Call It Canaveral.

Last night Nat Graf and I went to the East Brunswick Club to eat and watch the football. I had a Vegan Philly Cheese Steak and some of McNabb's Sticky Date Pudding. Nat was a little taken aback about how much food I was putting away. He was even more shocked when I told him I'd already eaten two sandwiches before meeting him. "I got a race tomorrow," I told him. "I gotta stock up."

History will show that the Bombers got up against the Hawks, but it will not show me heading to Atticus Finch after the game to catch up with Harriet and Lidia. Conversation was amiable and I wasn't heaps keen on leaving, but when Lidia offered a lift I took it. "I got a race tomorrow," I told the assembled party. "I gotta get some sleep."

Having used the race as my excuse for indulging my base desires twice in three hours, I was a bit nervous about how it would go. I'd been hurt bad by the previous week's handicap, and felt like a decent showing was needed. I put my name down in C grade and tried to keep warm.

Here's a digression for my international visitors. Five kilometres in a kangaroo crossed the road ahead of my group. It jumped out, freaked out, then tried to get the fuck out. I was one side of it, some guy was on the other side of it. I looked for space and kept my hands off the anchors and the roo jumped into him.

A couple of more clicks along the road and I hit a pothole, losing my waterbottle. The decent showing was looking less and less likely.

But in this week's race, as opposed to last week's, I'd been eating a lot of food. I'd let go of a bit more of my dignity and bought some gels, and they were working a charm. More than anything, though, I was stoked. It was sunny and warm, the roads were clear and things weren't hurting. So I joined a bunch and went off the front. Another guy - James - handed me his spare waterbottle, telling me he wouldn't need it. When we got reeled in I went off with the next bunch. Things were looking ok.

The countryside started flattening out and I started thinking about the finish. I asked around but no one would tell me how far we had left. Some guy from Sunbury was off the front, but I figured there was about ten ks til the end, so I let him go. When a bunch of people appeared on the side of the road about half a k ahead I thought momentarily that maybe some folks were having a barbecue, before realising that it was the finish line. It was now that I started spinning.

A couple of seconds later I remembered that I had gears.

It wasn't soon enough to catch the guy in front, and I scored a second place.

(Photo c/o Blakey, used without permission).

In My Soup.

A few folks and I are planning an event for the evening of Friday the 12th of June. Watch this space for more information...

You'll Soon Depart.

I was struggling in today's handicap race, something I think I'll have to get used to if I stick with this road racing malarkey. Half the time I was so short of breath that eating anything was near impossible. The other half my legs were hurting so much that it took every stupid psychological game-playing strategy I could think of just to keep them ticking over. I was hanging on to my group, though, and given that Ewin had predicted the winners would eventually come from my group, this was a good thing. To help ease the pain I was sticking to the back of the bunch, letting other folks do the work. They'd do their turn at the front, work their way to the back, and then I'd signal for them to cut in front of me. It means they had to do more work, but I doubt they were struggling quite as much, so I didn't freaking care. Until I signaled this one guy in. He really wasn't too keen on the idea, but I was dropping the wheel, so he didn't really have a choice. He did, however, make his displeasure known in a way that was universally understood.

He farted.

Pretty soon afterwards I got dropped.

The winner did come from my group, and my good pal and occasional training buddy Fraser came in fourth. I came home fifty places behind him.

Step Into The Realm.

Nath told me, when he outlined this new training plan, that I should have one day per week that I don't ride the bike at all. I chose Friday. Little did I know, at that point, how much it would suck. I mean, I don't mind public transport, but utilizing it means that everything just takes that little bit longer. Instead of leaving for work at eight, I have to leave at seven thirty. Instead of taking fifteen minutes to get to Smith St, it takes forty five. And don't even get me started on walking. Seeing this program laid out in front of me I wondered how I would manage doing so many hill repeats, or so many miles, and could almost feel the pain to come. I never would have imagined that these days off the bike would be the worst of all.

City Doctor.

There's a line from a Seamus Heaney poem that used to pop into my head any time someone asked me about punk rock:

"Incomprehensible
To him, my other life."

Nowadays, however, it pops into my head any time I talk to punks about cycling.

I guess I'm lucky it's a good poem, and not, "There once was a man from Nantucket."

The New City.

So, I went out on the bike today. Caught the train to Beaufort with every intention of riding all the way back. It started raining in Ballarat, where the temperature was hovering around 5 degrees. Stopped in Gordon for directions. When I walked into the pub some dorky 14 year old kid in a keffiyeh was singing some hymn a cappella. Everyone stood in thrall. Then they turned and looked at me, drenched to the bone and shivering uncontrollably. After their initial surprise they asked if I was a) Shane Kelly and b) stone cold crazy. I was required by the matron de maison to not wear my footy boots inside - which was pretty easy to comply with. The regulars were having a field day. One of them mentioned the train station in Ballan, which proved too tempting to resist. Eight hours after leaving home I'm back in bed, finally warm again.

And you? Spend a couple of hours inside on the rollers, did you? How'd that go?

Blue Black Eyes.

Dear The Australian Government,

First of all, thank you for the nine hundred dollars. Unlike a substantial number of my friends, who will be spending theirs overseas, I will be spending mine stimulating the economy (which really sounds like something one shouldn't do without one's friends).

Second of all - and this is perhaps a touchy subject - could you possibly please stop opening my packages from AK Press? I get a package from them about once a month, and it's always opened. Look, I don't want to be tactless here, but let's face it. I'm not a terrorist. I have a semi-steady job in the public sector, I live in a respectable apartment in a leafy inner-city suburb, and spend way too much of my time in lycra to be taken seriously as a threat to the status quo. A few books on anarchist theory are not going to drive me to take up arms and overthrow the government. Let it go, ok?

Thanks,

Brendan

The Families On Relief.

I've never really been one of those 'couldabeen / shouldabeen' kinda guys. This probably comes across as a cliche, but there are absolutely no quasi-philosophical / spiritual undercurrents here - I'm simply not smart enough to conduct the business of everyday life and spend a lot of time worrying about what I could have done better at the same time. This is probably a curse and a blessing at the same time, but, true to form, I really don't spend a lot of time thinking about it.

Lately, however, there has been one major exception. My parents are probably the first people on the 'exempt' list when it comes to assigning blame for the decisions I made as a young lad - as many folks around will eagerly inform you, they pretty much made did the best they could with the, well, let's just call it the difficult hand they were dealt. But nowadays, when I'm out suffering on the bike just so I can be competitive in a few more B grade club races, I can't help but wonder why, when I was 15 and totally jack of athletics and football, but still really freaking fit from going out into the Grampians on my mountain bike every other weekend, my folks didn't take me down to the Ararat velodrome and suggest I go round and round in circles for a bit. I might have been hooked from the start, and my fitness wouldn't have ever dropped the way it did, and those results would've been in A grade instead of B.

When I'm struggling up some hill, or killing myself to keep up with some nineteen year old, this really pisses me off. Is almost-thirty too old to storm off into my room, slam the door and crank the stereo?

Gotta Be Strong.

Cycling Tips is my new favourite blog. That is all.

Dear Ron MacLean.

Having just purchased the new Propagandhi record, I'm still getting my head around it. Even at this early stage, however, I'd like to thank the Manitoban boys for writing the song 'Dear Coach's Corner', which, although about ice hockey, neatly encapsulates nearly all of my feelings about football. The footy has started this weekend. The Bombers are playing today. I can only hope that no RAAF flyovers, no 21 gun salutes and no national anthems pass for pre-match entertainment.

As Stolen Cars Pass Through The Night.

So yeah, it has been a while. The problem with most blogs with a cycling emphasis is that when the weather is fine the time between posts grows and grows. Ladies and gentlemen - and in particular, those reading overseas - the weather has been fine indeed.

I've been riding a lot, and even training for riding. This has had some okay outcomes, in that I've won a few races. I can't say this in itself bothers me particularly - in fact, my results sheet is starting to look quite nice (thanks for asking). What bothers me, however, is that most - if not all - of these significant wins should probably have asterisks behind them. In last night's Trackolympics Alleycat, for example, I only really took the prize after cracking the shits about a checkpoint not being at the assigned place when I arrived. And at the Bendigo Madison, I only scored the first in the E grade scratch race after riding semi-(il)legally on the duckboards, eventually forcing the guy in front of me out of the sprinter's lane and out of contention.

I could go on, but really, the more I do, the less it worries me. I like to win, but I also like stories. And if every asterisk has a decent story attached, I'd be pretty happy with that.

You Could Be The Pollen.

And I'm 38, I Can't Believe I've Got To Worry About This Kind Of Shit.

There were always going to be a lot of horrible things about the Propagandhi shows over the weekend, but the band was never going to be one of them. Now, because everyone should already be aware of the horrible, and because everyone should also be aware that these punk rock survivors put on one hell of a show, I'm instead going to provide a bunch of unexpected highlights from last night's show.

• Knowing that a whole bunch of people got in for free by drawing the stamp on their wrists with a sharpie.
• Seeing the majority of Melbourne's punk scene from 1997.
• Todd Kowalski (Spelling? Who knows?) rocking out, as per usual, but trying desperately to stop himself from singing along, his voice blown out by the recording process three months ago.
• Folks in the crowd chanting the intro to a new song, then being accused of stealing the new album by an amused Chris Hannah.
• Drunk morons in the crowd cheering wildly at a mention of Charles Darwin's birthday. I mean, I like Darwin too, but I'm not sure that the commemoration of his birth warrants a "Woo-Hoo!"
• Chris again thanking the crowd for coming to see a bunch of 38 year old men dressed like 14 year olds.
• More banter from the band in general. Not too much the previous night.
• Looking over to my right and seeing a bunch of douchebag goons trying to start a circle pit, then looking over to my left and seeing a couple with their eyes closed, embracing each other, quietly intimate.
• The sweet Submission Hold patch Tara gave me after the show.
• Riding home through the quiet city, ears ringing, Purina Hall of Fame stuck in my head.

Your Dream Is That Gun In Your Hand.

You know what I remembered the other day? I was reading the paper, scanning through the twenty pages of obituaries, trying not to cry into my weetbix for the fifth day in a row, looking at all the photos of destruction and suffering and pain. It's not every week we're confronted with such terror. And then I remembered Gaza.

And then, a couple of pages further on, I discover that Benjamin Netanyahu is about to take power in Israel. A man who refuses to consider a two-state solution in Palestine. A man who has never even claimed to be interested in peace in the middle east.

The fires in the Yarra Ranges have flared up again this morning. The roads I used to ride two or three times a week now wind through scenes of devastation rarely seen in this country. Disparate communities are pulling together - punks are organising benefit shows, couriers organising benefit alleycats, everyone passing the hat around, donating their blood and emptying their wallets.

It seems, however, that we only react this way to fleeting natural disasters. When the destruction is caused by humans, when it is deliberate and systematic and continual, we shake our heads and keep our hands in our pockets. According to Human Rights Watch:

"The fighting in Gaza from December 27, when Israel began its military operation, until Israel and Hamas unilaterally declared ceasefires on January 18, left some 1,300 Palestinians dead and more than 5,000 wounded, 40 percent of them children and women. In addition, the casualties included an undetermined number of male civilians not taking part in hostilities. "

Perhaps - and this is an idea so crazy it might just work - when all the pictures of that koala have faded from our collective memories we could continue to be generous. We could continue to work together to ease suffering, by donating our money, our time, and even our blood.

As Easy As.

I am about to go watch Tara's new band play at Tom's house. Tara doesn't really want me to come see her band play because she thinks there's a chance I'll say nasty shit about them here. But really, let's face it, I'm incredibly biased when it comes to the people I hold dear - as long as they're throwing themselves into it with reckless abandon and having a shiteload of fun while they're doing it, they're going to get a decent writeup here.

Come to think of it, any band who throws themselves into the creation and performance of music with reckless abandon and looks like they're having a shiteload of fun while they're doing it is going to win my hard-earned praise. I don't need much else.

Though starting on time and playing a short set also doesn't hurt.