New Day Rising – Becoming a hoon cyclist

What does it mean to be a cyclist versus just someone who rides a bike? How does ‘cyclist’ become part of your identity, and where does it sit with your other personal identities? 

We’re about to head out on tour, but I can hand-on-heart say I’ve been a cyclist since I first learned to ride.

Nigel and I were discussing this a few weeks ago on the 20th anniversary of The Wizard’s purchase (he drove me to Melbourne to get the bike back in Jan 2005). 

Nigel is not a cyclist, though he has ridden the now-famous Sydney to Wollongong ride and a bike tour in northern NSW in his teens. So, he’s just a guy that sometimes rides a bike. 

We discussed how bikes have always been a part of my life. I can remember riding a little red bike with training wheels in the street in front of my childhood home (it was a hand-me-down from cousins that my older brother also learned to ride on). I also remember the very first time I rode unassisted on Burton Court near our house – when my dad let go of the seat and I pedalled on. And I remember how it’s always been my ‘go-to’ activity. If I have a free moment, I’m always ready to go ride. I’m a cyclist and always have been, since the very beginning. 

Nigel asks how many kms I put down on The Wizard (at least 45,000kms, just in touring alone).  Then we talk about how miles and kilometres ridden probably aren’t the best measure of cycling dedication anyway. Kms are easy to rack up on easy and/or paved roads. I did a heap of imperial century days on my 2014 tour in Montana and Wyoming. I rode 130 miles in Wyoming one day on that tour without any wind assistance.

However, on my last tour, it was elevation climbed that really told the story. And the more elevation climbed over fewer kilometres… the more impressive the feat. There are a few days etched in my mind when I rode and pushed the bike only 20 kms or so, but it took me four or five hours and I gained over 1500 metres in elevation. Those are some of the toughest days I’ve ever done, but the kms were certainly low.

I also think about the hours and hours and hours I spent on the bike ages 12-21 where I wouldn’t have ridden very far. I just rode around and around in circles in a flat parking lot practicing flatland BMX freestyle tricks. 

I did take that single speed bike on 35 mile return rides to nearby towns quite frequently – jumping everything jump-able along the way. And, while at the smart kiddo boarding school, I rode that bike all over that depressed, burnt out industrial town looking for pick-up basketball games (I’m sure I went places many white people never ever went – let alone thin, white, female teenagers. But I never had a problem, and the black dudes at the courts always welcomed me to play). 

BUT… really, most of the time on that bike was spent spinning in circles in a parking lot!

So miles ridden certainly wasn’t a good measure of my dedication in those years, but I was certainly a cyclist above all else and would go out to ride in all weather and temps. I rode every single day for months on end after school in those years. 

So Nigel and I decided that hours ridden would be the best measure of cycling identity and prowess. The hours I’ve ridden over my lifetime would be innumerable though – way, way too many to even try to count. 

And then, Nigel bestows on me the best compliment a cyclist could ever get. He calls me a hoon cyclist.

But first you need a bit of background:

So I didn’t get my first car or driver’s licence until I was 30-years-old (I met Nigel on my 22nd birthday). I just always rode my bike everywhere. Prior to meeting Nigel, I’d driven a car just a few times. So he taught me the basics, and then I figured out the rest on my own (e.g. how to overtake a vehicle on two-lane highways) while doing the 523 kilometre drive to/from Dubbo for my Honours research in 2006. 

Now, Nigel is a professional heavy vehicle driver (his primary identity). He can drive a billion different complicated gear boxes and trailer combinations. He can reverse anything, anywhere, on a dime. He would love to have had the opportunity to add ‘race car driver’ to his identity, but his mum dashed all those dreams.

However, he is a proud hoon driver, though not quite in the traditional sense. What’s a hoon? It’s a slang and legal term in Australia to describe someone who ‘drives a vehicle in a reckless or dangerous manner’. Typical activities might be speeding and doing donuts or burnouts.  It can also refer to ‘hooning activities’ which just means doing something at high speeds. 

So Nigel isn’t a traditional hoon, in that he would never consider ruining a good pair of tyres doing donuts or burnouts, and he’d never do anything to gain attention from others. But he likes to drive fast, and he enjoys reading the traffic and the road, and pushing the car and the road to their design limits. 

He should have been a race car driver. All of the times he has done the ‘V8 Supercar Drive Experiences’ at various race tracks – he’s always one of the best out there. At Bathurst, the instructor even allowed him to use 3rd gear over the mountain – which they don’t usually let people do. At one track, I was standing next to some bogan guys in the spectator area. We were watching Nigel weave in and out of slower cars on the track at high speed, and one guy said to the other, “that guy is good – he must race karts or sprints.”  I was very proud of my skinny, little hoon who looks like a Q-tip with the huge white helmet resting on his stick-like body.

So Nigel taught me a lot of good driving skills, and though I’m not a hoon and hate driving generally, I do really enjoy driving curvy mountain roads like a rally car. And no one would ever call me a ‘slow’ driver. 

Someday Nigel and I are going to go do the ‘rally car drive experience’ – though I just want to go for a ride experience and get flung all over in a rally car instead of driving it. Nigel thinks I should do the drive experience. Nigel says he was very proud of me the first time I came home from driving down Mt Buffalo after having my car for about two months when I said, “well, you know, I put the car in second, and those curves were actually really fun”!

So while we’re talking about The Wizard’s 20th Birthday, I tell Nigel about all of the fun I had riding while at uni. Every night I would go out for 2-3 hours and dash down dirt trails, jump dirt jumps and curbs, ride down stairs and snake and sneak my way through the traffic on my BMX freestyle bike. I absolutely adored those ‘night rides’.

Eventually, I found a group of mountain bike guys to ride with on night rides who also loved to jump curbs and ride down stairs and race down all the dirt trails that paralleled bike paths and irrigation ditches. We also loved to play in traffic. We had several games we’d play while dressed in all black and with no reflectors/lights on our bikes. 

In one game, we would ride down a particular one-mile stretch of four-lane road. The challenge was to ride back and forth across the road from bike lane to bike lane as many times as possible in that one-mile stretch. The person that crossed the road the greatest number of times in the quickest time won. You lost a crossing point for each time a driver honked at you. 

In another game, we would ride out to “Point A” – some randomly chosen place in town. Then someone would choose a “Point B” on the other side of town. Whoever got to Point B fastest won. You had to be strategic about which roads, bike paths and dirt tracks to use and know where traffic would be heaviest. Of course, there was no rule about following road rules.

It was absolutely tremendous fun. I very rarely won anything since I was on a single speed bike and the guys were all on mountain bikes, but it was always a great dopamine drop. Riding with those guys really improved my skills – and I can still remember how awesome I felt when I pulled my first one-footer, no-hander off one particular jump in “Old Town”. 

So that is when Nigel bestows the highest honour a cyclist could receive. The professional driver says, “Yep, I knew it. You have always been a hoon cyclist”. 

Now, these days, I don’t ride much at night. I wear bright clothing and use lights. But the BMXer spirit is still alive within me, and I very much enjoy seeing how fast I can do a loose, gravel downhill. I love reading traffic and riding in the flow of vehicles (in the city, not on 100kph roads with no shoulder). I love the hard, rhythmic climbs followed by curvy downhills that require you to read the road and the apexes. I love being one with the bike. I’m a cyclist through and through. And now… I am officially a ‘hoon’ cyclist. 

Yes, it’s right up there in my identity. I think it goes something like this: daughter, ex-wife, sister, friend, cyclist, nerd, greenie, woman, immigrant, expat, and smart, reliable worker (I’ve never really had a career identity like ‘accountant’).  I like to swim, but I’m not a swimmer. I like to bushwalk, but I’m not a bushwalker. Those are just hobbies. But I AM A CYCLIST. A hoon one at that. 

Nigel and I then discuss what I think makes a person a cyclist versus someone who just rides bikes (he gives me a similar list for ‘skilled driver’). Here are a few of the things I came up with. I think you’d probably relate to at least 80 percent of these to really be a cyclist, versus someone who just rides a bike:

• It’s the only thing you really want to do in your free time – you are always ready to go for a ride. It’s not ‘something you do’. It’s not a hobby. It is your ‘be all, end all’. 

• You love trying out all sorts of different bikes just to see how the differing geometries and parts/accessories ride. 

• You’ve fixed at least six punctures on the side of the road in terrible weather conditions. 

• You know how temperature and weather impact your tyre pressure and know just how much air to put in/take out for the perfect ride on all surfaces and in all weather conditions.

• Similarly, back in the days with rim brakes, you knew how temp and weather impacted their performance and could dial them in to perfection in all seasons. 

• You constantly are looking to improve your skills and love the challenge of different surfaces, obstacles and traffic conditions. You love ‘reading’ traffic when you ride in cities and figuring out where you are going on the fly without GPS in unfamiliar cities (I think true cyclists all have the bike messenger gene in them somewhere!). 

• You’ve worn out at least one rim from extensive use in the days of rim brakes and cracked at least one rim from riding hard.

• You keep all of your worn headset and bottom bracket bearings in a jar, after replacing those bearings/parts. 

• You have preferred brands/models of bike parts: e.g. tyre, saddle, pump, grips and/or pedals. 

• You have never owned and ridden a bike with all stock parts. 

• Your friends and family always buy you bike-themed stuff for your birthday/Christmas presents (e.g. oven mitts, dish towels, t-shirts, necklaces, plates, etc). 

• You get antsy and grumpy when you can’t ride for even short periods of time. 

• You ride in all weather conditions and have embraced Type II fun on the bike as part and parcel of being a cyclist. 

• You have shin scars from pedal smacks. 

• You have been to the emergency department at least once for a bicycle-related injury.

• You can bunny hop a bike without being ‘clipped in’ – and can bunny hop all of your bikes over small obstacles like rocks, sticks, glass, small curbs, railroad tracks, big pavement cracks or erosion ditches. 

• You’ve had at least one breakdown that couldn’t be fixed on the road and you walked/pushed/carried the bike for a long distance or had to get a car ride. 

• You’ve been hit by a vehicle at least once that wasn’t your fault.

• When you are out walking and not on the bike, you still instinctively look down for your mirror to look for traffic from behind when you are about to cross a road.
  

So what other ones have I missed? 

One of my mountain biking friends, who used to be a roadie (but ‘saw the light’, lol), added the bearings jar and being able to bunny hop things (I added the clipless bit, because anyone can bunny hop a bike with clipless pedals). 

I’m so grateful it was easy to become a cyclist, and that my family and friends have always been so supportive. I’ve always felt sad for Nigel that he never had the chance to get involved in karting as a kid (his uncle did race cars, right up until a few months before he passed – from old age, not driving!). Nigel never truly got to be who he wanted to be, but I’ve been fortunate to have always had that cycling identity woven through my life.

So we take off Sunday for my chance to just be a cyclist for 5 weeks before returning to be the ‘smart, reliable worker’. The temps next week look very HOT, so Nigel is going to drive me, in a hoon-like fashion, up to Dartmouth on Saturday afternoon. We’ll spend the night there, and then he’ll drop me off in Mitta Mitta to start the ride Sunday morning, so he can get back home in time to… watch the season opening race of the V8 Supercar series. This positions me to get to higher elevations where it is cooler before the heat hits.

The morning after I posted the INTRODUCTION page to this journal, my boss rang, and said,

“Good news!! The gov has finally got its act together and everything should be ready for your contract start in mid-March!!”  (I was expecting end of March based on conversations with others in Jan). 

Yep, make some solid plans, announce it to everyone, and the contract you’ve been waiting on since September gets the signatures.  Haha!

I replied, “Now, I don’t think I’m throwing a spanner in the works, but I’m planning to take off on the bike on Monday and be gone for the month of March.”

I figure I’ve waited on them for 6 months, they can wait on me for 2 weeks. I’m an excellent project manager. I’m smart, hardworking, conscientious, and I get shit done. I’m worth waiting for.

It was all okay. My boss just said to tell her what date I want to start, and she’ll get that written into the project implementation plan she submits on Friday.

Awesome. It’s so good to have that knowledge that I can get straight to work and start putting money away again as soon as I get back.  And in the meantime, I can go crawl up a bunch of hills, bomb down the other side, and wobble my way through a bunch of river crossings. Let’s go! The hoon cyclist and her crew are more than ready to head for the hills and go for a ride.