Links

Audax Australia
This is the umbrella organisation running long distance cycling events in Australia Their website includes a calendar of events.

Bikejournal
A place where cyclist can keep track of their mileage and any number of other statistics, as well as an attached forum.

Bikeforums
A set of discussion forums covering almost every conceivable cycling related topic.

Cycling Adventurer
The Cycling Adventurer has tossed in the structured life of an urbanite to explore the world by bicycle. A well-written site detailing how he came to cycling, and what he learned along the way.

Crazy Guy on a Bike

Bicycle touring journals from all over the world, including a couple of my own.

Johns Cycles

This is my LBS on the Gold Coast. While they cater more to the racing market, their service, advice and workmanship is the best on the coast.

St Kilda Cycles

Importers of all manner of things hard to find in Australia, including the legendary Schmidt hub dynamo & E6 lights.

Blogs

Bicycle-eye
Wonderings and wanderings out and about in Portland, Oregon, US

The Journey
The journey begins in Perth, Western Australia.

Lance Notstrong
The "other" Lance!

Ms Mittens
The Wired Cat on-line

Iron Gambit
.

Aussie Writer and Cycletourist
A blog chronicling the writing and cycling of a seaside baby boomer.

Up in Alaska
Jill's subarctic journal about ice, bears and distant dreams of the midnight sun.

The Kin Chronicles
Taking mediocrity to a new level of ordinary.

Allez
Riding and running with a vengeance.

London Cycling Diary
Pedalling across the capital since August 2005.

CouchPilot-2-BikePilot (Zin's cycling blog)
Living an adventurous life with Type-2-Diabetes.

The adventures of Crazy Biker Chick
... Including cycling, adventuring, cooking, knitting and ranting.

Redneck Espanol
The two wheeled Spanish redneck.

Treadly and me
"Work is something I do between riding my bicycle".

Crowlie
Womanist philosophy and theology. Cycling, climbing, art, single-motherhood and fire-twirling.

Adrian Fitch's random rambling.
A bit about cycling, a bit about genealogy, a bit about radio but mostly a lot about nothing at all.

Geo's big adventure
The life and times of Geo.

It's about the bike
Musings on the cycling life.

Spinopsys
Various cycling tidbits.

Industry Outsider
A blog about bikes and stuff.

Tweed Coast Treadly
An old man's bicycle riding diary.

A cyclist's life in Tenerife
(Canary Islands).

Bike to work to live to bike
It's never too late to get back on the bike

Stupid Hurts
Just the random scribblings of a guy with a bicycle

I'm not drunk enough for this
Really, I'm not.

BikeHacks
What can I say? Just read it.

Mozam's cycling adventures
A random collection of the things I like to do most, and mostly that is to ride my bikes, bicycles that is... My musings from competitive riding, long distance endurance to puttering around the neighborhood..

More cycling blogs

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Friday, January 13, 2006

When is it too much?

There's an interesting discussion taking place over at bikejournal about when cycling becomes too much of an obsession. The general consensus seems to be that this happens when you start to sacrifice long-term ambitions and goals for it (although one reply quite rightly points out that people never get ridiculed for being obsessed with golf, but cycling somehow makes them "weird" -- which is something I wear as a badge of honour). My question is this: what happens if cycling is your long term goal?

You see, I don't ride specifically to clock huge distances on the bike (as much fun as that is). When I'm not riding for transport, I ride to explore. I ride for what I can discover in the places that my bike can take me. My main objective in life is to see as many places from my bicycle saddle as possible. I live where I do purely because of the sheer number and variety of places to ride. When I consider them to be exhausted, I'll move on.

A few years ago, I was unemployed, uneducated and generally unmotivated. I was living with my mother, collecting unemployment benefits and going to the beach every afternoon. At that stage I simply had no long-term dreams. I made a few half-hearted attempts to find work, but essentially I needed something to motivate me if my life was going to go anywhere. Eventually I helped a local shopkeeper out with some renovations, and got enough cash together to buy a beater bike from a low-end store.

I started riding it (a lot) simply to give myself something else to do, and discovered some beautiful places like Springbrook or Beechmont. Eventually I desired to go further, and that was going to cost money. I wanted to ride in Tasmania, but I couldn't afford the airfares. I got off my backside, got a job, went to university and got a qualification (became the first ever in my family to graduate). Five years later it happened (you should have seen me on the plane on the approach to Hobart airport). Along the way I've been to other places that I hadn't considered (and indeed I didn't even know a good many of them existed). Yet virtually everything I have has come about simply because of the desire to ride, the desire to explore, the desire to discover the world.

I have another trip starting in 29 days, then it's back to putting money away and planning another adventure. Speaking of which, I still have some small things to tidy up. Things to do this weekend:

1. Find where I've put all that cold weather cycling gear that I'm not using, and get it all together. I'm going to be riding in places that get summer snowfalls, I need to be prepared.

2. Decide on the best way to pack my bike for the plane. I'm not sure how much I'll need to disassemble the hybrid to get it into the airline bag, it will be the first time I've flown with it.

3. Dig out all of those important documents like passports and so on. I won't need a visa to travel to NZ, but I still want the other things sorted out.

4. Give that new camelbak it's first trial run. A long ride on Sunday should do it.

I think that will do to begin with, given the busy weekend I'm facing regardless. Yes, they could all probably be put off for another couple of weeks, but I have no intention of waiting that long and panicking late on. That isn't the way I do things.

1 Comments:

Blogger Rodney Olsen said...

Darn. I actually wrote a thoughtful response here a couple of days back but Blogger was having issues. I thought it had worked anyhow but I see now it didn't.

I was pretty much agreeing with you about priorities and saying that if cycling is your long term goal you should go for it.

Cycling is high on my list of priorities but not the highest so I order my life accordingly.

9:18 pm  

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