My Trip to Melbourne

I’ve just been down to Melbourne to make a film which will be called; Councillor on a bike.

You seemed to like Doctor on a Bike, and so when I saw Councillor Jackie Fristacky in action at a Bike Futures Conference recently, I thought, there’s a lady worth a movie.

She rides a bike of course, her main way of getting around the City of Yarra where she used to be mayor, and is now councillor.

Here, I’m trying to keep up with her as she dashes cross -country to a meeting. I’m shooting, hand held, from my own bike whose front tyre is about to go flat.

Her’s is a municipality which has the highest bike usage by people going to work of any place in Australia, a pretty amazing 9%

This success in getting people to ride bikes as transport is not all due to Jackie of course, but she has been a driving force.

I hope you’ll find the way she’s promoting urban cycling, is, well, inspirational. I did.

And she’s doing so in a nation which is a tough nut to crack when it comes to getting people out of their cars and onto two wheels,

This trip to Melbourne had it’s awful moments. Much as I love taking this Countrylink train which ambles across the land at a lovely leisurely speed, I hate having to take my bike apart to get it on board with me, and this I had to do on the way back to Sydney, always have to do, in fact.

Yes, in what must be just about world’s worst practice, they make you disassemble your bike and box it. Here’s a trembling pic of my bike in pieces, trembling with fury, that is.

Every time I do it, there’s something wrong with the bike afterwards

I hope to have Jackie’s film cut this week.

In the meantime, I’ll tell you of my stop over in Kiama on the way home, where I attended a seminar put in by weight loss Guru, Jon Gabriel. You’ve probably seen the before…

and after pics.

I was not initially there for the message, but rather to see how Jon worked the crowd, thinking I could learn something useful for promoting cycling.

But I was impressed enough by the message and the faith of his audience in his methods, he was very gentle with a lot of very fat people, that I stayed to believe somewhat, and, as well, to came away with something to apply to my bike story.

Basically, Jon argues that we gain weight because our bodies are protecting us from famines we’ve constantly experienced as a species way back in our pre history.

This famine threat is even now remembered and acted upon by our animal brains whether appropriate or not.

Diets thus can never work because they merely convince that animal brain that a new famine has indeed arrived, and everything must be done, not only to keep the weight, but to add to it.

Your only hope is to get a message through to this Nervous Nellie animal brain of yours , that, Hey, it’s OK, brain! There’s no famine. Loosen and lighten up too!.

How do you communicate with this primitive part of yourself? By firmly visualizing how you want the animal brain to see you, and then let it then act accordingly to make that image come true.

Exercise, he stressed, is of course good, but atypically, he recommends having short sharp bursts of extreme effort, sprinkled into your routine.

Why? Because this replicates flight from predators, he argues, telling the animal brain that it’s time to flee, that it’s good to be able to run fast, ride fast, etc.

Flee or be eaten, animal brain!

So now, I’ll plan my leisurely bike rides interspersed with sprints, just like Jon himself as he recounted when he out-rode a dog, intent on tearing out his heel tendon.

He spoke further of visualization techniques. For that audience of course, it was in terms of seeing themselves as their once slender selves.

But I suddenly thought that maybe I could use that same idea to promote urban cycling.

Few Australians mentally picture themselves hopping on a bike to go to the shops.

Like a pop up ad on your computer screen, when you think shopping, a car image pops up, does it not? This car image blocks all other visualizations.

How to replace that pop-up car image with a bike? Firstly, a useful mantra. You car is not a lifestyle choice, but a lifesteal choice.

This is because every time you use that car when a bike would do, you steal an exercise opportunity from yourself.

You also put yourself on the path to those six pills a day in later years. (See the movie on this blog; Doctor on a bike)

The flipside manta is; A bike is a two wheeled gym

You can build your bike visualization using images from photographers who prove how beautiful and flattering cycling can be.

This is key since looking good is a core need for all of us. Photographers like Mikael Colville-Andersen and lars T. Danielsen give us a useful gift.

So, maybe we can get you to visualize yourself on one of those Danish bikes you see here. Try it!

Mikael Colville-Andersen has many more photos like this on his famous blog, Copenhagen Cycle Chic.

You are looking superb, as if the bike was just invented to show off a svelte human form like yours to the greatest advantage.

Visualize yourself as were your great grandmothers and grandfathers

Practice bike visualization. If you are not svelte yet, then you maybe prompted, in wanting to cycle, to make your own arrangements.

I’m not making a plug for the Gabriel method, by the way, and haven’t asked permission to use these photos of him.

Kiama , by the way, south of Sydney is a superb small town. Set on a beautiful bay and craggy coast, it has had the sense to keep some of it’s older stately buildings like the post office.

and this row of cottages.

On Manning street, I found a sculpture which strangely thrilled me. As I approached the curve of metal, (they call it the wave) I saw it was covered with etched writing, readable at some angles.

It turned out to be a tribute to a man called Joseph Weston (?), a town father, and journalist in the 19th century.

From what I could read, the text being a tribute by a friend of the period, Watson had been a very fine man, devoted to public service for his adopted town of Kiama. (He’d come from England on a sailing ship)

It made me think, this sculpture in it’s simplicity and beauty, of how important it is to celebrate people of modest honesty, unlike the crooks who so often slither into power these days and on whom so much ink is spilled.

The artist , I remember the name, Vivienne Lowe, so impressed I was

By the way, I must thank James Schwartz for all the help he’s given me, unstintingly, to change this blog over from one that no one could find to what it now is, delightfully findable.

James blogs from Toronto under the name, Urban Country, I have a link on the side.

I happened to use a photo sourced from Google photos of James on a Bike-Share bike, in Montreal, I think. James got in touch and since then, we’ve shared ideas and he’s helped me a lot. Here’s the photo I used by chance.

James has just told me that he was in Montreal with just the clothes of his back, pretty much. He’d canoed there from Toronto, which has to be around 600 kms. Phew!

http://www.theurbancountry.com/2009/07/toronto-to-montreal-kayak-adventure.html

Soon, he’ll go to Montreal again to get an assessment of how well the Bixi Bike share scheme did during it first summer.

And, oh yes, this parrot lives in Kiama. He’s not aware, it seems, that he’d look much better on a bike.

Your thoughts are much appreciated. Comments are easy to leave and can be incognito of course. Mike Rubbo