Category Archives: In and around Melbourne

In and around Melbourne

She is peddling on the back – a little bit

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After three weeks out of the saddle throwing a major spanner in our riding works, and with only four weeks before we head to The Centre, I FINALLY got back on the bike today with a little help from Ben the Brace and of course my trusty pilot David.

My new best friends for the next 2 months

Lessons from first binding of ankles: 1) allow plenty of time (took 20 minutes on this first round); 2) tape is VERY sticky so prepare for frustration on the part of the taper and extreme bossiness on the part of the tapee 3) for aforesaid reasons buy extra rolls of tape; 4) make a movie – the vid of the physio taping my ankle is more riveting (and will be more watched) than the lates season of Succession; 5) shoe horns are your friend (thank goodness for Amazon express delivery) – fitting several metres of tape and a lace up brace into riding shoes is no mean feat (pardon the pun).

Despite the initial palava the ride went smoothly – we kept it flat for this first attempt but managed 20k without too much fall out (so far) – and yes, i did pedal! Of course we did require the mandatory coffee stop – some things never change.

All in all cautiously optimistic that we might get to The Alice yet – David just needs to pedal a bit harder…..

In and around Melbourne

Burbing in ISO


With two frustrated riders, one tandem bike and one hour/5km limits we decided to use our snippets of freedom creatively and join the ‘burbing’ movement. We set off a couple of weeks ago, determined to ride every navigable carriageway in Postcode 3103.

One hundred and twenty-eight kilometres and five and a half hours of riding later we had left no street, avenue, bike path or night cart lane unexplored. 

What did we like most?

  • exploring the 42 courts/no through roads that we wouldn’t normally drive or walk down – and the way people living in courts leave their garages open so you can see right in
  • that people no longer call out “she’s not pedalling on the back” – they call out “that’s not social distancing” instead
  • the curious glances of our fellow suburbians as the strange masked couple rode  past once…twice….. then back again trying to cover off every nook and cranny
  • planning  the route- I know this sounds strange but when your burb isn’t set on a grid, the route requires careful planning to minimise repetition (hence the 128km)
  • seeing who’d put their bins out early so we could sneak out before curfew to dispose of excess rubbish (thanks Boroondara for cutting back to fortnightly collections)
  • the total absence of cars – bikes rule during lockdown!
  • Keeping our hill conditioning. We always knew we lived on top of a big hill but hadn’t appreciated how many other hills were around it. We climbed over two vertical kilometres in elevation in our 5+ hours riding.

Next steps? Our old stomping ground 3127 where we hope many of our buds will be out the front gardening as we ride by. Unless of course Dan the Man lets us out early tomorrow in which case we might go all the way to 3000!