The yearning

It is rapidly dawning on me that at some point this weekend I need to clean my tent and assemble my touring equipment and have it at the ready. At the moment I really feel the need to get away for a weekend, to tour somewhere. I have no idea where I would go just yet, or when the opportunity will present itself, but I just need to be ready for when it does. Right now nothing else really seems to interest me. I managed 44km on the bike before work this morning -- it was pleasant, but it simply wasn't long enough to offer the sort of escape that I feel I need right now.

Ironically, I had the chance a month after returning from Scotland -- with the Gold Coast Show long weekend. At the time I opted to stay back, feeling a little "toured out" and nursing an ankle problem. Ever since that weekend, I have yearned to get away, not just for the ride, but for the whole experience of pedalling to a destination unknown and setting up camp wherever I feel like it at the end of the day. There are no more long weekends this year -- so it can only be for one night at this stage, but that alone would be worth it.

* * * * *

In other news, Tweed Coast Treadly reports that tomorrow is National ride to work day. I must be out of the loop because this is the first I've heard of it, and I wasn't even aware it was a national thing (I think Brisbane runs it's version in March). Ironically, tomorrow may well see the start of a spike in the number of people riding to work here on the 'Coast with all the road closures in Sufferer's Parasite because of a car race this weekend. That said, my route is usually gridlocked regardless, so it won't impact on me at all.

I'll be riding to work as normal tomorrow regardless, but I often wonder at the effectiveness of running something like this once a year. I really think using a free breakfast to entice a large number of people to get on their bikes for one day a year without any kind of education, training (or even a clue in a lot of cases) has the capacity to do more harm than good. Essentially the problems occur when these people have "close calls" in the traffic, or encounter other problems like flat tyres that they have not yet learned the skills to deal with. These people then end up telling all and sundry about their bad experiences, which only puts more people off (the old marketing saying is that a person who has a bad experience tells 30-50 people, whereas a person who has a good experience usually tells 3-5 if you're lucky).

A better option in my view would be to abolish the free breakfast and t-shirt altogether, and just run smaller group rides to the city centre for work on more regular intervals. That way, the experienced cyclists could actually ride with and instruct the newbies rather than slaving over a barbecue. Once people have learned from the experienced cyclists, they might just enjoy it enough to do it more often than once a year. Sure, we might have to survive without the politicians speeches that way, but anyone who's watched the opening of the election campaign this year will realise that those rarely lead to enlightenment.