Ain't Nobody Sing Like Me.

At Brunswick Cycling Club - like most cycling clubs, I suspect - there's an old bloke who has been around forever and who knows more about cycling than I ever will. His name is Alf. He's seen me, over the past six months or so, go from an E grade rookie who can barely be trusted to ride in a straight line to a B grade rookie who can barely be trusted to ride in a straight line. Needless to say, his opinion means quite a bit. So I was kinda taken aback on Tuesday night when he started giving me shit about not placing. "Seems the run of Brendan Bailey is over! You let yourself get boxed in," he said. It didn't seem to matter to him that I'd spent the week previous riding from Sydney to Melbourne, or even that I'd won the points race immediately previous."What's that they say? Use your head for cycling and your feet for dancing," he continued.

Nath, who has been around the club a good deal longer than me, later explained to me that this kinda critique from Alf is a good thing. "It means he's watching you, taking an interest in how you're going."

I thought about this a lot at Ryan Adams last night, mostly because I'd publicly bitched and moaned about going, but was secretly pretty keen on seeing him. And you know what? Despite an opening band of truly horrendous proportions (a song about Kylie Minogue's ass was a particular low point), I had a really good time at that show. I've talked before about how much I like classic rock, and let's face it, despite pretensions to Alt-Country, any Cardinals song would fit nicely into a Gold 104 playlist - especially their cover of Wonderwall. And the fact that they started their set at 9pm and were done by 10.30 didn't hurt either - my alarm was due to go off at 6.30, after all.