Hated uncle

I have a niece that is 2 years old. The last time that I saw her was at Chritmas time last year and she did not like me. For some reason, she refused to come anywhere near me and cried for her mum if we were even in the same room together. Last week I travelled to Sydney to visit and I was keen to see if she would remember me or forget the last time we met.

Thankfully, she was a lot more friendly this time. We managed to bond over a few good story books and playtime in the park and she was quite comfortable with me.

I had arrived before my wife so the following day we all made the trip to the airport to greet her off the plane. During the trip, my niece fell asleep in her car seat and I gently carried her into the arrivals area. I took a seat with her in my lap and suggested that my sister in-law go and meet my wife off the plane while I waited.

'Are you sure you will be okay? Make sure you call me if she wakes up.', she said in a strangely concerned voice. I didn't think anything of it. Then I got a phone call... 'I'm still waiting. Is she still asleep? Make sure you call me if she wakes up.'

A few more calm minutes went by and I began to wonder. Why is she so concerned about my niece waking up? What's the big deal? Then, I found out.

My niece woke up. She opened her eyes and looked around. She looked at me and then stared for a couple of seconds. Then the tears began to well in her eyes and she took a mighty breath before screaming, 'WHERE'S MMMUUUUMMMMM??!!!!!'

I did my absolute best to keep her calm and reassure her that mum was not far and on her way but it was no use. 'I WANNNTTT MYY MMMUUUUMMMM!!!!' She kicked her legs out straight and went as stiff as a bored, making it almost imposible to hold her. she kicked me away and continued to roll on the ground screaming for her mum.

The ladies in the baggage claim counter had a direct view and I'm pretty sure they were beginning to wonder if I was trying to kidnap this child that was screaming at me.

After what seemed like an eternity, her mum came running down the hallway after hearing the screams and scooped her up. The tears immediately stopped. I got a couple of filthy stare downs by my niece as the tears began to dry. Thankfully, she forgave me during the car trip home and I made up for it with a few more story books. This time, I will not leave a hated uncle.

Sweat Box

Last week I took some leave from work to visit family in Sydney. This also meant that I took a week of leave from the bike as well.

Usually, I go through some phases when I stop riding for a few days. The first day is great because I get to sleep in but then I get progressively more and more grumpy as the days wear on. After 5 days I feel pretty fat and lazy and am slightly irritable. My wife says she can't stand it but I don't notice.  

This time, I wasn't going to let it happen and my brother in-law offered to take me to the gym and join him in a spin class. It had been a while since I had done one so I thought I'd give it a crack.  

When you ride a bike, you are outside, moving and rearing your own breeze. Even when you are just cruising along, there is a breeze of around 25kph to keep you cool. In a gym, there is an instructor yelling at you to go harder and the only breeze you get is from the fan that is pointed at your feet and swings in your direction every 20seconds. By the end of the session, my shirt could be literally wrung out and there was a pool of sweat under my bike.

Exercising in a sweat box also means that a lot of other people experience the same thing. So after years of housing sweating cyclists and soaking up pools of sweat on the floor, most spin class rooms have a distinct aroma of sweat and stale gym clothes. It is almost enough to make you dry reach. I swear that they should strip them down every few months.

Another problem with spin classes is the underlying competition with other participants. Everyone says they are not competing but secretly they are. My brother in law even checked my distance covered at the en of the session. The only thing is, everyone sets their own difficulty and no bike is exactly the same. This means that the 60 year old woman in the back corner that seems to be going way faster than you could be doing so with no resistance on an easier bike. The more you try to race people, the more frustrated you get as you comprehend how the chick in the track suit pants barely breaks a sweat.

 At the end of the session I walked out like someone had thrown a bucket of water on me but at least I had gotten some pedaling in to keep me calm for a few days.

Lock, Stock & Two Sore Shoulders.

A good friend of mine has finally decided to tie the knot and on the weekend, he had his buck’s day to celebrate throwing in the towel. Most buck’s days start with a manly sport that usually involves a level of skill, pain threshold and/or performance while intoxicated. Activities such as golf, golf buggy racing, skirmish or go-karts are normally on the agenda, however, this weekend had something a little different.

Living in Brisbane city, there are not many people that can say they have shot a gun. Don’t get me wrong, the chances get higher, the closer you get to the Gold Coast but for most, firing a rifle is only something that you see on television. So when I found out that we were heading out to Brisbane Sporting Clays to shoot stuff, I was pretty excited.

Sporting Clays is a type of clay target shooting that was designed to keep hunters in tip-top form during the off seasons. You use a shot-gun to shoot a range of clay targets that are designed to mimic real-life animals such as the target that floats along then dives down towards the ground like a bird or the target that skip across the ground like a rabbit. Unlike most real-life animals, the clay targets are also painted fluoro orange so you can see them more easily.

Unlike most target shooting disciplines, Sporting Clays are more challenging (allegedly) because the targets are random. They come out at different angles and speeds every time so that it is never the same. This way, the shooter can never anticipate what is going to happen.

We each got to take 25 shots from 4 different stations with the most skilled shooter taking home a booze voucher. I wasn’t worried about winning, I was more worried about coming last. On a buck’s day, you are surrounded by a sea of testosterone and the last thing you want to do is publicly suck at a man-sport in front of everyone. It’s a dog eat dog world.

After the first round, I was confident that I wasn’t going to come last. Years of Playstation and xBox have paved the way for shooting things in real-life and although reloading wasn’t as simply as shooting outside of the screen my hand-eye coordination was better than I expected.

Despite this, there was one thing that threatened to dampen the spirits of a few shooters. It seems that a 12 gage shot-gun can pack a bit of a kick when you fire it and if you don’t have it perfectly positioned in your shoulder, it can cause some slight discomfort. At the end of the 25 shots, I could barely lift my arm and after receiving some comments about my distinctive cyclist’s physique, I revealed some nice bruising on my shoulder. 24hrs later and my arm is still hurting. I have a new respect for Rambo and Chuck Norris.

More than I can chew.

A couple of weekends ago, I went to check out Pushies Galore, a Bike Meet here in Brisbane.

There was a bike show with a huge range of bikes from lowriders to fixies to old school BMX bikes. Despite the range of bikes, there was not a single modern bike. Every bike was from the time when craftsmanship and finishing quality was rated more highly than aerodynamics and weight.

What was most interesting was the number of bikes that were hand made in Brisbane. I assumed that it just didn't happen anymore, but there was a variety of hand made bikes. In fact, the winner of the 'Made in BNE' category just happened to be the mechanic from the Fortitude Valley store!

This got me thinking. I would love to build up a nice steel bike; something with class. I checked out some old school frames on eBay, but then it occurred to me... why not just build my own frame?

I found some steel tubing, lugs and all the other bits and pieces. But I made the usual male mistake.... Like assembling furniture from Ikea, I tend to try first, then look at the instructions later. I did some research about frame building and it is a HELL OF A LOT HARDER than I had anticipated. It seems to require some very large and expensive tools as well as some other stuff that I don't even know where to start looking for.

 

I have a feeling that I have bitten off more than I can chew.

Tour de France Hair Styles

I was flicking through the standings on the SBS Tour De France Tracker App on the iPad and I was shocked at the decline in hair styles since the King himself, Mario Cipollini graced the Tour with his flowing locks. Well, the flowing was usually highly restricted by hair product but Mario was the king of style.

A couple of Argos Shimano riders, Koen De Kort and Roy Curvers, look like they are trying to mimic Mario’s greasy style but are failing miserably. But they are just the start of it all...

 

FDJ-Big Mat have brought their own Justin Bieber look alike in Arthur Vichot...

Robert Kiserlovski looks like he is cutting his hair so his helmet fits better...

Meanwhile, Vladimir Karpets should not be allowed back into the peleton after his previous fails...

After his return from a 2 year suspension for doping, I think I know what Alejandro Valverde was doing. Advanced Hair, Valverde???

Then there is Luis Mardones from Cofidis who is packing a rat's tail...

Despite all of these, I think this guy, although he is not in the Pro Peleton today, tops everyone. SPEED MULLET!

Brews Brothers

In a couple of months, a friend of mine is due to be wed, and needless to say, planning for the event (more importantly, the Buck’s night) has already begun. As part of the preparations, my friend decided to brew his own beer for the evening.

Now this doesn’t mean we were throwing something together in plastic bag-lined garbage bins in someone’s garage.  Brews Brothers is a microbrewery located in Woolloongaba that provides all the equipment and ingredients you need to brew your own beer. A few weeks before you need the beer, you can head in, sample a few brews, choose from their big list of beer recipes and get a batch ready for your event. Then just before you need it, you come back and bottle your home made brew for freshly made beer on the night. So last night, we headed in and prepared a keg of Heffeweizen, a wheat beer.

When you first walk in, you can’t help but notice that Brews Brothers is the ultimate man’s cave. At the entrance there is an old school arcade game and pinball machine. Then there is a television with a documentary about the Heineken Factory playing on repeat whilst tunes are coming from the stereo. The entire room is filled with beer paraphernalia from miniature XXXX men to books about beer history to retro keg refrigerators.  At the back of the room is the beer brewing area and a giant cold room where your beer brews. While you are waiting, there is a bar and a number of tables that are littered with porno magazines for you to peruse. A young lady named Jess helps you make your batch of beer so I couldn’t help but feel a little awkward flicking through the latest People Magazine while I waited.

When I found out that we were brewing beer, I had imagined quite a complicated process involving thermometers and a chemistry lab-like set up. They explained the process to us in about 30 seconds and after understanding pretty much nothing, I was sure we were going to screw it up. It turns out, brewing beer isn’t that difficult.

Once you have selected your brew, you simply get the ingredient card, collect what you need and pretty much dump it into a giant heated vat over the next hour or so. Stir it a few times and then pour it into a plastic keg which goes into the cold room. The cold room looks like some sort of terrorists’ chemical manufacturing plant with barrels of brown liquid and pipes joining them together.

 

Inside the cold room, there was a huge range of beers from locals that use the facilities to brew and store their own beer to commercial companies that brew some crazy beers like ‘Espresso Stout’  and ‘Chili Ginger Beer’. In about 3-4weeks, we will be heading back to Brews Brothers to check on our brew and pump it into a keg, ready for drinking.

Feeling old & out dated?

Last weekend I had a work function that involved several beverages on a Sunday night. We had a fairly quiet sit down dinner that finished relatively early (or relatively late for me) and a few of the younger people decided to head across the road to a pub, to carry on the celebrations.

They asked me to join them and since it has been an eon since I last went out on the town, I decided to join them. We walked into the pub and there was no one in there. I thought, ‘Its Sunday night. No one is going to be out on a Sunday night’. We turned right, walked through a doorway and suddenly we were in a night club.

I felt old. The room was filled with girls dressed like a post Mean Girls – pre jail time Lindsay Lohan and guys that were struggling to have the right amount of hair sticking out the front of their beanie and ensure that their jeans were falling down just the right amount. Surely this was some sort of fancy dress party? People couldn’t possibly WANT to dress like this?

I wonder if I was that lame when I was that age? Sure, I can understand the desire to dress like famous music celebrities but when I was out on the town, we had it easy. If you wanted to dress like a music celebrity, you grew your hair long and never washed it, then put on a pair of torn jeans and a crappy t-shirt. Just like Curt Cobain, Pearl Jam or the Chilli Peppers did. Now it seems like it’s cool to dress like a cross between Harry Potter and Justin Beiber.

Sadly, there was one thing that has not changed. Spattered throughout the mix of the latest top 40, were songs from my era and even sadder was the fact that everyone still knew the words. My generation suffered through the Spice Girls & Hanson so that others wouldn’t have to. Yet the Lindsay Lohans and even the Harry Beibers were on the dance floor screaming the words to Wannabe at each other.

After one drink, I called it a night and went home in a state of shock. Has it really been that long since I’ve been out? Maybe torn jeans and a crappy t-shirt just doesn’t cut it anymore?

So this week, after being inspired by an advertisement for One Direction, I ventured out to purchase a pair of black jeans (I actually needed a pair for work). The lady at the jeans store brought me over a pair of ‘skinny’ jeans and perhaps it’s because of my muscular thick thighs, but they were harder to get on than my cycling kit and about 3 times more uncomfortable. How the hell do people walk, never mind, skateboard in a pair of those things??

So now I am the proud owner of some black jeans. The guys at work have told me that I need to start rolling up the legs to just above the ankles but I’m only going one step at a time. I’ve become everything I hate.

**On a side note... When Harry Beiber goes to get a haircut, what do they ask for?? ‘Give me a Justin Beiber or a tall guy from One Direction cut’?? Get a styled hair cut is on my list of things to do this year and I am thinking of going into the hair dresser and just asking for a ‘Ryan Gosling’. Is that how it works?

Melbourne Cycling

Last week I had to travel to Melbourne for work for 5 days. That much time off the bike usually results in me putting on about 6kg so I decided to take my bike with me. I was warned that it was going to be cold, but it couldn’t possibly be that bad.

I arrived mid-morning on Tuesday to a warm, sunny day with blue skies. The taxi driver noted that I had a bike with me and said that I was lucky to have missed that morning’s weather as it had dropped below 5 degrees, the coldest morning so far this year. Blinded by the warm sunshine, I fobbed off his comments, convinced that it couldn’t possibly be that cold.

When I arrived at work, three other people told me that it had been stupidly cold that morning so at 6:30pm, when I had to ride to my hotel, I put on all of my winter gear. Within 1km, I was sweating bullets, convinced that Melbourne cyclists were a bunch of whining cowards. At my hotel, I was blessed with a heater, which I left cranked up through the night. So much so, that I woke up in the middle of the night and had to remove a layer of blanket because it was too hot. Unfortunately, this also gave me a false sense of security of the outside temperature.

During the week, I had researched some Melbourne bunch rides and was surprised that there was a large number to choose from. Even in the cold, there was a number of morning bunch rides as well as evening rides that went up to distances of around 100km! I chose to do the North Rd Ride which had a group leaving at 5:45am. I put on all of my winter riding gear and walked outside with my bike to be slapped in the face by a 5 degree chill. I rolled down to the starting point positive that no one in their right mind would be riding in these conditions and thought to myself, if less than 5 people show up, I’m going back to bed.  

I pulled up and there was already about 15 people there. This quickly grew to 20… 30… 40 people. By the time we picked up all the stragglers, there was about 60 people in the bunch, all keen to ride in the freezing cold. We headed down the Nepean Hwy in a dead straight line. After about 30km, half the bunch turned off to do the ‘shorter’ loop. I continued on to do the longer 70km-ish loop. We continued on in a dead straight line for about another 20km and I started to worry about how far we were going.

I asked around in the bunch, and apparently, they had decided to try a new route that was going to be about 110km in total! So now I was 50km away and was supposed to be at work in 1.5hrs! Although it was just past 7am, I still had all my lights on and was absolutely freezing. We turned off the highway and one of the riders in the bunch punctured. The whole group stopped for him to change it, and as we got going again, another person punctured and I decided that I could wait no longer.

I took off alone and calculated that I could still make it back in time. Fortunately, Melbourne is stupidly flat, so you can maintain a good speed over long distances. At 7.25am, it was finally light enough to turn my lights off, however, it didn’t help that I had no idea where I was going. I took a few wrong turns and made it to work about 15mins late after doing 120km.

So I now have a new respect for Melbourne cyclists. The fact that so many people get out to ride in such cold conditions astounds me. For the rest of the week, I didn’t do anymore early rides. Knowing how cold it was outside made it all too easy to sleep in.

Cheaper alternatives

For those that love analysing data and measuring absolutely every aspect of a ride, there are a plethora of various devices that you can strap to your bike and later hook up to your computer to upload your ride.

It all started with the humble cycling computer that displayed your speed, distance and time. Then came the computers that included your cadence and even came in wireless options. Some models then started to record your heart rate and use this to estimate the number of calories that you burn while you exercise. Following this, computers that contained a barometer could record your altitude and give you a profile of your ride at the end. This then expanded into the realm of GPS to allow you to accurately record your ride and map it out for you afterwards. Now you can mount a full map and navigation system  to your bike so you never get lost.

More recently, I have noticed a large number of cyclists that have decided to mount video cameras to their bikes and record rides. I’m not sure if this is to catch out aggravated drivers that decide to cut a cyclist off or drive dangerously close, or if it is simply to capture footage of a ride and post it on YouTube for the world to see. Either way, it’s getting to the point where people need extensions on their handlebars to accommodate all of the gadgets they use... computers, heart rate monitors, video cameras, lights, higher powered lights with battery packs etc etc etc.

All of these gizmos don’t come cheaply either... $649 for a Garmin computer with Maps and heart rate. Then it’s another $400-600 for a video camera plus more for a memory card and software. Then it’s even more $$ for a protective case and bike mount!!! What really baffles me, is that most people carry a device with them that already does all of this plus more. Imagine if you already had a device that could map your rides, record your HR, cadence, speed, etc, give you directions, sync with a power meter, record video footage, play music for you AND you can make phone calls on it!!!

The humble iPhone is already able to do this, yet people spend a fortune on other devices to do the same thing! Garmin has just released an App called ‘Garmin Fit’ that records all of your time, distance and GPS fields.

For around $50, you can get the Garmin iPhone adapter. This little chip allows the iPhone to communicate with wireless ANT+ devices like HR monitors, cadence sensors and Power Meters.

The reason a lot people don’t like using an iPhone as a cycling computer is because it’s quite big and most mounts on the market are, well, butt ugly. Topeak has just released an iPhone mount called the ‘Ride Case’. It screws into the steerer tube top cap and even tilts up and down so that if you want to record video footage of your ride, you can. For only $50, it sure beats a $500 camera.

So for about $170 in total, you can get the software, adapter, HR monitor, cadence sensor and bike mount. If you were to get these devices separately, it would be over $1000!!!

Despite already having an iPhone and knowing about these cheaper alternatives... I still have a separate Garmin.

You know you have a problem if...

If you can tick off half of the following, then you have a problem. If you can tick off 3/4, then you should probably see someone about it. If you can tick off 90%, then we should go for a ride!!

You know you have a problem if...

Your Facebook profile picture is you riding a bike.

You refuse to fly Jetstar because they are not bike friendly.

Driving somewhere confuses you because you are used to taking the bike route.

Most of your laundry is taken up by cycling kit.

You have or have had in the past, a subscription to RIDE, Bicycling Australia or any other cycling magazine.

If a cyclist goes past you when out in public, you turn to see if you know them.

If your friends go for a ride and you sleep in, you are angry at them (and yourself).

You favourites bar has more than 5 cycling related websites in it.

You absolutely cannot stand walking anywhere!

Your partner refers to your bike as the 'Mistress', 'Other Woman' or 'Significant Other'.

You check cyclingnews more than twice per day.

Your bike costs more than your car.

You 'NEED' to upgrade your bike because SRAM 2012 just came out and and Dura Ace 9000 is coming.

You knew that Dura Ace 9000 series is coming.

You keep your 'good bike' inside the house.

Every room in your house has at least one piece of cycling related paraphenalia in it.

You live by the motto, 'Why stand when you can sit, why sit when you can lay down and why stay awake when you can go to sleep'!

You know who Phil Anderson, Miguel Indurain, Jacques Anquetil or Bernard Hinault are.

You have or plan at some time in the future to go to France to follow the Tour.

You have more than 3 sets of wheels.

You have a folder for cycling related Apps on your iPhone.

You wear cycling socks while you are at work.

Now be honest here... How many of the above statements apply to you? 10? 12? 15? More than 15??? Well, the saddest part is... ALL of the above statements where based on myself.