well, not exactly, we did the family oriented 50km ride, which was from melbourne to altona beach and back. got up just after 6am, after packing stuff the previous night, to make sure i wouldn't forget anything. camera equipment (which i didn't even use), and all the essentials, like sunscreen, water, etc. alf showed up just before 7am, and we got the bikes into/onto his car, and headed to ozzy's place. when we got there, i realised something, i forgot to take my helmet!! we decided, that there would prolly be someone selling them at the start point, so we rode through the city to alexandra gardens. ozzy registered while i looked for a helmet, unfortunately, the bike expo didn't open until 10am, and alf said we should just go rather than wait. i did get a free cap from the apollo stand, which didn't really hide the fact that i wasn't wearing a helmet. the plan was to look for a bike shop along the way, or at worst, get one at the halfway point from a stand or something (i didn't mind, as my old one is pretty old).
we went past several volunteers, and police officers (giving directions), before finally, one guy pulled me over and questioned me a bit before heading over the west gate bridge. he called me a liar (or at least that i was an idiot for riding without a helmet, when i said i forgot to bring it), and then just walked off and said, "if you go off, it's your own fault", so i rode off. the bridge was pretty windy, and a bit of a climb, but nothing harder than what i do on my time trial ride. we got to about 20km or so, and alf and ozzy were complaining of being stuffed. i just took it easy and rode with them till the half way point, not wanting to get caught out by myself (with no helmet).
after a break, and no luck finding a helmet, we headed back toward the city. the ride back was pretty cruisey, i pretty much just spun it back at about 18km/h. after about 5-10km, i seemed to have dropped alf and ozzy, and not wanting to slow down too much (i just wanted to finish without getting busted), i just kept rolling along. with just under 2km to go, they finally caught up to me, just after we past the freedom machine, with so little distance to go, i decided not to bother getting a helmet. we finished the ride, and went back to ozzy's place to recover, i think we all fell asleep briefly watching the rugby final replay. that was it, one silly thing kind of ruined my whole day, i would've ridden a lot faster otherwise, and also worried less. maybe (hopefully) next year i will be a bit smarter.
pic taken from bicycle victoria site.
#33 dtra (david tran)
Last edited at 19:41 21st-oct-2007
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