The Strange Adventures of Petunia Happenstance and her Chicken of Destiny

UPDATE 10pm/14 May

The registration page has been altered to remove the confusion.  It applies ONLY to the 68km Challenge.  If you want to enter the Road Race or the Family Fun Day, you should contact CSV or BV respectively.  If you registered and paid $39 thinking you were entering the road race you should ask for your money back before Friday (or you’ll only get half back).

UPDATE 5pm/14 May

The wording on the registration page has changed but it’s still very confusing! Do you register on this page if you want to race? Where do you register for the Family Ride?

UPDATE 4pm 14/May:

I just got a phone call from John Trevorrow at Cycling Events Down Under. They have been commissioned by EastLink to manage the ride and take their fee from the entry fee.

Revised web pages (Event and registration) will be put up tomorrow. They acknowledge that they jumped the gun in putting info up unpolished, and you will see some changes, apparently. (hopefully)

There will be “separate” 65km rides. The first riders to leave will be the racers (license required), followed by “the rest”.

The cost is $39.

Covers:

Cycling Events DownUnder commission/running costs
Timing system
Insurance
Cancer Council donation

The Cancer Council donation component is estimated at $15-$25 depending on the level of subscription and other variable costs.

Write to Eastlink asking for a cheaper 65km ride!

The Eastlink tollway folks are having an open day on the 15th June 2008 featuring cycling and walking on the road prior to the official opening to cars. The registration page is confusing. It says that all riders in the 65km ride will be timed (this means having to carry a transponder, which will have to be distributed appropriately controlled, monitored, and returned at the end of the event at considerable expense). There seem to be two different 65km rides - one for normal folks who enter and pay $39 on that web site and the other for registered racing cyclists who will need to enter though Cyclesport Victoria. (Note: this event would exclude all non-CSV/UCI compliant vehicles recumbents, handcycles, MTB’s etc..)

The other is a free family fun ride of five, ten or 20 kilometres.

It seems to be a rather self-defeating move to require even the non-competition cyclists on the 65km ride to carry transponders to determine a time they could measure using their watch. Surely split second timing is only of interest to the racers! What a great way to discourage participation! Methinks that they are asking recreational riders to subsidize the racers.

I suggest that the organisers offer a cheaper option for folks who don’t want to pay to be timed…..

Was John Dickenson the “Inventor of the modern Hang Glider”? Should hang gliders be called “Dickenson Wings”?

Well, if you go to http://www.johndickenson.net/ you’ll read a lot about John and his amazing contributions and I guess you can make up your own mind. There’s a lot of noise happening on various hang gliding forums pointing at that site, and it’s difficult to see what all the fuss is about. My take on the whole thing?

Continue reading ‘Who invented the modern hang glider?’

Only sixty three percent though? That’s pathetic.

Click on the picture or here to take the test….

Yesterday we attended a funeral for a man who died too young.

Ms Canada treasures the few relatives she has in Australia, in particular her second cousin on her mothers side, Patrick. We’ve spent a couple of very, very relaxing weekends visiting him and his family at their house in the hills behind Foster near the Prom, most recently over Easter.

Patrick has been suffering from cancer since before I met him, and every time we visited was looking progressively frailer. Last week he succumbed, only days before his 72nd birthday and yesterday was his funeral at the Mission To Seamen chapel.

Patrick, you see, was a sea-captain before he left the open waters for a post with the Port of Melbourne so that he could spend more time with his growing family. Pat was English, and had already left his native land and joined an Asian shipping company to marry Jennifer, an Australian nurse.

In his heart, he never left the sea. His home was filled with naval and shipping memorabilia and books. As a perpetual reminder in retirement, from the house’s wide glass windows he overlooked the rugged Wilsons Promontory and beyond, the often tempestuous waters of Bass Strait. Pat was active right up to the end with the Seamans’ Mission, the Company of Master Mariners and the Old Conway group - folks who trained on HMS Conway back in the UK. The chapel was filled with his nautical comrades.

The service was moving; the readings nautically related, the eulogies delivered below a pulpit that stood tall, modeled after the stern of a sailing ship. Pat’s son John delivered a warm and fitting tribute to his fathers’ life.

As we filed out behind the coffin, we did so to the slow tolling of a ships’ bell.

Pat, as I knew him, was a true gentleman. I never heard him complain about the cruel hand that fate had dealt him. He and Jennifer welcomed us into their home with open arms despite his illness.

Pat, may fair winds and a good tide speed you on your final voyage. It was a privilege to know you; and Jennifer we wish you and the family all the best for the future, and hope to see you again soon.

John Brian Patrick Blamey 5th May 1936 to 29th April 2008

Up until 3 weeks ago I’d never heard the word “Barista”.

Suddenly I’m hearing and reading it everywhere.

What gives?

Here they are, finishers 2, 1 and 3 in the 30 Minute Challenge at the Melbourne Festival of Cycling.

This is how it was advertised:

Challenge your mates, your work colleagues, or just yourself. Set a goal and if you like, “get sponsored” for the distance you ride. Not only will you enjoy the feel good effect of physical activity, you’ll be riding on the traffic free Albert Park road circuit, maybe even alongside some of cycling’s best.

Basically, the idea was this: Ride like stink for 30 minutes to see how far you could go.

Well, about eight of us “funny” bike riders took part as part of our usual Sunday B-Spon ride. Obviously we couldn’t resist opening up the throttle for a bit of friendly competition. In the end, if there’d been anyone keeping tabs, three of us would have finished “on the podium” in the distance covered. There were only a handful of road bikes doing a reasonable speed (using drafting techniques), so to a large extent, finishing faster was a matter of “recumbent pride”.

Of course, in the end, nobody except us cared, and in the context of the event, that’s how it should be.

More photos from John Halbrook … here.

Degnsied in Taiwan…

This is an old one, but….

What would the Tour de France be like if the Diamond Frame bike had not been invented?

Yes, that’s right. They’d rather ride nothing at all and still wear the Lycra, rather than let recumbents race.

Someone with Photoshop and too much time on their hands….

An update, mainly for those of you who get here via Googling “recumbent bike” or “OzHPV Challenge”….

The OzHPV Challenge last weekend attracted about 20 competitors (not counting the juniors) at the Go-Cart track at Wodonga which is equidistant between the two major concentrations of recumbent bike riders in Canberra and Melbourne. This way everyone is inconvenienced equally.

The track is twisty and only 700m long. The main event is the 30 lap road race. To win required a combination of raw speed/strength and a willingness to lean the bike into the corners… hard. Sadly, I lack the gung-ho to push it that hard.

The picture below is of the overall winner of the competition, Jamie Friday, who consistently won or placed in the top 3 in every event. His homemade coreflute fairing did seem to help his speed. As for me, well, I finished 11th. So, I guess I’m just an “average” rider. I’ll update this summary with a link to the results and a fullwriteup as soon as they are published.

I can’t pass the opportunity to tell you to run, don’t just slide your mouse to download or listen to the superb Radio Eye documentary on Campbell McComas. It’s priceless. The man was a genius who died way too young. What are you waiting for? Click the link! The podcast won’t be up for long!

To quote the blurb:
“The brilliant hoaxer Campbell McComas died a few years ago at the peak of his ‘career’ as a bogus after-dinner speaker. Gordon Glenn got access to his assiduously preserved tapes, which record his outrageous pranks on the professional class, and has assembled them together with candid interviews with the hoaxer himself.

Out of a total of about 1,800 totally fabricated personalities, McComas recalls some of the more memorable ‘visiting professors’ and other high achievers he presented to the academic and business groups circuit as genuine experts in various fields. Not everyone got the joke — the feature includes a walk-out by US diplomats upset by a reference to their Americas Cup defeat.“