Brisbane Cyclist

So, couple of days ago, Dan got in touch.

I’ve been thinking about it since then, and luckily quite a few people have let me know that there are several good websites around the place all about Brisbane and all about cycling.  Effectively, in most circumstances I was aware of this fact. I’m not actually completely oblivious.

In fact, when I moved to Brisbane about a year ago I did almost the same thing, I entered “Google” then I entered “bike”, then I entered “Brisbane”. Pretty much 20 min later I decided that, as I didn’t actually need to buy a bike, so getting to know all the bike stores in Brisbane seemed kind of over the top.  And, despite the fact that I have several blogs and three separate twitter personalities, I sometimes believe that this is in fact an indication that  I am not actually that into the Internet.  Sometimes I find that the Internet is a really boring place. I am astonished just how popular it really is.

One of the first places that I visited was Brisbane Cyclist.  At the time, I did not become a member because generally speaking I hate websites that require you to become a member in order to engage with them. I have the whole Internet account dedicated to collecting lifespam, which seems to be what I go on for Facebook these days. Isn’t that strange, after a lifetime of trying to avoid spam I now find myself spending long hours deliberately looking at a version of that very thing. So yeah, at the time I didn’t feel like being a member of Brisbane Cyclist. For those who don’t know, Brisbane Cyclist is an initiative of Damien M,  who is, all things considered, a very enthusiastic person about cycling given that he was involved in the establishment of Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney cyclist sites. As far as I can tell, Brisbane Cyclist does a pretty good job of offering a wide range of information to your general cyclist: friendly, semi–moderated, quite pleasant to look at and presumably growing in numbers.

As an aside (ah, always the inevitable aside)  I have now joined as a member. I don’t want to be disparaging about anything that I haven’t really tried, so this stage I would say that Brisbane Cyclist has a few ticks –  absence of Comic Sans, events, links to blogs, and a smattering of friendly people. I’d have learned more about the Brizzy Bike Fest if I was a member earlier. When I say smattering I mean 331, which is only approximately 1600 less smatters than there are in Melbourne and some 3300 less smatters than there are in Sydney, which kind of makes sense given that the Sydney website was the first one to be established. I have added the link next door.

If I could be  a bit boring, I would say that one of my initial reasons for not taking the opportunity to become a member of Brisbane Cyclist was just that, in having a little bit of everything on the site I got a little bit confused and as such a little bit less interested. I was talking about this idea (that sometimes I need to have a little less to like a little more)  somewhere else and I guess it’s a bit of a theme for me right now. Oh,  and I have to admit, that I don’t really like green. Why is that? Who doesn’t like green? Maybe because I read so many “light green” websites there is something about the use of the actual colour that makes me feel blech.

That said,  if I was more of a joiner, I have to say that Brisbane Cyclist would not be that bad a place to join at the start. I am sure that the site will grow and there are plenty of good, helpful, interesting posts on the site which I am sure I will inevitably end up finding bloody useful.

This is Damian. He seems nice and into cycling.

Potentially Damian is very into cycling.  I am more so into riding and sometimes into cyclists and often into community. This can sometimes mean that I am not actually that helpful when it comes to cycling information. Top work to Damien and his team, if you are into cycling  and starting out in Brisbane then perhaps you should check out his site. I have, it was almost painless.  I only had to join in.