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New Day Rising – Becoming a hoon cyclist

E Sharp

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.

Closing in on Casper – on the day I rode 130 miles, the first 32 miles with a headwind through a canyon at Thermopolis and then light, variable winds thereafter. Elevations between 4,000 and 5,000 feet through the day, net elevation gain and a rolling ride time of 9.42 hours. I’m pretty confident I could do that again, that far into a tour, even now, 11 years later. Would I though? Nah, I wouldn’t be on a road that would permit such distances anyway.

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. 

Age 13 – I’d had the bike for about three months. Eventually I’d be able to ride with my foot on the seat and handlebars.

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!

Age 20 – by this point I spent more time on night rides than practicing freestyle tricks. I don’t have any night ride pics – it was still the days of film and I don’t think we ever thought to lug a camera along. I doubt you’d be able to capture much in the dark either.

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. 

Nigel, when I first met him in 1998, with his pride and joy. He has driven this vehicle very fast.

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.

In his element. He loves cars as much as I love bikes.
Nigel in his first ‘drive experience’ in 2012 at Winton. He’ll go on to do Sandowne in 2020 and also Bathurst, Oz’s hardest and most famous track, in 2019 and 2021.

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. 

Okay, so you have to imagine this being 10 o’clock at night. Now you are going to dash from that bike lane on the right to the bike lane on the left. And back again and again. Over and over. You are not allowed to pause or wait in the middle turning lane where it is present. And you must do this while you race everyone else doing the same thing and while not being hit, or honked at, by a car. You are dressed in all black and your bike has no reflective material or lights. It really was great fun.

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”. 

A roadie hoon!

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:

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.

Packing up – everything from the gear box is on the floor, ready to be pared down and packed away. No changes to gear from the 2022-23 ride as that gear list and set-up worked really well.

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.

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