Manfred the Manfriend is up late finishing an assignment so, in the spirit of solidarity I am up late also, figuring I might as well update you all just a little bit on the day that was: Melburn Roobaix.
Conditions were mixed: weather was a bit windy and bit cold and a bit wet, but certainly not very windy, freezing cold and pissing rain. All of which are entirely possible at this time of year. The natives were friendly (some with very cute helmets) and the roads were ready. Equipped with our deadtree.gsm map, we jolted our way from Hawthorn to Richmond (via liberated coffee courtesy of Coffee Supreme), onto Carlton (again coffee in North Fitzroy), across to Flemington, god-is-this-Moonee-Ponds and back through Brunswick maybe (I’ve lost interest in the map by this point) and finally, the Brunswick Velodrome, which feels somehow like it’s in Northcote. Eventually, there was beer and prizes and a room so pungent with the aromas post-ride riders, I feared for the health of the few little toddlers hanging about the front stage.
Do check the unusual suspects for more rigorous run-downs of the event; I believe that facebook/flickr/the blogsphere will soon be sufficiently plastered with images of people mid-jiggle to satisfy even the most curious among us.
What I will say however, is that I had a great day and that the whole experience was worth the 45 mins it took to create my entry video and the countless hours and astronomical phone bill required to bully all my friends into voting for me so that I could get a place. Though I didn’t pay for my ticket, I’d say it was damn good value for money and despite my fears to the contrary, the event did not suffer Coldplay Syndrome (the idea that the more people that like something I like, the crappier somehow that thing appears to me).
And though I feel I could blather on for quite a while here, and might indeed at another juncture, I am feeling rather happy about life right now because today was a day on bikes. And I love bikes. I’ve not yet harnessed an appropriately succinct way to say it, but there is something so magnificent about the sensation of riding, that some days I don’t know if I feel at all like applying a critical lens to it. It would only kind of suck the magic.
So I don’t care much to rate the pave, the planning or the prizes. Others will do it for me and better.
What I will do is recommend that if you haven’t tried a nice big group ride, in such a vein as the Roobaix, do try one. I was always very timid when it came to riding in a group. And though I loved riding on my own or with one or two friends, I never really felt that exciting sense of reclamation, the David and Golaith victory, the plucky underdoggedness that you get when four hundred or so bikes (surely the most pleasant and and polite of vehicles) go out and take back the streets.
eleanor j jackson 