Eclipse – Conclusion

31 December 2019  and 1 January 2020

13 kms (8 miles) and 25 kms (15.5 miles)

NEW YEARS EVE

It’s the end. The end of innocence? No, Black Saturday should have taken care of that. The end of ignorance? No, humans are surprisingly capable of not learning from the past and acting only in self-interest. But it’s the end of something. You can feel it in the subdued atmosphere at the shops this year. There’s an anxiety in the air amongst the holiday festivities. Read more

Eclipse – December Ride 2 – Not quite the tradition

25 December 2019

55 kilometres (34 miles)

 

I have a tradition. It’s a one-day-a-year tradition. It’s something I look forward to each year. It is a Christmas Day gift. You see, while everyone else is inside celebrating Santa in the morning on Christmas Day, they leave the roads very empty. For an atheist with no family within many thousands of kilometres, it is a great gift. It means I can ride narrow, shoulderless roads that are normally too busy to consider. Read more

Eclipse – November Ride 1 – Putting the pieces together

23/24 November

85 kms (53 miles)

The dam broke in 2017. It wasn’t the first time and it won’t be the last.

You see, I’ve always seen life as a bit like being a kid building little rock dams in creeks to hold back water. Only in life, all the rocks are people, places, resources, jobs and such – the pieces you put together to build your life. You assemble all these little rock pieces of your life within the current of the universe. And once you’ve got all the pieces together, it holds back that current for a time and creates calm waters as you tread its safe depths.

Yet, that current is always moving. It’s a force that takes pieces away but also delivers pieces to you. The water can bring you lots of resources quickly, or slowly, and it can take them away quickly or slowly, too. Erosion, or life, is not an evenly-spaced sequence of events. Read more