a sharebike rack just around the corner from my hotel, so I soon located a subsidized helmet at a 7 Eleven ($5) and took out a weeks subscription ($8). I downloaded the spotcycle app which mapped the bike stations and gave real time updates of number of bikes available and number of free docks.

Trips under 30 minutes are free, but seemed to get pretty expensive the longer you ride (up to $10/hr), but the idea is you cycle from one bay to the next and keep your rides under 30 minutes. Casual users need to have a credit card.

Heavy, but serviceable

The bikes themselves are heavy, but that is the nature of bikes left outside that can be used by anyone. They're equipped with Shimano drum brakes front and rear, nexus 3 speed hub gears, fenders, bell, bulky saddle and front rack with strap. Despite their bulk, they get along Ok and I didn't see any damaged or broken ones lying about. My cyclemeter reckoned that I managed 50kph at one point (which I don't really believe) but pedaling along at 20kph was no problem.

There's a nice network of shared paths along the Yarra River and various marked lanes around town. Riding in the traffic wasn't too bad, especially as there are so many other people cycling around in the city and most drivers seemed conditioned to it. Perhaps not Taxis, but are they ever.

During the week I clocked up just over 60kms on the blue beasts and thoroughly enjoyed the freedom they offered. The program is apparently on a 5 year trial, and while use is growing, there's been a lower than expected uptake. A lot of that has to be related to the helmet issue, and that the bike racks are not more widely dispersed than the CBD and immediately adjoining area.

That aside, I found them really useful and got to see parts of the city that I wouldn't usually have managed to see by tram.

Mileage in Kilometers = 667









.

Getting a couple of rides in

Last week the 2011 Paris Brest Paris was run and with thanks to the miracle of technology I was able to vicariously enjoy the efforts of friends as they worked towards their goal of finishing the ride. Particularly to Greg, who was the lone "Dog" on the ride and came home in slightly over 80 hours.

Sitting back in my armchair as I was, the ride has also motivated me to get back out on the bike and I have enjoyed a couple of rides over the last few days after not spinning a pedal for 2 months. I have found that apart from some stiffness and predictable contact point soreness, I still remember how to do it. Not so sure about going for a really long ride just yet, but there's a 100km ride in a couple of weeks that I will have a crack at, then I might think about working towards riding Fitz's Classic at the end of October.

Curiously, I remember back in in 2007 thinking about getting to PBP in 2011 and embarking upon my audax adventure, and find myself in much the same position today, thinking about PBP in 2015. It's really not that far off.

Mileage in Kilometers = 3636

Could be worse I suppose

I've been spending time off the bike of late in the hope that my foot will recover. In order to cheer myself up about missing PBP this time and to spend my airfare on something more interesting than whitegoods, while taking some of the weight off my foot - I am going to learn to paraglide in Manilla next week. Should be great.

As far as the foot goes I wish it were better, but it seems not. It's getting worse.

Initially I was treated for metatarsalgia, I got some orthotics fitted in my cycling shoes and moved to a roomier fit with a Look style cleat replacing my SPDs in order to spread the load. As noted, this didn't really work, though the Sidi Lazars are great in every other way.

The primary cause of the pain as it turns out is neuroma, or more specifically Mortons Neuroma, which is basically a benign tumor on the nerve sheaf in my foot between my metatarsals. It is exacerbated by applying pressure to the ball of the foot and apparently one of the causes is wearing high heeled shoes.

I don't wear stilettos so much, but I spent a great deal of time during my twenties and early thirties wearing really tight fitting rock climbing shoes such as these Boreal Aces -



The style for rock shoes was the tighter the better so a good fitting rock climbing shoe was 2 sizes smaller than a walking shoe. In hindsight I can see that something was bound to give eventually.

So the "foot" is now bad enough to cause problems when I'm just walking around, so I am beginning to think that getting a cortisone injection will be the next stage of therapy.

Anyway as its all pretty stuffed, and is getting painful to walk, I may as well ride.

So tomorrow, I'm reduxing yet again!

New shoes, old feet.

Quite depressing really, my feet failed again on the Border 600 this weekend. Could only manage 160km before it became too painful to continue. I think that's the end of my Paris Brest Paris aspiration.

New Gadget

The plan is to use it to power the Garmin and potentially other gadgets on long rides. It has turned up just in time for the Coal Valley 400 this weekend.

A non cycling interlude

I love music, play a few instruments in a slapdash kind of way and am currently learning the Violin. You can always tell when a ride is going well for me as I will be singing various songs as they come to me down the road.

After singing in choirs at school and as a busker and vocalist in a band during my misspent youth, my vocals in recent times only really come out on the road or in the shower. I was never a good singer, but I loved how it made me feel.

Late last year while driving to work listening to ABC Classic FM I heard a story and music about an American composer Eric Whitacre, who had created a virtual choir on youtube. At that time he was putting together another choir and wanted people to join in.

I thought the idea was pretty interesting so noted the link quoted and checked it out when I got to work. The whole concept seemed really exciting so then I thought, Hmm, why not take part?

I downloaded the various scores of the different parts and decided that I could best manage the Bass Pt 1 so set about learning it. For the next few weeks I worked on the tune and with the 31st January deadline looming I started recording my part so I could upload it.

Gawd it was awful! I tried about 100 takes and finally arrived at an imperfect version but reckoned it was as good as I was going to get.

Today the combined video was launched. There were 2052 participants from 58 Countries. I'm third from the left ;-)

Riding for transport

A week or so ago at the Audax NSW awards night at Harts Pub, it was great to catch up with Adrian, once a blogging peer from Yellow Brick Road, now more wise.

He arrived, very stylishly on a natty Brompton and following a folding/unfolding demonstration we yacked a bit about its utility and how Adrian was using the bike regularly during his day to get to meetings outside of his building (he works at a large University) and across campus.

I thought this approach pretty intelligent and as I frequently find myself in a similar position as my office is offsite to the main building (about 1.2k down the road) and I regularly drive to meetings and return often 3 time each day I had a great idea. A Brompton could be really useful in replacing those car journeys and making an (albeit small) difference to my carbon footprint. And bromptons are really cool. Just ask Will Self .

I descended on the Brompton website and after deciding that I would need the 6 speed, titanium model with the Brooks saddle and custom paint, was forced to consider the fiscal practicalities of this.

On reflection I realised that a folding bike wasn't really necessary as I am blessed with a large garage and loading dock at work, and in my home bike shed I just happened to have a "spare" stealth bike built up from decent retro parts found but tragically unused this last year or so (nitto stem and bars, Selle Italia saddle, Dia compe brakes, sugino cranks and 105 ders - the wheels - Velocity Dyads - were new couple of years ago).

So I dusted off the Stealth on the weekend, placed some nice MKS platform pedals on so I could ride in work shoes, adjusted the mudguards, stuck on the old Zefal frame pump and attached lights front and rear. Took it for a quick spin and realised that 20 some years of working downtube friction shifters never goes away and felt right at home.

I took the bike to work on Monday set it up in its parking spot against the wall and waited for my first meeting. Before long I found myself donning my helmet, and velcro gaiters before setting off on my maiden voyage, slightly anxious for some strange reason. I needn't have worried, it felt great and was every bit like riding a bike!

So far I have done 8.7km just going to meetings and back to the office. The bike runs great, it's an easy flat ride and I can make better time on the trip than I ever did in the car, simply because I can ride right up to the back door and the traffic lights mean everything moves at 25kph anyway.

I also feel "cycle chic" on the rides as I'm in work duds, which is usually a suit and always a tie. It's actually really nice to ride like it isn't a big deal, no gloves, no lycra, no water bottle - just hop on and go. I noticed quite a few WTF looks from drivers and pedestrians today as I rode to meetings and back, jacket flapping lazily, drive train humming, carbon being saved.

At the end of the exercise though, I just really enjoy riding.