On a wander in Sydney Australia, A few things come to mind. Aussie's love cycling - witnessed two septegenarians rolling strong, up hill, in traffic on full race Merckx rigs. Gas, parking, insurance and repairs for motorized means of transit are mad expensive, keeping the proletariat on bikes n' buses. Nice. Lots o' folks seem to love the dual slalom, beefy bmx style rigs here - they call'm pushie bikes. Whatever. Guess it's cause they're such pigs you end up pushing them on the hills instead of riding. There's a downhill run that everyone talks about where you take your bike on a train out to the Blue Mountains and bomb downhill all the way back to the city. That's like an hour of DH on mostly single track and some road. Haven't done it yet but if I can get the right bike sorted, maybe later in the week. On the weekend, the local highways and streets are chockablock (oz slang for packed) with weekend warriors kitted out in lycra and spinning like mad. Everyone seems to know what a Madison is and has a favorite track racing star. I've only seen two monocoggers and neither was fixt, so that craze has not caught on here yet, which is weird since they love the trackies so much. There's a beautiful park here called Centenial Park that has great loops and paths for riding. We rented some super heavy Giant commuter bikes and rode around the park all day, then later that night we rode to the best Indian restaurant in the world - Oh Calcuta in Darlinghurst. Australia is beautiful, great food, great people, fairly affordable and lots of good riding, so pony up the airfare and go! Viva.
I envy you guys. Have fun. I just missed doing that Blue Mountain Downhill run when I was there. Have you hit Arthur's Pizza yet? I don't think my other place would suit you guys too well - Burgerman in Darlinghurst - with the beetroot on top with horseradish. nice. enjoy
Posted by: bigsleep | 03/17/2005 at 17:39