This week in Spring...

We had a super little storm last night - pounding rain for about ten minutes, then lighter rain on and off for the next hour. It freshened up the garden and this morning everything looks freshly washed and happily hydrated. Some of this week's treats are:

Above, my Tomgirl ivy-leafed pelargonium. I have two of these in hanging baskets and they are loving the early spring sunshine; they're covered in buds.

Arab's Eye/Black Eyed Susan. I put these bulbs in three years ago. The first year I was rewarded with dozens of flowers and the last couple of years they haven't given me a single one but simply drooped to the ground. This might be the only flower I get this year so I recorded it for posterity.

Sweet peas, just coming into bloom. Behind them the red flowers are pineapple sage/salvia, with a bank of white daisies to the left.

Dutch iris.

Viburnum Anne Russell. Heavenly scent. Unfortunately only one lot of flowers this year on this young plant. My helpful cats, always keen to lend a paw or tooth, chewed off any other buds. Little horrors!

Primrose. This is called Sundance I think. Sweet little flowers... you can see how small they are by comparing them to the flat leafed parsley leaf top left in the pic.

Native jobby.... not sure of its name. Beautiful French Lavender behind it.

New Season's Asparagus

Oh joy! Oh bliss! The first of this season's asparagus was in the grocer's today. Realistically asparagus, along with all other fruits and veggies, is available all year round these days at the cost to your palate and the vegetable's own carbon footprint.(Peruvian asparagus has been on the shelves for ages.) But I like to eat and cook with local seasonal produce whenever practicable. So on the menu tonight is the first bunch of this year's asparagus. Some of the spears are a bit thin and will I think be a little stringy and tough - but as I haven't had asparagus in months I don't care.

Accompanying it will be butterfly pork steaks, done on the griddle and served with a little Char Siu sauce, and a French dish which includes aubergine, eschallots, mushroom, parsley and pan-fried breadcrumbs. Mmm.

Sydney Olympic Park

One of our regular weekend rides is Sydney Olympic Park. If you get there early enough, the cycleways (shared with pedestrians) aren't too hectic and you can get a bit of speed and constant movement going. There are around 35km of paths in the park, and we typically do about 22-25km of them on our rides. More info about them can be found here. While the presence of families cycling slowly can be a hazard to navigation, the nice thing is that the paths are for the most part off road, and the scenery along the river is always cheering. You ride through bushland and smell the crisp eucalypts, or the heady scent of wattle. Birdsong trills about you, and aside from tracks that run beside the roads, there is no traffic noise.

The whole area is relatively flat,with a few hills and rises, some of them optional. On a gorgeous day like today heading out there after breakfast was a no-brainer. For Penelope, it seems these bike paths and the bike lanes on adjacent streets are her native territory. The winding, undulating paths are like any you'd find in the UK, just right for a British bike.

The whole area was developed around ten years ago, so the roads themselves are smooth and pothole free. Any bumps are treated with disdain by Penelope. I found my lovely Pashley just as easy to ride as Petunia this morning, quite light despite her steelness, and nimble in mid-range acceleration. Cycling on the shared paths can be stop-start, or slow-go as you negotiate pedestrians, dogwalkers and cyclists who just go too slowly. We generally ride on the roads for a little while as well, as this part of Sydney is geared for cycling and has a superb bike lane structure. She came into her own on one of the back roads - a long, sweeping bend, no traffic... I pedalled madly and was rewarded with a smooth, blisteringly fast (for my level of fitness :-) few minutes. Greg had to drop a gear and go like mad to catch me.

And - nice to know - I CAN stand up and pedal on hills. It feels rather precarious compared to a road bike or MTB, but it works. Greg led us down a wrong turn in search of a different entrance into the park, and it was up hill and down dale for a bit. The down dale was brilliant, and the up hill surprised me. Yesterday's ride must have done my muscles some good as I was getting up the hills easily enough, especially when I got the hang of standing up.

By the time we got back to the car it was getting madly busy; on weekends cyclists outnumber cars in this area about 10 to 1. Next weekend there's a special family cycling day at the Park so we'll give that a miss and head out into the country instead.

A journey back home

What a gorgeous spring day! Temps in the early to mid 20s, sunshine, the incredible scents of everything floral bursting into the air. We loaded our bikes onto the car and drove to my childhood home, where my mother still lives. This is such a gorgeous, graceful part of town. Old stone houses, tons of trees both native and European. In particular, the azaleas and wisterias which dot just about every old, established garden were in full swing, heaven to look at and heaven to smell.

This was the first time I'd ridden around here in about ten years. Back then I was riding a 21 speed mountain bike and able to negotiate all the hills in this hilly bit of town really easily once I'd got fit, standing up and pedalling like fury. Taking Penelope there for a ride was a different matter. She's much heavier and her lowest gear doesn't match the range on an MTB or hybrid. On the flat bits she was just brilliant, so easy to get her up and speeding along, and down the hills she flew like a bird, giving my other half on his road bike a serious run for his money. But I'm ashamed to say that I got off and pushed on the biggest hill (just as I did the first ever time I tried that particular hill on my MTB). My legs were aching like mad and I was gasping. Even low gear wasn't enough, so I think I'll have to get the bottom gear lowered, aside from working on my personal fitness. More disturbing was the realisation that it's really, really awkward if not unsettling to try and stand up on the pedals to get up hills. The geometry of the bike doesn't really allow it.

That being said, she really is lovely to ride and it means adapting to her geometry and gearing as well as making such mods as I can afford. Sydney is a hilly ci

ty, more suited to bikes with more gears and in particular more low range gears if you're an unfit lass like me.

Next time I take her to Mum's I'll be fitter and more used to her. She's worth all the perseverance, all the aching legs and gasping breath, as she is a diamond on two wheels.

Pimping my ride

Having taken delivery of the delightful Penelope, she does need a bit of personalisation. Particularly in the handlebar grips department. I'm surprised that, since they produce and sell leather handlebar grips, Pashley doesn't offer them as standard on their top end bikes such as the Princess Sovereign. The only bit of my bike I don't like is the cheap rubber grips, which are actually not comfortable when you ride for more than a few minutes.

Petunia the Mixte has been prettied up with lovely Brooks leather handlebar grips, which replaced her own cheap rubber grips. They not only look nice, they feel fantastic. As you can see. They match her pretty champagne-coloured frame. (She is still to get her own Brooks saddle though it's in the pipeline.)

I'll be getting Brooks grips for Penelope in the next couple of weeks - they are more readily available than the Pashley grips and I suspect a little more padded and comfortable. I've found two on eBay - one is the same colour as Petunia's, which complement the brown Brooks saddle. Currently they're very affordable but the auction ends on Sunday. The other option is a Buy It Now from the USA for GREEN leather grips which echo Penelope's shiny paintwork. They are a similar hue only lighter in shade. Both eBay options are cheaper than buying through a bike store here in Oz; the US one is more expensive than the auction due to the exchange rate and the postage (international postage seems to have increased significantly lately).

My heart says go with the green grips and be a bit different. Not everyone has green grips. :-)

Obesity crisis gains weight

Blimey I'm posting a lot today. But I read something in yesterday's newspaper which appalled me. Taxpayers could be forced to fund lapband surgery for obese teenagers. Now the appalling bit isn't the bit about the taxpayers (although that's bad enough), it's that there are so many young people out there seriously and dangerously overweight. Apparently one in four children here in Oz are obese or overweight.

It wasn't that long ago that Australia was considered a bit of a paradise, filled with lean, healthy people, outdoorsy types who spread the legend of the Bronzed Aussie throughout the world.

Fighting middle-aged spread is not uncommon throughout the western world on western diets - our metabolism and hormones change the way we store and use fat. But my goodness there are a lot of sadly big children around. It can't all be "just big bones" or "genes". When I was a kid in the 60s and 70s we were all pretty lean. I was slightly chubby compared to my friends but looking at pics of me in my youth I wouldn't have been considered overweight. We used to run around outside all the time, we rode bikes, we flopped into bed tired after busy, active days. We didn't have fast food several times a week as to be honest there wasn't any back then. There were a few pizza shops but KFC and McDonald's didn't appear in Australia until the late 60s/early 70s and even then they were considered a twice a year event in our family. Now there is a scary wealth of fast food options for busy parents to fall back on, or for teens to stop at on the way home from school.

Pre-teen kids these days have a different life. At school, many of them aren't allowed run at lunchtime unless the school has a grassy oval. In my childhood we belted around the concrete playground heedless of skinned knees and other injuries. Nowadays schools are mindful of insurance premiums and parents taking out lawsuits if Little Johnny breaks an arm at school. So kids can't run unless it's during supervised sports.

The careless play my friends and I indulged in after school isn't always an option for today's child either. All the kids in my street would congregate in the bamboo grove at the back of my next door neighbour's. It was a cave, a house, a castle, whatever you wanted to make of it. We'd perhaps go for a bike ride together, or play chasing or some kind of ball game. Our mothers would get a little concerned near dinner time and call us in, or take turns to check periodically we were all still there and in one piece. Today's child often stays in 'after care' until his or her parents get home from work. If Mum doesn't work and picks up the child from school, it's usually in a car, and the child has to stay at home rather than play in the street with friends as parents are justifiably concerned about paedophiles. My mum used to worry about me getting kidnapped, but compared to a lot of today's kids I had amazing freedoms. So today's kid stays at home in front of the telly or computer after school. Many modern suburbs encourage big houses on small blocks so the classic backyard, the home of cricket, footy and everything else, is diminished.

Teenagers don't 'play' like younger kids. There's even more temptation for them to spend their money on junk food after school, and unless they are passionate about their sport, they aren't the most active beings if any of my friends' teens are an example. If both parents work, your average teen will go home from school and either hit the computer or the tv or chat to friends on the phone. There's no-one to tell them to get up and move around. Where I live I see a few teens and younger children being active after school either on bikes or walking, but nowhere near the number I used to see when I was younger. The lure of technology encourages sedentary behaviour. It's all very well to buy a Nintendo Wii and play tennis on it but don't kid yourself you're getting fit - you'd be much better off playing tennis for real.

Our government is currently engaged in a 'measure up' campaign for adults, encouraging them to measure their waistline and do something about bringing their weight down if they are overweight. They are also seriously considering banning fast food / junk food advertisements during children's tv time. Major supermarkets are engaged in advertising to make fruit and vegetables exciting choices for kids to eat (but still have long, full aisles of sugary soft drinks and fatty or sugary snacks). There's a real push to get people out there in the fresh air, exercising - there is a spring family bike ride next week, 45km across Sydney; Ride To Work day next month etc. But is it too little too late for families who take the easy option with pizza and chips and use the car to travel 500 metres?

Is Australia now Paradise Lost?

Blissful bike!

Oh, the joy of it! I went out for a ride on Penelope yesterday, and it was sheer bliss! Having NOT ridden on Petunia first for an hour beforehand, I was fresh and fit this time and gave my lovely new mount a good tryout on my usual 30 minute exercise route.

My husband came with me on his road bike and I discovered I was no more disadvantaged in the 'keeping up' stakes than when I ride Petunia. Well, perhaps a smidge more but not uncomfortably so. I even managed to leave him standing on a downward slope :-). AND pass him going up a hill!

She's a tougher ride in that my legs really feel it, but her solidity and smoothness more than make up for it. She really does glide along graciously - never was a bike more aptly named than the Princess.

I feel quite different when I ride her... more happy to dawdle along, head up looking at the scenery. In my quest to find a gracious, old-fashioned outlet for my mind and heart in the midst of technology and stress and today's too-fast pace, she (even more so than Petunia) is a vital addition. In her saddle, I can forget everything else.

Can't wait to finish my work for the day and get back into her saddle :-).