I’d like very much to be riding right now, but I am without a helmet. How can this be the case?
Faced with such trauma, I’ve been forced to exploit my latest, probably untenable foray into internet media something communication version format poem place. The podcast.
I hear that Ms K Lansell is doing some track cycling! I want to hear more, but I’ll have to wait until she gets off the goddamn bike…
I do by far and away the least technical, the least frequent, the least helpful, the least spec specific and least helmet related helmet reviews but I have the most fun.
Me and a coven of two took off down Southbank and stoked ourselves some houses. Lionel Richie drove us there asking first:
Are you ladies in the circus?
Nothing says circus like a Brompton.
If you are prepared to take your helmet to dinner, or to a bar, or to the gallery, I am prepared to have you be a guest reviewer. Naturally, I do not want to hear anything technical or sensible.
In the mean time, please read my most serious, most specific, most helpful, most cycling related helmet review of the catlike whisper plus.
NOTE – As kindly pointed out by Sam, the Catlikes have had some non-approved issues and, although people own them already, you couldn’t buy them in bike stores. Well, not that I am across the whys and wherefores of this situation, but this particular helmet came from an Australian bike store, with an Australian Standards sticker stuck inside it. I believe this means that they are now approved. I can only defer to the sticker.
So, when last I wrote, I was taking a bit of a break for a think.
As always, that’s basically a euphemism for being/feeling/worrying/thinking I’m a bit depressed. Holy moley. But I feel better now. I will spare you details but I can tell you that I am back in the saddle.
For this moment, I have been just asking the question what is that I love about cycling.
Last night, on the way to Alain, to meet with friends, I headed out in Queensland’s most excellent cycling weather on the Brompton formerly known as and got myself a wet bum and wet legs and a wet head and a dirty big bikey face smile.
I love that when you are riding out in the rain you are instantly a little kid again. Adults try and stay dry. Kids are more playful than that. I liked being a kid.
That’s what I love about cycling.
I also love hearing young folk talk about what they love about cycling. Why do the kids in Brisbane love their track cycling? Is it because Anna Meares is so amazing?
Because it’s fun to go to the top of the track and you get to meet new friends – Georgia, 7.
Check it out on the ever gorgeous BrizTreadley, who is working with the ABC digital radio peeps to give you a bit of a Sunday Spin each week on them special new radios.
Call your girlfriend and let her know. You are back in business.
“We have invented nothing”
I mean, Madonna (here featured Blond Ambition style circa 1990) maybe invented a few things, but probably not as many as I would like to think.
I have no idea if Madonna is herself a cyclist (I think not) but there is something to that image that has stayed with me a bit these days. If everything old is new again, surely it’s not that unthinkable that everything old was once new and everything new will soon be old and really, now is just as good a time as any to take a pause for effect and have a bit of a think.
I’ve been thinking about this image for a while too. I mentioned it before once, here.
And I’m conscious that my focus can sometimes be on the “create” to the detriment of all the other steps which are as beautiful and as important. Like “observe”, or “evaluate”. God, “fail early”, I’m all over that. But some of the other stuff, well, that’s just been a bit left behind.
Tonight I have a reprieve, my physio cancelled.
Chances are, it’s going to rain all well, and the partner in crime has dismantled Jana Wendt (you don’t even know how I let that happen, but I did. We think we have secure attachment, but we don’t). So I’m one bike down and one bike that doesn’t like getting wet and dirty.
Time to go back to first principles. Time for a bit of a think.
First think first might be fixing up this freaking template.
One day, when I am famous and I have heaps of money and time to devote to such things, I am going to run some sort of photography competition for people do for cycling what The Sartorialist has done for walking down the street in New York. Arguably, Andy and others are already all over this one, but sometimes I wish that my photography would do justice to my subjects.
In the end, I think one of the secrets is getting people to stop since I can neither whip out my iphone nor become a better photographer while actually riding my bike.
Lucky for me, Kendall was already stopped and sure, I was running late for work but I just had to pull on up for a quick chat. She just looked utterly chilled and cruisy, presumably someway to work or someway from something to something, a simple front basket, a basic skate lid and goddamit some super hot shoes.
With blue soles.
You can’t see them, unless of course she’s pedalling away on her bike, which is just the kind of detailing that makes me reach matcher’s heaven.
Apparently she has a road bike too, so you never know, she might be an all star celebrity ride on interview about nothing much at all. One can only hope dear reader, one can only hope.
PS you know, I know and we all know that this change of layout has been a pretty big disaster, but we live and learn, right? I’ll get there in the end. Just really really slowly.