friday 25th april - anzac day

anzac day public holiday means a number of things for australians; dawn service, parades, two-up. for us it was an opportunity to slip another ride into the week. we lined up our normal public holiday route which took in shelley, attadale, freo and cottesloe. as always it is meant to be a recovery ride and no sections were designated as “smash the crap out of the group” sections… meant to be.

anyway, had quite a good turn out with probably around twenty riders. as usual, a public holiday is an oppurtuntiy to get away, get on the turps the night before, or get told by the missus that you will be doing something other than riding. my missus had let me come out and play so off we trotted for a nice casual lap.

it was cold again, and i was rugged up. i had been out on thursday morning and didn’t fare too well. the other guys had to stop and wait for me twice, which is quite embarrassing. i’m putting it down to work stress and lack of sleep caused by work stress. i am coming to the end of a major project at work and there is a lot on. i usually don’t care, but for some reason this one has affected me a bit. so it was either that, or i was coming down with something. hence the extra layers of clothing.

it was a nice pace as we came down through kensington and past curtain uni. the roads were fairly empty so we were not expecting any hoon trouble, especially not this early. so as we were coming down lawson st and were just about to turn onto manning rd, we had an interesting altercation with a motorist.

lawson st is a double lane rd and we were taking up one lane as we have the right to do. this car, and i can’t even say it was a hoon car as it was a rav4 or honda crv size, came past and gave us a very aggressive blast from his horn the pulled back into our lane so he could also do a left hand turn. anyway, the left hand turn is not the usual, just give way, but has a set of lights which, unfortunately for the motorist, were red.

right, i thought, i am going to see what this dickhead is on about. i rolled up to the drivers side window and knocked on it. this 60 plus year old guy was sitting there, deliberately looking forward with his hands on the wheel making sure he didn’t make eye contact with me. probably silently praying that the lights would change. so andrew also pulls up next to me and actually opens his door and says ‘what did you do that for’. the driver is visibly shocked and probably close to shitting himself as we have now invaded his nice safe little cocoon of a car. he makes some excuse that we were taking up the whole lane, which we reply that we are allowed to. then andrew asks him why he used his horn as he came past, to which he says that he only wanted to warn us that he was coming around. bullshit, it was a full blast to show what a man he is. anyway, the lights change and i am trying to get him to go, which for some reason, he doesn’t want to and wants to argue. here is a guy that was in too much of a hurry and got pissed off that we were delaying him now didn’t want to drive his car. so we shut his door and we headed off first. he then had to come around us again. stupid guy.

it was funny seeing the look of terror on his face when we opened his door. as i have said before, we may look stupid in our pretty lycra, but i’m sure that the twenty of us could have put his car on it’s roof. i know that cyclist have the reputation that we are all testosterone fuelled menaces to society, that run over pedestrians and deliberately hold up traffic, but drivers need to look at us like their old grandmother. we are slow, take up the whole lane and if you collide with us, you will probably kill us. i am probably preaching to the wrong audience, but some people just don’t seem to care that they take our lives into their hands. see lexus.

anyway, we made our way down to shelley, via fern ave and saw some other public holiday ride coming back the other way. there would have been about 100 riders, so it was probably the old papas ride. shelley was very contained and the group stayed together well. apparently lennie lost her chain at the end of the road before we hit the bike path, but no-one let me know so i didn’t realize she was gone till to late. we cruised up canning hwy and missed the appelcross section of the river ride. if we do it when going clockwise, we then have to go past the old folks home on the bike path and with a group this big it is too dangerous.

once we turned onto burke dve the pace picked up a bit. not too much like there was an attack, but enough to start stretching the group out. stu was the main antagonist, which was strange as earlier in the ride he had said that he was not feeling too well. the pace stayed on till pt walter where the hill sorted the group out a bit. luckily there was a general slowing once we were over the top and most people managed to clamber back on.

we turned to get onto riverside drive and past the left bank, the pace picked up once again. still no real attack, but just stu pushing hard to make everyone hurt. darren commented on the nice cruisey public holiday ride we were having. the pace continued until we caught up to a small car with learner plates on. the car alost came to a stop when it went over the speed hump, so about four riders diverted around it. the car was still moving and john almost got squashed between it and the median strip which had started again. silly boys. even worse since it was an inexperienced driver who could panic and just run you over by mistake.

i gave them a stern talking too as we past through freo and headed up to cott. the wind was starting to pick up, or was it there all the time and we just didn’t notice as in was on our backs. either way, it made things difficult as it was almost a direct crosswind so you couldn’t hide behind the wheel in front. the pace stepped up again as we hit marine parade and headed towards cott. i just let it go and sat in where i could. most of us were expecting a nice quiet ride and like chris previously, was looking forward to seeing some nice scenery in cottesloe. not to be as we came through with enough speed to ensure the mind was focused on the wheel in front. i don’t even know who was driving the bunch by this stage, but a number of guys were keen to stretch their legs.

the return through dalkeith was the usual fare, with the pace coming on as the undulations started. i was keen to stay out of it, but when three guys shot off the front, i did a turn to pull them back just before the main climb on birdwood parade started. can’t even remember who was in the break and it was only yesterday. anyway, they went again as the gradient increased, and the guys i had dragged back up to them, didn’t have anything to go with, so they gapped us again. cresting the hill we could see a road block up ahead. probably the wrong thing to do even though the guy said it was ok, but we went through and past an anzac memorial service being held in an adjacent park. the group kind of stayed together till mounts bay road ready for the final line up.

with the wind in our faces, the slog along mounts bay would be hard. with ryan contesting the crit up in midland, there were very few real long range threats in the group. i was second wheel and when the front guys peeled off i thought that it was too hard to go it alone so started to roll through instead and signaled for the others to join in. it worked fairly well until one new guy got a bit confused, left his run too late and formed a big gap that he could recover from. by the time i rolled back to the front we were less than a k from the end so i thought that i would put in a big effort. all this did was give a nice lead out to a bunch of the guys who rolled past me and onto the finish line, while i dragged myself to coffee.

only a small group was at coffee and we were joined by my family for a hot chocolate and muffin. with not many public holidays left in the year, and the group generally getting faster, i fear that the cruisey ride may be a thing of the past as people try to take advantage of the extra ride. oh well, at least we were riding.

friday 21st mar - good friday

ride report by chris

it seems fear of the pool boy and tennis coach were not enough to stop some of the guys from turning up for the ride today. a group of 16 was a reasonable turnout for a good friday ride.

after the last public holiday becoming a bit of a smash session this one was a lot more controlled. we only managed to drop two or three and dr paul “ninja” was able to get to the belltower ahead of us. how does he pull that off?
major disappointment for the day was the usual coffee haunt wasn’t open so we had to settle another location. i can’t comment on the quality of the coffee as i didn’t have one.

anyway, the ride was the usual public holiday lap of the river going clockwise via shelley following the river to freo, north along the beach and then back to the city along the river. a little longer than the usual weekend ride but when done at a sensible pace complete in under a couple of hours.

the usual shenanigans ensued along the riverton stretch but thankfully everyone had listened to my request to regroup along the leach hwy. a little detour around the roadworks at the applecross gave us the chance to admire homes i know i’ll never be able to afford. this wasn’t without incident though as stu dropped his chain , needless to say it wasn’t terminal and we continued on.

shockingly things were reasonably well controlled all the way to pt walter where the pressure put on by a couple of the guys meant the group split up a little. however it seemed the group had listened to the pre-ride briefing as another regroup at freo meant we were all back together. except for the ninja, who at this point used his mastery to do whatever ninja’s do.

so a steady roll along the beach allowed a suffering lennie (complete with secret weapon) to catch back on, not for long though as she decided to make a solo run for home.

from here on in things warmed up a little along the northern river foreshore. i set a steady pace on the front and things were strung out single file for a while at least. it has to be said, the speed along here wasn’t quite what it is on the saturday rides.

the group slowly got back together along by steve’s but not without incident. john went down after a moments inattention led him to touch the wheel of a bike in front. a little blood and a bruised ego was the only damage done thankfully.

all that remained was the finish along mounts bay rd. now by this stage my legs were pretty shot so i decided to tactically drop down the back and have a bit of a rest before the inevitable sprint finish. i knew the flying fynn was behind me somewhere as we headed towards the brewery and thought i’d find out where he was so swung out to go find him. sure enough, there he was sitting at last wheel. ready to kick hard as he usually does. well a thought came into my head; i could spoil his sprint if i boxed him in. at least someone else might get a chance at the “win”.

as the speed picked up i was suffering sitting out in the breeze keeping ryan boxed in, anyhow my cunning plan was foiled and the two chaps who managed to get a break were mown down by ryan and others.

so, a good solid ride and several of us hung about afterwards for the usual bench racing and some tasteful jokes from the ninja. nice.