On Yer Bike

Each day during the Melbourne meeting we were booked on a bike-ride around inner Melbourne to look at the city's evolution. Bec and I took up this opportunity, though only about 5-6 of us out of 250 delegates did so. The first morning the was a large thunderstorm and the ride was cancelled, but we went the next two days.

Melbourne runs a bike pool and we simply fronted up to bike cache on the pavement, slipped a credit card into a machine which took some money (not much), and waited for the machine to provide us with a code. After keying in the code numbers we pulled a Melbourne bike out of its clot and rode off. When the ride was over we returned the bike to any of the city's caches and that was that. In Australia, unlike the Netherlands and Denmark, one has to wear a helmet. Well, those can be bought from a machine or a 7/11 store nearby for $5 - hardly much of an expense.

The trips were great and I learned a lot. Now I can say I've been to Moonee Ponds where Dame Edna Everage lives. The pictures show us about to set off one morning for a lengthy, maybe 20km ride. Sorry to say that the picture of me is lying on its side. However, in practice, I rode upright.

AS