owlrigh

It's magpie season again, and unfortunately this time I can't avoid the two magpies who have it in for me. They're right on the Pacific Highway, and there's no way of getting around them; they take turns at bombdiving. Hardly has one been waved off before the other comes in from a different trajectory.

A couple of weeks ago Ben and I went for a ride into town, the first time that these birds decided to do the double-up attack. He pedalled up on ahead and stopped once he was out of their range, laughing at my continued assault.

"Hey, I don't have to ride too fast -- just fast enough that you're behind me, because then they'll go for you!"

That they did, and that they did again on the way home.

They continued to get me after that, whenever I was by myself, and then I caved in and stopped riding to town. I couldn't bear the fact I couldn't even try to avoid these birds; there was no escaping them.

I was discussing these birds with a lady at work one evening.

"You should try going along the highway!" she said. "Try that route instead. Get off your bicycle when it comes and walk, because that way it won't see you as a threat."

One afternoon I began with the first of these things, and it was then the magpie nest location became clear -- in the big tree at the very corner I used to turn. Also right under the new path along the highway, and it went for me with a thirst for blood in its ghoulish little eyes.

It was off the bicycle for me, and I tried to walk it along while keeping an eye on the magpie. The creature of evil then ran along beside me as I tried to walk, but mostly ended up getting tangled in my bicycle and falling over.

There had to be a solution!

( My Brilliant Idea. )

On another bicycle note, a comfortable, nice, totally uplifting one: I got myself a women's saddle seeing as my old one was dying, and this women's saddle is the best thing in the world. A Terry Butterly Ti women's specific saddle, shorter in the nose and with a blissful channel in the middle.

I never quite realised how annoying my old one was. At least now I can avoid the magpies in comfort.

( New and old bicycle saddle. )

The short way to work involves a 15-minute bike ride, and that's my old route; the new one's 40 minutes and involves a loop taking me out to the northern breakwater wall, following the bikeway which starts not too far from here and goes just about right up to the supermarket's door.

My thighs are the hugest they've ever been, thick and ropy with muscle and I don't have to even think about squats anymore; I can lift heavy boxes from a squat when at work, push harder on the bicycle than I can ever remember. I've always been kind of wimpy when it comes to speed, and now I find myself wishing for a racer with narrow tyres and sleek frame just so I can whiz past the chaps with their fluoro lycra in the morning.

I come across amusing things:

( just warbling about cycling )

The ride to work is along the Pacific Highway for a stretch, the main road going along the NSW coast going up to Brisbane. It isn't my most favourite part of going into town, but often enough it provides some excitement, if only from the wind hitting me as a double-train truck goes past.

Sometimes this happens with such strength it forces me off the road! Ever since I arrived and have had to go from the boat yard to town I have wished for a bicycle path. There's one going from Ballina all of the way up the coast to Brisbane, just about, with a small bit from Ballina to Lennox Head without a trail. From there, north? You don't have to go on the road at all.

So it was with some pleasure that I noticed some earthworks begin along the side of the road. It began with stakes, which I swore up and down to anyone who got close enough that it looked like a bicycle path. Everyone pooh-poohed my enthusiastic optimism, and the stakes remained untouched for ages.

I went away to Brazil for a month and when I returned the earthworks had begun in earnest. They'd put fine gravel down, flattened it off, and created a path from to the nearby caravan park -- cutting my ride along the Pacific Highway by a third. Eventually this path was paved with hot mix, making it even more desirious to ride up, most especially when a headwind was in force.

This afternoon there was a wind against me, and so when I got to the path I went to cross onto it over the bushy ground. This was where I forgot I'd pumped the tires up to their maximum PSI, which I'd done in anticipation of a bitumen ride.

I promptly hit a very small scraggly clump of vegetation and stacked my bike.

I was wearing a fluoro safety vest so I could be seen better by motorists, and I wished immediately I'd not put it on today. I jumped up and righted the bike, and found that the handlebars had been twisted 180 and one of the gear levels pushed to the side.

I took a quick look around to see if anyone noticed and saw a guy walking up the path towards me. My bicycle-fixing speeded up, but not before he passed by without a glance. I couldn't decide which was worse: him seeing and saying something, or his polite blindness, probably while laughing to himself.

A car'd beeped its horn at me while I was still down, and I hoped that it wasn't anyone I knew; earlier in the day while riding around someone'd beeped and waved, which is what people I know do when they see me riding along the highway. (They tell me days later, hey, I saw you riding!)

All shaky, bicycle fixed, I headed on into town, and stopped by the video store/dvd store. The owner, Neil, was there; I speak to him on a regular, chummy basis.

"I did the most embarrassing thing just a while ago. Stacked my bike in full view of the highway!"

"You all right?" He checked me over. "I know someone who was riding with his wife, and his wife hit a pothole, fell off, broke her neck and died. You're lucky."

All the times I've ever fallen off my bike I've only ever come away with scratches, and only one scar -- from the most memorable of stacks coming down a hill in Tasmania a couple of years ago.

The most embarrassing will remain the time in Bundaberg -- where I looked down to avoid the glare of the low afternoon sun and ran into the back of a parked car at full speed. Instead of twisting handlebars this bent my front fork backwards to such an extent I couldn't ride it properly back home! Because I was riding with Damien to town, I had to continue there, as he was waiting for me at the agreed rendezvous (he had a racer and so went vastly faster than myself). Bad enough to ride with everyone seeing my mangled bike, but then my unsympathetic brother rolled around laughing. At least he wasn't there this time.

The median age of Ballina residents is 43 (making it 17th on the oldest rank of NSW towns), with the population of over-50s increasing with every census. Every apparent housing estate isn't filled with families and bicycles on the front lawn, but older chaps walking their fat sausage dogs and sitting on their front step with a cup of tea. I was employed for a few months last year in cleaning up on a new aged care building site.

Around here you don't have to look out for young men hooning around in their hotted up cars, but for oldies screaming down the footpaths in their souped-up electric carts. They're not supposed to go any faster than 20kph but seeing that some of these grandpas go past me when I'm doing faster than that on my bike, I daresay some of taken to tinkering with their wheels.

It's not just the older folk who use the electric carts; the younger folk who use them stand out, and get askance looks when they drive around the supermarket on them. This land of fat people will get even fatter if everyone need not get off their wheels and instead are allowed in every shop! Some make me worried when they're beeping their way around the aisles with quick jerky moves as they try to steer closer to the shelves to pull what they want off it without having to bend too much, or even -- the horror! -- get up off their comfy seat.

Sometimes you see old people carefully walking with their walkers -- a more common scene in, say, Brisbane than here. These old people are thin, frail, delicate; I want to put them in one of those carts, but then again, that's probably the reason for why they're still walking, that they've forgone the wheels their companions have chosen.

This is an oldies town, Ballina; people who find out I live here exclaim -- what a wonderful place! I love it there! -- but if probing questions are then asked one finds it is Byron Bay, 35km away, or Bangalow, 20km away, or Alstonville, 10km, that they like; places I can't easily reach by bicycle as there are no road shoulders and I would put my life at peril. Public transport is so dear that it's not even a consideration -- to go to Alstonville, a charming pit-stop town, would cost me $5 one way.

Ben and I had enough of Ballina today, and headed on to Lismore, a town of population demographics skewed to the other age range. It's most likely because of the university there, and with the hippy influence of Nimbin and Mullumbimby giving it a fresh, if alternative, feel.

It's not without its eccentricities; the mental health hospital there has given it a large number of eccentric people, or perhaps it's all the pot being smoked? And so walking down the street will at times have you being accosted by some harmless eccentric wanting to shout at you that you're wrong! And that all things are evil.

I go for the bulk food store there, for the health food stores, and for the vegan eateries I've never seen anywhere else in Australia, actual dedicated vegan cafés. I wish that I lived there instead! I would be accosted by the slightly mad, I'm sure, but I was already kind of used to that.

All that said, there is one bonus to the large aged population: the small library has the best range of craft books I've ever seen. It swamps the non-fiction, and then the rest is all about the navy and other marine-type stuff. The other part of the oldies around here's the Naval Retirement Village -- and so the otherwise interesting Ballina Naval and Marine museum is all filled with navy ship models and nothing about the interesting history of the area, of the origins of the town as regards to shipping of logs, or anything like that.

There's the balsa wood raft, La Balsa raft, of the madmen who sailed it on over from Ecuador to Ballina in 1973, taking nearly 180 days, sinking all the while as they got progressively water-logged. Their display is so full of inaccuracies it makes me wince, each spelling of the men's names becoming more original every time you see it. The navy section is definitely not like that, with every t crossed and every i dotted!

Ballina's also got the most rain of all of NSW -- last summer it rained for six months, putting the boat building project back enormously and making me fat and lazy because I couldn't be bothered getting soggy on my bicycle riding to and from work. We hope that this summer coming up is dry and warm, so our time here can draw to a close and we can away from the dry, drained feeling this town inspires. It's feels like where everyone comes to die, just waiting for that to happen and in the meantime buying their sago and Bonox like they have since they were young. I wish I could shake life into this town!

The airport was full of people when we arrived at Launceston, all waiting to halloo arrivals. They were out in the open air -- it looked most strange, used as I am to bigger terminals, all closed in. The luggage came out on a bunch of carriages behind a little vehicle. No continuous belt! How quaint, how strange! There were our luggage, two big boxes on the last carriage. We waited until everyone had finished the mad rush for their bag before dragging them off and outside.

Propping the boxes against the wall, I dug into mine and pulled out my trusty swiss Army knife, tore into the box, and so began assembly of our bicycles. It wasn't long until dark, and our night's destination still was some distance away.

I toddled off to fill our water bottles and came back to find Ben talking to a cabbie.

"Nothing at Evandale," said the cabbie. "You can camp there -- at the primary school. Take the first left when you hit the post office and keep going. You'll see it."

Bikes set, we headed on to historic town Evandale of the penny farthing races -- our first night's camp.

( After a long silence, the two weeks in Tasmania. Over 8,000 words worth. )

"Bloody hell they're big," said my brother, pulling up to the side of me and nodding his head in front of us.

I looked in front again, this time really taking in the size of the two Brahman bulls, which I had only before curiously looked over.

"Bloody hell. I hope they move," said I, just as they began trotting to a larger group of cattle behind a nearby tree. "Thank goodness!"

Up until that moment I had been cycling along, smelling fresh cattle dung and reminiscing upon how pastoral it all felt. Dung was all over the road I was on, and it's not until you realise that there are these huge bulls nearby and you are on a bicycle, not a car, that you feel small. Or as insecure as when you notice there is no fence.

Damien and I pedalled along slowly, watching the cattle nervously ... when they started trotting towards us. These cattle are amongst the largest sort in the world, and here they were coming towards us and we on our tiny bikes.

( Do not mess about with nature. )

Many people, upon finding out that I ride a bicycle, have predicted accidents for me. They've all been based upon my being on a big road, like one of the arterials, and some vehicle -- usually a truck -- hitting me. Somehow I got the gruesome idea that I would die upon this happening.

The minor kind of accident, like where I hit the kerb or a pothole and fell off the bike, now that kind of accident goes without saying. Even if I've never had them. I've fell over the front of the bike once, going too slow, and another time a bicycle pulled into the front of me and I once more fell off the bike. No harm was done to me. Nobody told me that I'd have another kind of accident.

I was riding into Bundaberg town the other day, for I moved back onto the catamaran with my folks when they moved far out of the town reach, when the sun was low on the horizon and I was heading towards it. My contacts were not in, so the sun bounced off my glasses and back into my eyes, blinding me when I looked up. And so I looked down.

( No looking down! )

"We'll leave at dawn," Damien and I told one another, "just as it gets light. Set the alarm for 4:30am."

When the alarm sounded I got up to turn off my phone and then snuggled down back amongst the covers. Three hours later the town hall tower clock gonged and awoke us and we slowly began to get ready. No need to worry about lateness of leaving once hours of daylight have already passed you by!

The good thing about the ride back north to Bundaberg was that the wind was going to be up the arse the whole way. Seeing as the ride down had been hindered by the gusts I was looking forwards to it.

"Do you want to get a milkshake?" Damien is obsessed with these, and here would be none to be had for another day. With his assent, we navigated Bazaar street -- aptly named -- and parked ourselves in front of the health food store.

We milled around out there for a while, for although the door was half opened it still wasn't open to business. As I mooched around for my wallet, the store owner appeared.

"Milkshake?" he asked, pointing at Damien. "Soy?" he said, and pointed at me. "Banana?"

"Wow, you're good." And all we had to do was sit outside waiting, for he brought them out to us as well.

( A good couple of days on the road. )

"Well, if you're bored, come with me to Maryborough then," I said to my brother, just the day before I was due to cycle on down there to meet a friend. He ummed and ahhed and then agreed.

Monday morning came about and I woke him before dawn. He hadn't begun to pack, so he did that quickly and I cooked us up a batch of porridge. The look on his face when he saw it said it all.

"What?" I said when he came out with his belongings. "You're going to cycle that far with a bag on your back?" Nothing I said deterred him. So he put in on his back, I put my panniers on my bike rack, and off we went.

We weren't too far down -- perhaps a couple of hours' ride -- when I began to complain.

( Not so hardy. )