The World Institute of Slowness.

Yes. Right here. I feel calmer already.

Having a growly day. Thank technology.

Gosh I've been grumpy today. PMT? Possibly. But it's the sheer amount of interruptions and 'urgent's that has done me in and given me a headache. While I love my computer for the pleasure it gives me in my leisure time - surfing the net, catching up with friends on Facebook and email, reading other people's blogs - I'm finding technology increasingly annoying during work time.

The bloody phone hardly stopped today. It seems that in my role as admin/marketing/events/chief cat herder for a large Chamber of Commerce I have to be accessible at all times of the day. Of course everything is urgent. From having a great day yesterday where I actually got things done, the General Public has bounced back from Melbourne Cup day in a frantic, nagging mood. I've been lucky to get to the loo without the phone bleating.

If I turn the phone off for a bit to get some work completed, then I get emails which tell me about the phone message they've just left. One guy left three messages asking me to call the other day. I politely told him leaving one would do in the future, as I do get back to people as soon as practicably possible. I think I'm too polite sometimes. I refrained from saying I actually have a life, and two of those messages were out of business hours. I'm stupid enough to reply to emails out of hours if I check the inbox; my own fault for creating a rod for my own back.

But...has technology created rods for backs for most of us? Thanks to the wonders of the mobile phone and the internet, we are now contactable just about all the time. Who hasn't seen someone texting on the train (or, God help us, driving a car!), or even (rudely) at the cinema? Sit at a cafe and you'll be guaranteed people yakking away as they walk by or sit at the next table. We have made ourselves too available. If you want to 'get off the world' for a day, you face a deluge of messages, a flood of 'where are you?s' which induce annoyance in this little black duck.

Life was so easy when I was younger. The pre-computer days (yes, Virginia, they DID exist). The pre mobile-phone days. We didn't have an answering machine at home then. If you were out, you missed a call. Tough. I think it gave me a lot more freedom. If I was out and about and had to phone someone, I used a callbox. The postman came once a day with letters. Things took longer to happen; life was more relaxed. More frustrating admittedly if you wanted to research anything compared to the Internet Joy we have at our fingertips, but I didn't feel the pressures I feel now, this sense of people crowding me into a corner, with demands coming thicker and faster by the day.

Now there's social media to blend into the mix. I've organised a breakfast workshop for later this month with a speaker who'll be explaining how social media works and how you can use it to promote your business. Bookings are coming out of the woodwork. I think about Twitter and sigh that if I go onto it that's one more bloody thing I have to do on a regular if not daily basis; another 15 - 30 minutes a day to put aside for a task. I'm just a bit over it all at the moment.

Am I alone in getting annoyed with the expectancy that I have to be constantly available?

Grr.

The race that stops a nation

Sweltering at the moment in Sydney - in our part of town it's going to get pretty close to the hundred on the old scale before a cool change tonight. I went outside for a few minutes and decided it was really too hot, humid and revolting to get the bike out. I'm a wimp; fact is I'm not a summer person, and our winters here are so glorious for riding. I loathe exercising in summer, so it'll be rides in the evening from now on. But I digress. This post isn't about bikes, it's about the Melbourne Cup.

Back in my misspent youth I was a horseracing tragic. I memorised the names of every single Melbourne Cup winner as a teen - at the time I would have been able to recite more than 110 winners. I couldn't do algebra to save my life, but I could explain the difference between 6/4 and 5/2 in terms of betting odds, and work out how much I'd have to spend at different odds to win $20. Melbourne Cup day was the best day of the year behind Christmas Day. It was my own joyous holiday, my celebration of horses and racing, and my high school knew there was no chance of me being at school that day. My poor mother... writing excuse notes year after year.

I grew out of all that gradually as left school and got a job, but The First Tuesday In November is still a special, exciting day for me. I've done the form guide and picked my horses. I used to have an excellent system that meant while I'd be backing between three and seven horses, I could just about be guaranteed the winner; and for many years happily made a profit on the Cup. Now with the influx of international horses it's harder to maintain that system and some of the leadup races have changed a little too, so now I'm like any other mug punter with the Cup.

This year I'm backing three horses trained by Bart Cummings. He's won 12 Melbourne Cups and at 81 will be thinking of retiring soon and will be doing his best to make it 13. I'm also backing a rank outsider for very sentimental reasons.

I've mentioned in a previous post my teen lust for jockeys. My first jockey crush was on a New Zealand guy called Noel Harris, who came second in the Cup in 1973 on the short favourite, Glengowan. Many saw it as a boy being sent on a man's errand. Noel was 18 and real eye candy. Yum yum yum. I had posters of him torn from racing magazines on my bedroom wall. I was 11 at the time.

Noel is still riding at the age of 54. Like Bart Cummings, he'll be desperate for a Cup win before he retires. He's ridden more than 2000 winners in his career, but never the pinnacle of Australasian racing, The Melbourne Cup. He's on a rank outsider, 100/1, this year.

Above is Noel's backside. This was taken for a charity race celebrating Jockey underwear; the riders did it Superman-style with their underwear on the outside. And here's a pic of him taken last year. He's pretty fit for a guy in his 50s. (Blimey... where has the time gone? I only feel 21 still.)

I thought I'd do a wee bit of research on Noel this morning... I wonder whether he's riding every year when Cup time comes around and like my other old jockey flame he's fairly recently hooked up with a woman thirty years younger than himself. Heh heh, I can pick 'em, can't I?

Anyway, good luck to "Harry" - I hope he can finally achieve a dream and win the Cup this afternoon. Come 2.30 pm I'll be in front of the telly with a glass of champagne cheering him on.

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. >;-)