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Here is my bike

With thanks to Trish for the idea, here is my bike. I bought it about a year and a half ago. I don’t ride it as much as I’d like to, but with the price of petrol going through the roof, maybe it’s time to start using it more.

My bike, with me on it

I took this by using the camera on a tripod with the self-timer set to ten seconds. I did half-a-dozen “click camera, run to bike, put up stand, jump on, wait for frenetic beeping from camera, then ride in front of it” pictures. The first one taken turned out to be the best.

Want to post your bike? Link in the Trackbacks or comments.

By Daniel Bowen

Transport blogger / campaigner and spokesperson for the Public Transport Users Association / professional geek.
Bunurong land, Melbourne, Australia.
Opinions on this blog are all mine.

15 replies on “Here is my bike”

Oh wow! Ur much braver than I am! I’m 40, and I haven’t ridden a bike in years! The last time I tried to ride one like yours – about 10 years’ ago – it nearly ended messily on the side of the driveway! needless to say, the last bike I rode was a Malvern Star dragster, so I just didn’t know what to do on a ‘real’ bike! hahahaa!
Mal – Bathurst :o)

Meh, this is definitely one I cannot participate in. I can’t ride a bike and therefore, do not own one. Cars should be next, Daniel. I wanna show my new one off. ;)

I’m 58 years old and I prefer to ride a bike or walk or take Public Transport. I bought my dear wife a nice Mecededes, my son a Camry and my daughter a Corolla, and although I’ve held a driver’s licence since 1964 I now would rather not drive unless it’s absolutely necessary. I’m a lifetime Labour voter voting Greens for the 2nd time running.

That’s great! I’m gonna try and get Tony to do the same. Though instead of setting the timer and running for the bike, I’ll make him ride around til I get a good shot.
Next… roller skates. P’raps not! :)

Here’s my bike asleep on a train to Maastricht in the Netherlands. And if I could just wax political for a moment, helmet laws are band-aids on bad bicycle infrastructure. They distract attention from the real problem, which is that the roads in Australia are really dangerous to ride on, helmeted or not.

Here’s my bike:
The Superlight
I got back into cycling about 3 years ago after a knee reconstruction. I discovered mountain biking thanks to a friend and haven’t looked back since! My bike(s!) are now worth more than my car.

Oh, and in response to Fraser commenting on helmet laws – I think the important issue is not so much about bad bicycle infrastructure, but rather bicycle awareness and sharing of the existing infrastructure. I know a lot of people that rant about freedom of choice and “nanny state” laws – I’m going to make a big assumption that you are one of them. To an extent I agree – there is no statistical evidence that helmets save lives or reduce injuries (like there is for seatbelt laws), and if the arguement is for cost saving in the health industry, I am sure having more fitter people (by encouraging bicycling by any means – helmet or no) would cost less than the few head injuries each year “caused” by not wearing a helmet. It doesn’t mean wearing a helmet is a bad idea though, and I would never ride without one, on road or off.

Trish, it’s true, I was shaky. Mostly because I was trying to manoevre it in front of the camera at the split second the timer went off, and from a standing start close enough that I could hear the camera’s beeps! (Gotta get another person to help next time.)

As for the helmet debate, I wouldn’t ride without one, full stop. I had a minor accident when I was a teenager, and though I didn’t hit my head, there was enough blood from the road that I would never want to be at risk from hitting the tarmac without a helmet on.

That said, some bicycle campaigners do argue that helmets shouldn’t be compulsory. They argue that statistics showing fewer fatalities are due to less people cycling, rather than the same or more people cycling more safely. Some also argue against bike lanes on roads, because cyclists should be able to mix with general traffic. I’m not entirely convinced of either argument myself, but then I don’t ride enough to know a heap about it.

(As an aside, some car drivers continue to be oblivious to bike lanes. Like the guy I saw merrily driving for about a kilometre down Neerim Road today in the bike lane, before turning left at an intersection. How one can miss the signs, line markings and big painted bike symbols in the road, I don’t know.)

Grant, it’s not really a freedom of choice issue for me. My comment was motivated by the way helmet laws are introduced as though something is being done for cycling safety — it’s a way of grabbing the moral high ground (how could you be against wearing a helmet?) without actually spending any money. I find this dishonest. I’m living in the Netherlands at the moment, and it provides a wonderful illustration of how to do things right with respect to bicycles.

I think that mandating helmets is a waste of time in the absence of real changes. And I’m a left winger, so I can’t really complain about nanny state laws :-)

Personally I wear a helmet in Australia, but don’t bother in the Netherlands. But my commute in Australia took me along Camberwell Rd, Toorak Rd and the Burwood Highway, so in retrospect I wonder if full body armour might not have been more appropriate.

Putting on your helmet to go riding is like putting on your shoes when you go to work. There was a sign in the bike shop where I got my new bike and new helmet that said, “Would you spend more on your child’s feet than their head?” But, laws shmaws … what matters most? I know that even given what has been said about whether a helmet does much good when put to the ultimate test, I’d rather have one on if my head hit the asphalt than not! Besides, when we ALL wear them, we ALL look silly, and thus it becomes the norm! It is part of the cyclist’s uniform, and a helmet just looks ridiculous hanging on the handle-bars of a moving bike. I always taunted my brother with, “You must really want to protect your handle-bars!?” when we were kids.

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