Saturday morning in the park

Finally some pics of me in Penelope I can send to Kate at Steel City Cycle works for her bike gallery. All my other pics show me without the helmet that is mandatory in Australia - yes, I'm a lawbreaker!! >;-) I do hate wearing the bloody things but I do realise they help protect you from brain damage; helmets seem to be contentious topic on the net. My personal view is that they should be mandatory for children but optional for adults. Usually I'm wandering around the back streets or on bike tracks and it irks me having a hot sweaty head. If I were commuting in traffic I'd certainly wear a helmet without question. I had concussion twice during my horse riding years and would have been dead without my horse riding helmet. Horses are far less predictable than bikes though!

Proof that Penelope can go reeeeaally slow below in these pics. Greg was using my little Lumix digital which often has a lag between pressing the button and taking the photo... so there were a few that showed me disappearing out of shot. And this was on sport mode. Hmm. Anyway I dawdled along hoping he'd manage to get me in frame and these are the results.

This is in a little park about 4km from our house; typically it's the turnaround point for our usual 30 minute ride. At the moment it looks beautifully verdant courtesy of heavy rain earlier in the week, and a wet start to October. Come the middle of summer the grass will be yellowing and tired.

A bit of Pashley info

I came across this article in the UK Independent during a little search to find out more about when the Pashley Princess was designed and put into production. In a nutshell, nobody at Pashley seems to know :-)! But the article is lovely... makes you want to sit down with a nice cup of tea, a digestive biscuit, and hum "Rule Brittania".

And I'd like to think that this chap - or someone very like him - was responsible for turning Penelope from tubes of steel into a masterpiece.

Marathons get the thumbs-up

The sky was brilliant blue in spring sunshine today - a great morning to head to Sydney Olympic Park with our bikes. It was a tossup for me: I longed to take Penelope as I thoroughly enjoyed riding her there last time and she gets me fitter, but I did want to try out Petunia's new tyres, so the Mixte got put on the bike rack this time.

The Scwalbes are excellent - I had suspected they would be. They are replacing the original tyres that Petunia had when she was new 25 years ago. Realistically any tyre would be an improvement one would think, but the Marathons are great. Very quiet, very grippy. Sydney Olympic Park is mainly paved bike tracks but there are some clay/gravel tracks there too which we tried out. I felt more confident riding on the dirt tracks with the new tyres :-). They feel much more stable. They are currently inflated to 80 psi but as they can take more I'll put them up to 85 for my next ride and see how that feels.

As usual I had the camera but was so busy riding I didn't think to stop for pics. D'Oh!

And finally... the Marathons

The guys at my local bike shop put my Schwalbe Marathons on today. While they were being fitted I got chatting with a guy who has had a custom bike built for him but is paying it off weekly and can't take it home yet. It's a mountain bike with Really Ugly Welds, front suspension, disc brakes, hydraulic this and that, aluminium frame, 27 gears etc etc etc. It's costing him around $4800. I gulped. He roared with laughter when I told him my saddle and grips cost more than I paid for my bike. Little Petunia came in for quite a few questions from the shop guys; how old was she? Was that a genuine Brooks saddle and was it leather? Where did I get the bike? What else had I done to it? Initially I was told to come back in an hour for my fitted tyres but once they started asking questions they got her up on the rack straight away and set to work. She does have a certain old-fashioned charm.

The white reflective stripe gives them a bit of an old-fashioned look; while they look a little more modern than the ancient Panaracers they replaced, they don't look too out of place.

More to the point, they ride well. I've only done a really short test ride on them (had to get back to work) but if the weather holds over the weekend will try them out. Rolling resistance seems pretty low, as the manufacturer promises. They can be inflated up to 95psi too - hee hee, that should give me an extra km per hour!

So here's Petunia with stage one almost finished. Just have to find a way to mount a light and a front basket. This may mean replacing the stem and cables unless I can find a clever person who can weld me a custom bracket for the handlebars. I have something in mind.

What's stage 2? At some point in the future, when I'm feeling far more financially capable, I want to rebuild the rear wheel with an 8 speed hub gearset. My sister-in-law has done that to her Mixte, and loves it.

Also part of stage 2 will be finding fenders that fit. Now the new tyres are on I can get measuring in earnest. >;-)

What a difference a service makes!

I had Penelope serviced late last week and have since then only really ridden her to the shops a couple of times. This morning, as it was sunny and glorious at 6.30am, I jumped out of bed (winced at my knees) and took her for a 30 minute ride. What a difference! Although I love her I confess I was feeling a bit worried about ever getting used to her as she seemed so sluggish compared to my mixte Petunia.

But the simple 30 day service, tightening everything up, checking all was bedded in correctly, made a world of difference. The little Pashley seemed so light and vigorous. For the first time I got her into top gear and pedalled happily without any effort. I've been struggling, on the same bike path, in fourth and even third. But she went like a bird. Last time I rode her up the main hill on this ride I'd had to move into low gear near the top. Today it was easy in second, I was hardly blowing. And it's not as if I've got much fitter in the last five days.

I'm really falling in love with this bike! She is a dream, a jewel. Pashleys rool. They do.

Brooks love and joy...

Yay, we picked up Petunia's Brooks saddle yesterday! It seems only a handful of high end bike shops in Sydney stock Brooks gear, and I had ordered mine fromWoolys Wheels in Paddington. This is a super shop - three stories of bikes and bike stuff. Most of the gear is aimed at the lycra crowd but there was a tantalising locked cabinet of Brooks goodies. The guys fitted the saddle for me so we headed down a couple of blocks into Centennial Park after that (we took both our bikes with us to the shop).

Centennial Park is a mecca for cyclists in Sydney's eastern suburbs. The main riding track is around 4km, mainly flat, so it's usual to see people on speedy road bikes whizz past you in a flash of lycra and skinny tyres. I prefer a more leisurely pace - we tend to average about 16-17km/h when we ride. I had to laugh at the speed signs which stated that neither cars nor cyclists must exceed 30 km/h in the park. Because I didn't take any photos - too busy keeping both hands on the bars and overtaking small children - you can find out more about Centennial Park and see some lovely pics here.

Petunia looks fab with her new, and very comfortable, Brooks B66S in antique brown. I did some tinkering when we got home and moved the saddle forward on the post a bit as I was finding myself sitting on the fork rather than the flat - as with Penelope. It's seriously comfortable to ride on.

So Petunia's transformation is nearly complete. Next come the Schwalbe tyres (next week). Finally I have to figure out a way to mount the rather lovely old-fashioned bullet light I bought AND keep a front basket. The basket I have is easily removable - it clicks onto that clunky big black thing you can see in the centre of the handlebar. However, when it's on the bike there's no room to mount a light underneath. So ideally I need to find a) a shallower, removable basket or b) a basket which CAN be removed when I want it to, which sits low enough for me to mount a light above it (and hopefully stays firm when I'm riding rather than bounce about). I've had no joy with baskets that meet this criteria to date. Most bike shops here, even the posh ones, sell basic baskets. Looks like I'll have to order in from overseas to achieve perfection or at least some way of having a basket and a light! Any suggestions? Answers on a postcard please... or simply leave a comment.

And finally, below is Petunia as she was when I bought her last year. That saddle (vinyl) was a shocker so the gel saddle she's had in the meantime has been an improvement. The handlebars were narrow and scary to ride with and lasted 48 hours before being changed. I think with her current saddle and handlebars she looks a much more inviting ride :-).

A trip down the coast

Penelope has been for her 30-day tweaking, and it was a gorgeous drive down the coast to Thirroul yesterday. It took about 90 minutes each way. It's doable by train, and you can take your bike on the train, but it's a good two and a half hours each way from where we live... so maybe something to do another time when we are feeling less pressured and not skiving a day off work.

But the view below, from a lookout near Austinmer, was enough to relax us. Heavenly! You can see it was a bit windy - there are tons of white horses on the beach. With a cool south wind blowing nobody was in swimming anywhere we passed despite it being school holidays here.

Here's Penelope on her rack down at Austinmer beach, where we stopped to breathe in gulps of salty air.

The villages between Sydney and Wollongong offer you the opportunity to step back in time. Yes, there are lots of modern houses but lots of charming old ones too, and commercial and public buildings like these two. Here is a theatre in Thirroul which has been put to good use as commercial premises, keeping its intriguing art deco meets Tudor exterior. This area was a popular holiday spot in the first half of the 20th century. Er...it still is! Although these days it's more an extended suburb of Wollongong.

Every little town had its School of Arts back in the day, and this sweet wee one is at Clifton. Here's where ladies practiced flower arranging, art exhibitions were held, and generally the School of Arts was a focus of life in the village.

And finally, the new Sea Gate Bridge at Coalcliff, completed in 2005. The road used to run alongside the cliff, but a landslide in 2003 washed the road away and essentially cut off half the villages from using the coast road - they had to backtrack inland to get from one town to another. Read more about this bridge and see some stunning pics here. It's a remarkable drive - you are held up on pillars high above the ocean.

After all that, Penelope had some minor tweaks, tightenings and adjustments done. I did an adjustment myself today (my middle name is now Spanner) with the saddle, moving it on its runners so it sits further forward. I was finding I was riding on the front rather than the seat; I have short arms and legs. A test ride this afternoon proved much more comfortable.

I also swapped the bolt that adjusts the seat post height for an adjustable one from my MTB. This may sound terribly girly, but it means I can adjust the saddle height now for maximum comfort for each pair of shoes I choose to ride in. Ahh-!!! I found riding in my Colorado clogs a different and uncomfortable experience than riding in my Geox flats, for instance. Mmm, I love tinkering!