Found my tribe.

The most important thing during Bike Week is to demonstrate cyclists are ordinary folk, just like you and I.

The Banana
Originally uploaded by Velovotee
From the Sydney Body Art ride.

888km so far this year.

The bargain bikes of ebay

I'm a pretty constant lurker in ebay looking for bargain bike bits. I've often got a project in the shed which needs a part or two so I put in a lot of silly low bids, some of which bear fruit. One thing I have noticed is that the demand for old parts is growing strongly and so are prices. The sad truth is that no matter how much we value our rides, sometimes we delude ourselves about their true value.

Check out this gem. For only $130 you can be the proud owner of a 'vintage' bike which looks like it's spent the last 20 years at the bottom of the river it's named after. No tyres, no brakes, a saddle that looks like it was used to absorb an IED attack and rust galore. But hey, it's old and it's a single speed so some fool might buy it right? But you'll have to pick it up yourself from Hobart, there's no chance of the seller extending himself to ship this gem of antiquity, possibly because it weighs 80kg. Why, why, why on earth has nobody placed a bid on this bike? You heathens of Hobart.

Oh, you want something roadworthy? For a mere $92 (at current bidding) you can get your hands on a sought-after Repco Traveller Road bike? Equiped not just with gears, but a ''gearing system" and tyres that "will need eventual replacement" the seller does kindly point out that the the Traveller "is making an encore in Victoria now as a popular vintage bike". Among whom? The mentally deranged? And why not in other states? No shipping on this one either cycling archaologists, you'll have to take the station wagon to Glenroy.

But why spend $130 or even $92, when for just $5 you could pick up a "Vintage Malvern Star bike single speed fixed project"? Never mind the fact it looks like it might have been ridden into a car and has a saddle that would cause irreversible injury, this one also has tyres. They're flat, but what do you expect for $5? Bid early, bid often.

854km so far this year.

Damn lies and spreadsheets.

I was entering my commute into the bikejournal tonight and wondered whether I'm getting faster or slower over time. One wonders. There's opposing forces at work here: firstly I'm riding more, secondly I'm getting older. Which one wins? (I'll leave aside the fact I moved from flat Victoria to hilly Tasmania halfway through.)

As it turns out, the question is more complex than I would have thought. I assembled all my ride data into a single spreadsheet. There lies the details of more 500 rides totalling more than 1,000 hours (two more milestones just recently passed!). OK, how to proceed? I'll graph the buggers!

The first graph is ugly. It doesn't show anything much at all. The regression line for my average speed is flat. Odd. Ok, so I chuck out the 20 slowest rides, clean the data up a little. Now the curve slopes down. It's just barely detectable, but it slopes down. Hooray: I'm getting slower over time.

But wait. The graph shows a bunch of slow rides in July and August last year. Hang on that's when I was fanging around Beijing on the folding bike. Surely those rides don't count? Out comes July and August 2008. And guess what? The curve is upward. Just slightly, but upward. Grotesquely enlarging the graph makes the slope steeper. Cool. But by how much?

Very close analysis reveals the regression line through my rides slopes upwards from 21.85km/h at the left hand end to 22.0km/h at the right hand end. Over four years I'm 150 metres faster an hour. So if the old me raced the new me for an hour on an Olympic velodrome, he would be be close enough to yell abuse but wouldn't have lapped me. Still, any progress is good.

In the end, there is no real answer. Five years after getting back on the bike I'm fitter, happier, healthier and more handsome - all things numbers can't measure. The moral of the story is as always: ride for fun. They haven't yet made a cycle computer that can measure that.

711km so far this year.