Drag Race Cars

2 responses so far ↓

• Milo

  Sep 26, 2010 at 2:42 am

  

  Paul, Matthew, Alan,

  I'm really late with this post but let me add something: Yes it likely is that the compulsory helmet law is the single biggest determinant in Melbourne Bike Share's peculiar failure to take off, compared with the similarly-sized Dublin scheme, which, all accounts agree, is enjoying astonishing success. But it is important to understand that Dublin's bike successis due to other important factors which scarcely translate to Australian experience.
  The first of these is that Ireland has a cycling tradition. The Irish have always cycled. This is partly a matter of lack of money but it is as much to do with geography as on-again, off-again economic growth. Ireland's slightly smaller than Tasmania. It is full of roads, some of them not much wider than a Morris Minor, yet the country is not densely populated. Bicycles of one kind and another have been handed down within families since the invention of the safety bicycle (how else are people to get around?).
  Secondly, the Irish build in the European manner, up and down (basements), rather than out and flat (bungalows). In South Australia, growth tends to mean outer and flatter, thus artificially lengthening distances. In compact European cities and towns, wherever cycling thrives, there exists a tighter understanding of how space is to be managed in what are after all, small countries unburdened by Australia's heat and distances. Cycling is thinkable in places like Denmark, the Danes got good at managing space and design, their genes duly produced Jan Gehl and Jan's the man Melbourne turned to for advice on what to do with all this space and wealth which puts us in such a bind of confusion and impatience that it's become almost impossible to take the humble bicycle with any seriousness.
  A third difficulty is our insularity. There are bike-shop workers who do not know that almost no other country in the world – apart from our Tasman neighbour – requires people to wear helmets when riding bicycles. What does that do to the climate of opinion in Australia on this touchy subject? People today talk as if cycling only really got going after 1990 when cycling was 'made safe' by the passage of MHLs. It's as if before this portentous date no-one knows what, if anything, was going on; thus a blank screen is created onto which people project all sorts of conjectures: before 1990 people cycled and died, people stopped cycling, the only cyclists were drunks working their passage to a return of their licences. No link at all between past experience of years of unhelmeted cycling and the sudden claim that 'Helmets save lives.'
  A fourth point is that In Australia there is a peculiar tribal cleavage between riders of sit-up, commuting bicycles and lycra-warriors in full battle dress. This split does not exist in Ireland because it doesn't need to; thanks to Ireland's smallness and the tradition of utility cycling, the memory of cycling is everywhere, re-inforced each year by Europeans touring Ireland every summer. When in seven months in 1987 Dublin's Stephen Roche won the Tour of Italy, the Tour de France and the World Championships, everyone heard of it and the country rejoiced. Kids saved up for racing bikes, older folk continued cycling to work, the shops, the movies. Whatever.

  Alan Davies, the Dublin scheme was emphatically NOT pitched at tourists. Tourists arrive in Ireland on French and UK ferries, with their own bikes. Scarcely a helmet in sight. American tourists arrange a package which will include a car. Besides, the tourists' destinations are primarily in the West and South. Most users of Dublin bike share from what I hear, are working people. Yes petrol's expensive – a smaller tax-base. My brother's Audi is small but not slow. Likewise his wife's. Paris is full of small cars – they drive like maniacs.

  Milo.
• Giles

  Sep 27, 2010 at 6:10 pm

  

  Hi Ewen, 15th in the nationals is really good. you said you were disappointed but the fact is that you are probably in the top 2 or 3% of all the juniors racing bikes in this country. That's not a bad place to be, especiallly if you can view your junior career as being part of the journey and not the destination. Everything you do now is just preperation for later when it really begins to count. From what I've seen of you race you never seem to give up and always seem keen to get stuck in. in the end that attitude will bring you a lot of victories.

  I think everyone develops at different speeds. i remember as a junior being just not as good as many of the others around me but later on (when i was 18 – 20) all the guys that had been winning as juniors had either packed it in or had just stopped developing while the rest of us all caught up. i then started getting results and with results comes confidence which brings more results. in senior racing it seems to be much more of a level playing field – if you keep on doing the right things (training, racing and keeping way from nightclubs & loose women) you'll get that call from Herety or one of the others.

  good luck, keep at it.