Opinions Were Like Kittens.

Last week my coach informed me that he was giving the game away. Like a lot of local cycling coaches, he also works a real job, and this real job is taking off in a way that doesn't allow much spare time. I gotta say, this left me a little bummed out. I'd been with him a year, and the programs he set me were working really well. I'd continued to achieve results on the track, and on the road had gone from getting dropped in B grade to winning A grade. I was looking forward to another couple of years, at least.

But I'd known it was coming, and had made preliminary inquiries. There were other coaches around, and some of them were pretty highly regarded. Eventually, after a cursory google search and a couple of phone calls, I decided to go with Brad. And I'm pretty excited about the goals we've discussed, and the programs he's going to lay out for me.

The whole process has been a bit of a rollercoaster, though. It's like breaking up with one girlfriend, then hooking up with another. Only this time your girlfriends are men in their mid- fifties. I guess some people are into that.

Gentrification.

And here's another band I don't hate as much as I should. In fact, whenever I was out at some party in 2004, I'd be kinda stoked when a White Stripes song came on. Sure, I'd never buy a record, but that doesn't stop me from enjoying them.

Come On Wild Child.

Botheration Yeah.

On to less controversial topics: Here are some excellent records by Melbourne bands.



No shit, I've been loving this record lately. For about three months when I was seventeen it was played everywhere I went, but then it totally disappeared. Found myself thinking about it a few months back and a cursory internet search discovered this. Stoked!


I bought 180 degrees and 767 before I went to Canada the first time, and played them to death every time I wanted to feel like I was back in Melbourne. This came out while I was away, and I was a bit slow to the party, but it's by far their most accomplished record. I still skip over Cam's songs though. Sorry Cam.

There doesn't seem to be any images available online for South East of Syracuse by Providence, but it's one of my favourite records full stop. You can purchase it from Missing Link here, and if you're into math rock with a touch of Alice Donut, I'd suggest you do.


Sharing a drummer with Providence was One Inch Punch / Mid Youth Crisis. Happiness In Authority is by far their best record, but this discography includes it and Lost In What We Lack, as well as the stuff they did on the blazing split 7" with Sommerset.


If all of the members of a band are from Tasmania, can I call them a Melbourne band? Whatever. This record is epically bleak, and is perhaps the foremost example of what I like to think of as the Tasmanian 90s sound. You can also download it for free here.



And, lest you think I'm totally stuck in the 90s, here's My Disco's Paradise. Marcus summed it up best when he said, "it's all about the locked groove." This is perhaps my favourite record to ride to. Those consistently thudding rhythms mean cycling to me more than any Metallica record.

And, that might do me for today. If I think of any more I'll let you know.

Fuck You I Won't Do What They Tell Me.

I've never really been one for adventure sports. Bungee Jumping, Extreme River Walking, Turbo Double Plus Hang-Gliding, Slingshot Karaoke Jam Basketball Dunking, whatever the combination of ridiculousness, my reaction has generally been a heartily scoffing, "meh". These sports seem to have been invented, appropriated, indulged in and enjoyed by the kind of tough-guy ex-college footballers who I really tried to avoid while I was at university. Above all, though, they always appeared to be a more blatant symbol of status and privilege than any limousine. It's as if the participants are bragging to the underprivileged: "Check it out! Our lives are so safe we get to invent danger for ourselves! Dude!"

And then they couple their bragging with a sweet corporate rock anthem about socking it to the man and post it on Youtube.



Those who died! Are justified! For wearing the spokecard, they're the chosen whites!
(apologies to Mr De La Rocha et al, even if every time I mention RATM I feel the need to link to this map explaining the links between major record labels and major arms manufacturers)

Now, I'm not in the best position to throw stones here - I've certainly raced in a lot of alleycats, and I'm not above inventing danger in my own life - just the other day, for example, the cat scratched me bad, just as I was in the midst of the second guitar solo in November Rain, pretending I was Slash, using the cat for a guitar. But let's face it, if your life is so safe that the only way you can cop an adreniline rush is by running red lights and playing in the traffic, well, perhaps you need to make your life less safe. Perhaps it's time to cut mummy's purse strings, for a start. Fuck, even Zach De La Rocha himself went and spent some time with the Zapatistas, learning first hand what it is to struggle together to survive. Riding your bike like a madman on the weekend then retreating to the safety of your mama's house in Malvern is not danger, kids, and nor is writing songs about smashing the state from a Manhattan boardroom. Like Tom Waits says, you have to risk something that matters, otherwise you're just another inventive jock with too much spare time on their hands.

Ps. If you're struggling for ideas, perhaps you should go to France, where the Sarkozy government is about to sick the riot cops on the biggest strikes since 1968. Time to stop idolizing the past, folks. History is what's happening right now. I only hope that this time around they produce more sweet posters, so I can get another tattoo.

Ain't Got No Sweater.

Oh man, I'm doing my first year of Arts at ANU all over again:

I Don't Know What's Up There.

Until last night, I hadn't been back to the track for a bit over seven months. Hadn't raced, hadn't done a few easy laps, hadn't been on the boards at all. So last night I was a little bit nervous. And when tougher and tougher competition kept popping up through the tunnel, I was a little more nervous. It worked out much better than I expected, however, and I managed to end up on the podium in two out of three races. The odd one out was the points race (according to Old Mate, you know you're in good form when you feel good in the Points). I wasn't too upset by this, as it meant that I could sit back and watch others contest the sprints. Strangely, for someone as competitive as me, I often have more fun at the track when I'm not in the running. I get a little bit excited by audacious moves, by people unleashing enormous sprints, by the tactics as they happen. When you're at the pointy end you may come home with the money, but when you're at the back you learn more about other riders. I'm not sure which is more valuable in the long run.

If I Could Start Again.

In the Brunswick Cycling Club clubrooms there's an honour board listing club champions on the road and track, members who have raced at the Olympics or Commonwealth Games, and men and women who have served the club with such dedication that they have been declared life members. Like the club itself, the names on the board stretch back to 1916. There's an online version of it here, which is slightly more up to date. I'm new to all this, but it still means a lot, being a part of something with this much history. It connects you to other people, places you on a continuum, in a community. And though I've been playing it down, getting my name on that board - after winning this yesterday - means even more.

It's Getting Dark, Too Dark To See.

Over time I've come to think of myself as what I like to call an "Early Resister". This is the polar opposite of an early adopter - you know, the first guy on your block with an iPad, or the guy that knew about that cool new band before you did. Instead of taking new ideas and embracing them, I tend instead to hear of a new idea and think, "That sounds dumb." And, as this blog attests, I'm not particularly shy when it comes to expressing my thoughts.

The upside to being an Early Resister is that sometimes, when something does prove to be a short lived fad, you dodge the bullet. So, for example, I never wore a pork pie hat (think 1993) or thought The Offspring were an ok band (1996/7). The downside to being an Early Resister is that a lot of the time you're wrong. In fact, I distinctly remember arguing with Pete Hyde about Email. I was, unfortunately yet unsurprisingly, arguing that it was dumb. "If I want to get in contact with someone," I remember stating forcefully, "I'll just write them a letter."

The first email I ever wrote was to Pete. It said, "Dear Pete. You were right. From Brendan."

Incidentally, I was telling someone else about being an early resister just the other day, and related the same anecdote. "How could you be so stupid?" he asked, "Arguing against email is like arguing against telephones." I agreed, and added that I probably would've done that too. When you're wrong so often you get pretty good at it.

With this all in mind I should probably confess that when it comes to nutrition - and food science as a whole - I largely thought that it was bullshit. I mean, I've been vegan for a very long time, so obviously I took note of my diet, but anything beyond "this has no animal products in it" was alright by me. There were two sensations within my body that I took note of: Hungry (aka Undesireable) and Full (Desireable). The journey to each particular destination was pretty irrelevant. As such, I've been on some pretty interesting food adventures - I've lived on peanut butter and jam sandwiches for two weeks; I've eaten fifty shoddy dumplings from Camy Dumpling House in one sitting; I've battled the vegan chocolate cake at Vegie Bar singlehanded and won; and I've tried my best to disprove the myth of the skinny vegan. None of them - well, apart from the Dumplings - made me sick, and I certainly didn't notice any change in my day to day 'performance'.

Nowadays, of course, I ask a bit more of my body. I started off simply eating a little more of what I was already eating, which meant that even though I was exercising a lot, I wasn't really losing any weight. So eventually I started paying a bit more attention to what went in my mouth. People had been recommending that I read this book for a long time, but initially, true to form, I thought it was dumb. Some of this initial skepticism was due to the fact that Brazier is a triathlete, and as a cyclist I'm hardwired to view triathletes as slightly below wombats in intelligence. Casey bought the book nonetheless, and eventually I - in a moment of weakness - picked it up.

Now, I'm not following the diet meal for meal, so I can't state unequivocally that it's fantastic and you should live by it forever and ever and ever amen. I have, however, made a few changes to my diet as a result of reading it - trying to have one big salad a day, drinking the energy smoothies, exploring the weird and slightly gross world of dried fruit, eating fresh fruit and vegetables, cutting out bread and coffee and processed food, and paying more attention to my recovery. Hell, tonight I even got busy with the food processor and made a whole heap of homestyle energy bars. And when I eat them, I'll be paying attention. So far, it's been working out pretty well.

So, I've said it once, and I'll say it again: I was wrong. Apparently it is important to eat well, and the Thrive book isn't dumb. There.

Jus' Sayin.

Does He Wonder Where I Am?

Today I was looking at the stats from this blog and realized that there were some pretty distinct disadvantages to having a blog with the word "fuck" in the title. So I changed it. Feel free to update your bookmarks, etc. Rest assured the content will not deviate from the usual self-indulgent drivel. Some things you just can't change.

Stay Silent.

I was racing out near Kyneton today, on a course that I'd only ever been dropped on before this point. It was coming to the last climb and I was still feeling pretty good (probably thanks to this, with the addition of some of these wheels, courtesy of this guy - more on that later). I was starting to think about the sprint - there were two guys off the front, but it was definitely going to be on for third place. I think I even loosened off my brakes a bit. In the hope of covering any moves up the hill I'd gone to the front of the bunch, and was sitting there quite happily, before I started to hear this voice. Now, this was at the end of one hundred ks of racing, and I wasn't thinking real clearly at this point. "That's it," the voice was saying, in a disturbingly calm tone, "keep pushing it. Come on. Come on. Now drop down a gear. Come on. Big ring now, big ring. Out of the saddle now. Out of the saddle now. Come on. Come on. Smack it! Smack it!"

When eventually I blew (no similies this time, perverts) I was relieved to see that the voice belonged to Sean the Man, who took off up the hill without delay. I was also relieved to see that we'd shelled most of the other riders in the bunch. The Man ended up coming home third, taking some money off the organizers and sharing it with me.

There's a dubious moral in here, about how listening to the voices that could possibly be just inside your head leading to wealth and riches. Make of that what you will.

Hey! Ho! Let's Go!

One for the sponsors.

The Fundamental Things Apply.

This Is What We Mean.

When we talk about pulling the pin on a ride.


To add insult to injury: You see that dark blob on the counter there, just above my saddle? That blob is my gloves. As far as I know, they're still there.