Earlier this year I went for a bike ride with a friend, and really enjoyed it. I mused on the idea of riding to work, and so I looked up one of the “no excuse zone” maps that the city of Sydney council has put together.
I live a long way further out than even the 30 minute zone, and so I put my plans of bike riding on hold. I still wanted to be able to ride a bike, though, and I mentioned this to my brother, who had a spare mountain bike lying around that he hadn’t ridden in a long while.
I even tweeted about it – that it was way too far to think about. Someone else at work tweeted back that it was perfectly reasonable to ride that far, and so I formed a crazy ambition: to ride my bike to work for ride to work day.
It took longer than I was hoping to get a bike that I could ride, but once I had it (the spare mountain bike), it was a matter of getting the brakes checked at my local bike shop, and then – three weeks out – doing some practice riding. After a couple of trial runs, I rode half way to work (to figure out which way to go as much as anything) on the long weekend, and then did some distance rides with a friend out at the M7 bike path – I only managed some of it, and found out just how unfit I was.
Yesterday morning, I hopped on my bike and – disaster – the front brake wasn’t releasing properly. A sleepy Kel came out to see what I was doing, and helped me figure out that it wasn’t the brake that was the problem, but that the wheel nuts had been over-tightened. With that changed, the bike was working again, and I headed in, completing the 22km ride in a little over 2 hours (I’m hoping to get faster at riding as my fitness improves).
I felt a bit tired by the end of it, and was ready for a good night’s sleep last night, but was otherwise unscathed. If I can ride a bike that far, I think anyone can!
And yes, I took my bike home on the train last night rather than riding home again: if you take a bike on a train during peak hour (6-9am, 3:30-7:30pm) you have to buy it a child ticket, so overall, I saved $2 by riding to work. I can’t say that saving money was the aim of the exercise this time, though: it’s been more about building up fitness, and trying to accomplish a personal goal.
If you’re thinking about riding a bike in Sydney, have a look at the links above, and also at the RTA pages about bikes.
Update (2024-03-06): The Bikely website is no longer live. Read more
go you!
im impressed that you did it and that you sound like you would do it again. if they could make a seat that didnt make bums look horrible i would think about going with you 🙂
Stop in for a coffee next time you’re winging your way past on the M7 … we are about 400m away from it 🙂