In more positive news, found underneath the house an ancient track bike. Dad says at least 1910s Matchless track bicycle. Apparently someone in the family used to ride it and my dad rode it for a while too. Its missing wheels, is well and truly rusted but over the summer I’m hoping to get it repaired and ready to ride again. I’ll post some photos when I start to repair it, but if anyone comes across this page with knowledge about matchless bicycles I would love to hear from you so please leave a msg. All I can find out is on wikipedia and that matchless around the turn of the 19th century they stopped making bicycles and started pumping out motor bikes.

Legs are dying this week but I’ll ride on.

For the last two days though there has been someone else in the change rooms of a morning, usually there is a cleaner or the random person changing. This new fellow although is of a special breed. For some unknown reason he finds it necessary after his shower to dry his legs one at a time by placing them up on the benches and towelling them off. Again not such a big deal if its done quickly, but this spaz finds it necessary to do this whilst blocking the exit and for extended periods of time. Its just fucked up how his balls and shit are dangling all over the place.

I find it pretty disgusting and almost perverted. I feel as though next time I see him I will just have to tell him to get his kit on quicker in the change rooms because I find his body repulsive.

On other notes the ride was pretty sweet this morning. My legs are getting used to spinning it up hard down this really steep street, must be around 160rpm when I hit the flat, easily over taking cars doing 60kmh. I also detoured down this street called May lane, just full of graphic art and stuff, cool to find out that there are places in Sydney like this.

Over and out

This morning I managed to take a corner to sharply, hit my pedal on the ground which flipped me upright and forced me over a median strip with only one leg still on the pedals. I then found myself in a rut on the road which I almost slipped over on. Finally as I’m approaching work I came to fast up behind a car, skidding the rear and just before I hit the back of the car I slam the front brakes and I endo into the spare tire on the back lol…..

In conclusion I think I have a slow leak in the rear tire and will have fun at lunch repairing it, hoping this afternoon will go better

First on the train, they are blitzing the train station in the mornings checking  tickets.  So this morning I got a run down about how if I’m doing what they think I’m doing with my train tickets and they find away to catch me they will be pushing for fraud charges. Well my response(in my head lol) was that I always have a valid ticket so it shouldn’t be a problem for me, but the 5minute discussion wasn’t very comfortable.

Then I get on my bike and start the trek into the city, feeling pretty tired as I’ve been pushing home a bit longer and faster this week and just as I’m pulling up to the second last set of lights before work and I slip. I was weaving in and out of traffic and the gutter was full of crap and I slipped and came down hard. I came down hard onto the side of some guys car. Luckily for me there was no damage and he was pretty cool about it but I felt like a knob. Kept on riding then I’m behind some idiot who thought being cycle safe was driving slowly once your in front of the cyclist, to the point your at a walking pace. He must have been frustrated that I was slowing him up even from behind so when he turned a corner he yelled out a lovely piece of abuse.

In conclusion some Sydney drivers are cool and will even let you use their car to break your fall

On Saturday morning I also went for my first Martin place ride, a bunch of fixed riders meet up 7am in the city for a rip around the streets. Not too many people were there last Saturday but everyone that was there was really friendly and just happy that more people are coming for a ride with them. There is also another ride on Wednesday nights and I’m hoping that I get my shit in order so I can tag along for that ride.

Going to see if I can get the dietitian to write up a special post naming what cyclists riding everyday should be consuming to make sure you keep going. She is a bit busy this couple of weeks but stay posted.

Also the bike is holding up pretty nicely, I’ve put some scratches on it but its hard when its in and out of the car twice a day and being locked up everywhere. The tires are starting to wear pretty badly on the back but the front still looks fine. Also having trouble with tight spots on the chain, its weird like last week it was smooth as after I adjusted the chain ring, but I took the back wheel off for a tube change and its got this grinding feeling through the pedals when they are under strain again. Any clues anyone?

Cheers

Been noticing all the scratches left from the stack I had because of the dog, going to repair them this weekend before the steel starts to rust! And also get a piece of fabric or something to protect the top tube when I’m leaning the bike up against things.

Started to ride a bit further home in the afternoons and my legs are just getting progressively weaker, they just don’t feel like I have enough energy. Luckily my gf is studying to be a dietian so she has given me some tips to get the feeling back in the legs. I am now eating a ‘second’ breakfast when I get to work to put the glycogen’s(?) back into my legs, I got some muesli with almonds in it.

Anyways still haven’t been on a saturday morning ride in the city planned to go last weekend but the trains were out :’( so it was too hard to get in there.

over and out

I said threes right? the next incident was a little more serious, after recovering from my first stack and inspecting the minor scratches on the levers I got back on the bike and started to head home now. Everything was going to plan until half way along Sydney Park Rd some idiot in his shitbox blue car clipped me with his revision mirror. I was already a little shaken after almost being attacked by a ferocious beast so when this poor sod clipped me with his car I absolutely erupted. I blew up screaming at him and caught up to him at the lights ready to unleash some more fury but once I saw he was obviously sorry I rode off. I am still shocked at how some idiot managed to clip me(which didn’t tickle) on one of the widest roads it wasn’t like I was riding down the middle of the lane or anything.. but geeezeee!

The final bit of bad luck came with a mechanical failure, the lock ring started to come loose on the rear sprocket, thankfully not too far from home. It was then I noticed the large scratches left in the rims on the rear and front probably from the stack caused by that mutt. Both of these scratches look like at a latter date they will be a point of failure but I did buy this bike to ride and ride it into the ground I will.

After discovering the lock ring being loose I decided to take it back to Mortdale bike shed the lovely store where I originally brought the bike from for the first free service. They said they were going to look after the lock ring and true the wheels up for me. Time will tell how good a job they will actually do as I was a little disappointed when I purchased the bicycle as the bars weren’t straight, brakes not crisp and the fitting was alittle dodgy(well I actually ended up doing it at home), just felt alittle thrown together.

The philosophy of the fixie rider roughly relates to  minimalism, an attempt at reducing the complexity of design whilst increasing efficiency and connection between the operator and environment. It originated from the bicycle messenger community in which fixed speed bicycles became popular because their simplicity  increased reliability and made them less prone to theft. As fixed speed riding developed  into subculture focus began to shift from the design and mechanics of the bicycle towards an “expression of ones self.” The subculture soon began shifting focus from the idea of simple and effective design towards the ascetics of parts and bicycle builds, going as far as some forums now contain lengthy posts which users contribute pictures considered ‘bicycle porn’.

Although as this shift took place some fixed speed cyclist resisted this change in culture and removed those more concerned with the style of their bike than riding it by labelling them hipsters. Ironically the trend with fixed speed circles continued to become more fixated with the ascetics of the bicycle itself to the point where fixie purists will even remove brakes.

Removal of brakes is one an aspect of the fixie speed subculture I cannot relate to and one which I think contradicts the original intentions of the fixed speed bicycle. I once had a lecturer give me advice in regards to the design of electronic systems, he asked the question “how do you make a race car the fastest in the race” and I immediately replied “Give it a big engine” and he replied “The size of the engine doesn’t determine how fast the race car is, the brakes do.” This advice was originally intended to give a new perspective on design but now I think it has a more literal application. The speed of a fixed speed rider, especially in traffic is determined by how quickly they can stop. The best components, strongest riders will never be able to replace the value that brakes add to a fixed setup, which is why I am suggesting that any fixed speed rider that chooses to remove brakes from their bike is really just a hipster. Someone more concerned with the look of their bicycle and not really the functionality as the roots of the fixed speed design is based around simplicity and effectiveness.

Alot of fixed speed riders will defend the choice to remove brakes, claiming that they are reducing the complexity of the bicycle by removing components and that the pedals still provide an effective method to stop. I rebut this claim as the cost to the efficiency is too high to justify the reduction in complexity, as using the pedals to slow will never be an effective replacement for brakes over any non-trivial length of time.

So I am encouraging fixed speed cyclist to keep their brakes on their bikes and value the effectiveness of our bicycles over the ascetic aspects, keeping the fixed speeds out of the hipsters hands.