Dave and Jen For Oxfam

If you follow our Twitter feeds you would have read that Jen went on a training ride on Saturday without me, as I was off at a music festival. On the topic of Twitter feeds, you really should head to our profile and Follow us! Whilst I typically don’t like to get involved with event reviews, the editor convinced me otherwise and I ignored the little voice shouting “if you catch a cold from this you’re going to be miserable in Vietnam” and braved the masses. Fortunately most of my other work is ahead of schedule as the final week before we go looms, so it felt like a nice sunny day to be squished amongst a lot of people and attempting to make some sense out of the day. Arriving home rather late (shall we say) I sat down to the same Acer Aspire One micro-laptop that we will be taking on the trip, and punched out my part of the review on the only-slightly-small keys as yet another nice practice run for writing site updates and articles whilst overseas. In the last week we have added a few other outlets to the list of things that I’ll be writing for, which means as many abused adjectives and as much unabashed hyperbole for the sake of Oxfam Australia as I typically manage for the sake of music production.

For the sake of our legs however, I joined Jen on another training ride on Sunday. With the fine weather continuing overhead, and not a frozen pellet of hail to bounce off of our helmets this time, we hit the familiar setting of the Powerhouse for a warm up ride across to the Brisbane River Walk. Unsurprisingly the streets are busy with people making the most of the weather and we don’t feel too uncomfortable trying out our new In2Cycles riding jerseys as other cyclists in equally bright and tight gear zoom around like us. Whilst breaking my new Shimano shoes in I risk breaking my brains out, slipping somewhat on the new tread. The shoes offer the ability to screw in cleats but I figure this is perhaps not the best time to make such a sudden change to my riding style, given the good natured advice that I’m bound to “fall off a few times at first”.

With that enjoyable prospect buried, we race across the River Walk with a few bursts of camera and filming, and shake our heads in silent understanding as we near the historic wharves. Public outcry and political caution is thankfully mounting over new plans to develop the Howard Smith Wharves under the Storey Bridge. It really shouldn’t surprise the Council and developers that Brisbane city residents want this historic stretch left alone, and certainly not spoilt by a “boutique hotel”. We like this stretch of the river and the history of the World War II air raid shelters, and truly fail to imagine a nine-storey hotel marching up the cliffs. Thankfully the cliffs of Kangaroo Point on the far side of the river remain free of the meddling of developers and council for the time being and we ride over the Goodwill Bridge and dodge pedestrians who seem to alternate between Space Invaders formations and a real life game of Frogger.

We keep an eye on the cliffs as we ride past, being a popular climbing spot for a number of our friends, and head downriver until we are spat out onto the road near the iconic Brisbane Jazz Club. We ride past to the sounds of a some tired jazz standard being sung very politely, and despite my preference for Minton’s era jazz played by those who put a difficult life into joyous notes, I’m happy this old building has escaped the developers that are eyeing off the wharves on the opposite banks for the time being.

Making a stop for water, a check of the distance ridden on the cycle computer and some photos, we spin around and tackle the South Bank stretch. By the time we break through the humans and their happily random sidewalk footwork, I’m giving in to the reality that I might have picked up a cold from the previous day’s music festivities. We pause outside the lovely facade of the Gallery of Modern Art and check the cycle computer again. Chatting briefly we decide it’s better to appease the cold then to push on and start to head home. As we tick over the relatively embarrassingly short 30 kilometre mark we slow down and appreciate a gently setting sun and the disappearance of the buffeting headwind which has added some extra effort to stretches of the ride.

The ride was perhaps well short of the 100k’s we had planned earlier, but another day in the saddle all the same. I have gotten so comfortable with the Crumpler SoupandSalad bag now that I doubt I will want to ride with a traditional backpack again. It is something of a messenger bag in the way it hangs over one shoulder, but the cross strap I struggled with on the first day in Byron Bay now sits perfectly across to the side, holding the bag to curve of my back and side. The benefits are clearly airflow over my back and the ease by which to unclip one strap and have the full bag swing round to dig out cameras, squishy and Carman’s muesli bars as needed. It may seem a small thing to note, but the right gear does seem to remove the need to think about such matters and lets us focus on such important topics as how bad they are going to remake The Day The Earth Stood Still, how cool Gort was, or the relative merits of Open Source versus Third Party software. Obviously I was doing much of the talking by this stage. And much of the typing now.

With the ride retired and the sun past set, we swap bikes for cups of green tea, orange juice and rest. Thoughts turn to the hope for the disappearance of any suggestion of a cold and of the week ahead. One last week to rally support for our fundraising for Oxfam Australia before we fly out to Vietnam to swap our well laid Brisbane city roads for… for what? We know an idea of what to expect, we have seen the small snippets of video and the photos besides, but in just over seven days we will know for ourselves. And possibly curse every training session we cut short, regardless of something as genuinely lame as a cold. In my defense… well… no. There isn’t any. Time to rest up though.

Check our FlickR Gallery for Brisbane Riverside Ride Photos.