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Tuesday, April 6. 2010Cash - Gone
Have a quick look at the image to the right. It's from a Liverpool Champion story about Liverpool Council heavy-handedly enforcing a 10m from an intersection parking rule, violation of which results in a $197 fine. Here, two cars would be fined for not being greater than 10m from the intersection.
Do you, as a member of society, think 10m is warranted? Look at the silver car in the picture - that's the approximate position I parked my car within Liverpool Council's boundaries, from where I cycle to Parramatta on occasion. I don't have a photo or proof, but I believe I would actually have been further from the corner, but I'm not claiming to have been more than 10m. For the same amount of financial penalty, I could have driven between 10 and 20km/h over the speed limit, an action which statistically impacts the safety of others. Unlike, say, parking 6m from an intersection. Sure, I'll pay - it's the law after all - however I won't bother to pick small parking spaces anymore for my biodiesel-powered tiny 5L/100km car (last tank 5.3L/100km, including towing 750kg mower/trailer combo at times and driving "with spirit" at others) to fit now so that others can have the larger ones for their land yacht fuel-guzzlers. There were plenty of huge open spaces away from an intersection I could have parked in. Bugger the rest of you people looking for parking spots, it seems. Tuesday, April 28. 2009New Job!
Well, sorta.
A year or so ago when the team I originally started with in 2001 was transferred to Parramatta office, I used the excuse to stay in town with a different team and also move to a Technical Lead role for the experience. Now things have changed a little - the team in town got moved across the bridge along with everyone else from that office, and also we have moved out to Picton. The combined two hours each-way commute was bearable for the transition period, but something had to give. Coupled with this the old team at Parramatta had some internal re-organisiation, and the Team Leader role became vacant. I was asked to step up, and as of Monday, that's what I'm doing. So yes, I'm now a manager and have the Crackberry to prove it. I view it as a challenge, but figure I wouldn't have been asked if people thought I wasn't capable. I haven't even had time to unpack my boxes, it's been go-go-go since I walked in the door, so there will be precious little rest time it seems. As I type this I'm cruising along in the train to Parramatta (using the rare-as-hen's-teeth Cumberland line trains), and out the window I can see where I cycled yesterday. There's a "rail trail" from Liverpool to Parramatta which is pretty good, but could do with the signs being replaced so I don't waste 30 minutes next time following the wrong railway line. But I guess that's what GPS is for. Liverpool station is also a poorly-designed bottle neck for an "interchange" with a cycleway. I'm still balancing the train times to arrive at the appropriate work-life balance - this took me a little while at North Sydney and some experimentation appears to still be required.
Posted by Alison Gould
in Cycling, Mobile Devices, Sydney, Work
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21:22
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Monday, June 30. 2008Blue Mountains trip
We got back yesterday from a great long weekend away staying in a house in Wentworth Falls with friends Sarah, Derek and Pearl. It was quite a lot of fun as an over-sized family and a great place to stay.
The photos tell most of the story, but highlights include:
Posted by Alison Gould
in Cycling, Family, Real Life, Travel
at
04:41
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Thursday, June 12. 2008Southern Sydney Waterways Ride
I took advantage of the nice weather to head off on a aimless ride around the area today. If the forecast is to be believed, that might be all the riding I get in the next week or so.
Robertson
I'm in the middle of a week off work (well earned, in my humble opinion!), and one of the things we wanted to do was have a couple of days break from Sydney.
A big of searching landed us with Robertson, a small town half-way between Bowral and the coast. We'd stopped there on a steam train ride and despite the horrendous rain that day (Robertson has a huge annual rainfall) we had fond memories of it. After discounting most of the accommodation (why are Aussie B&Bs so expensive??), we landed on the huge old manor of the town, Fountaindale. This is known to most people we've mentioned the trip to as Ranleigh House, which it was called for most of its life. I sold it to Liz as coming across a bit like Fawlty Towers, and once we arrived, we found I was more correct that we had hoped I would be! It wasn't bad, but for the prices they charge (lucky we were getting a hefty discount) you'd expect heating in the rooms. Especially when you arrive with a six month old and my wife who would probably have preferred to be on the coast somewhere very very warm :) The charm of the place would have been great in its day, but it needs some serious work to compete - we won't be returning unles they do some major work. Anyway, the town was nice enough - one pub, a few cafés, galleries, etc. Disturbingly many places recently closed for business though, which is never good to see in a small town. I'd taken the bike and set off one afternoon when the weather permitted for a ride up the little-used railway line. Fountaindale actually had it's own station, which would have been a grand way to arrive back in 1924 when it was first built. On the way back home yesterday we stopped at the newly-opened Illawarra Fly treetop-walk. This was quite a bit of fun, although not one for the vertigo-afflicted! All three of us had a great time walking around, even when it was rather high up! They'd done a reasonable job of making it fit in with the surroundings, and it's all sustainably done with water tanks, no flashy signs, etc. Worth a visit if you're in the area, for the great views across to the coast, and the chance to bounce the cantilever sections to annoy those not big fans of heights in your group :) Phoebe slept mostly in her porta-cot, and some times with us in the King-sized bed, which was a pleasant bonding experience for us. Tuesday, May 27. 2008Woodford to Glenbrook Careflight Charity Ride - Sponsor Me!
A few friends and I are entering the Woodford to Glenbrook Classic, a ride which aims to raise proceeds for NRMA Careflight.
I'll be pestering people to sponsor me, so here's some advance warning to save a bit of cash up for when I find you :) Or even better, come ride with us for added fun factor. Hopefully my newly-rebuilt mountain bike will be up to the task, or more accurately hopefully I am up to the task, as mechanic and rider! We're making a weekend out of it, staying with some friends up the mountains for a nice winter weekend getaway. Sunday, April 27. 2008Jake Pics
I owed some feedback to the people in a bike forum that helped me choose my latest bike, and as such there are now a bunch of pictures of it online, if you are curious.
The weather actually looks good enough to get back on it again this week - I'm a bit of a wuss in the rain, although I pretend that's because I don't want to get the contents of my bag wet. Sydney Cyclist is a good self-descriptive website, and this is the aforementioned-forum, full of helpful people. Thursday, February 21. 2008Aaah the blog...
It's a sign that life is busy when I don't post here for ages. It's been beyond busy recently. I stare at the front page now and then and note the stagnation, knowing only I can change it. And then something else comes and steals my attention.
No matter, life is going well! Miss Phoebe is for the most part much improved. She still has times when she has been awake for hours and is so tired that she won't sleep or feed. They're tough and she needs constant attention to sort her out. Liz is unfortunately copping most of this as I'm busy at work and still with bands. Several times of the years I've considered dropping back my band commitment, and each time we've discussed it and agreed it can continue. Now I'm not so sure, it's just not fair on Liz to make her do so much while I'm off having a good time elsewhere. As part of the process of spending more time at home, I purchased a shiny new bike. On the first ride into work on it I cut ten minutes or so of my fastest time on the old bike, so there should be less time spent commuting and more at home. I spent a long time researching options, considering a few compromises on eBay, but ended up getting exactly what I wanted. An expensive way to do it, but warranty and reliability are key on a commuter. It's what they call a Cyclocross bike, dedicated to the sport of Cyclocross, which pretty much nobody knows about. The formula is to take a fast road bike, make it more rugged, make it more comfortable, and add practical features. So it's a bit slower than a "real" road bike but as you can see above, it's still plenty fast! And at the other end of the commute - work - things are changing too. My team is being restructured out to the Parramatta office, and I'm was really not looking forward to the extra hour's train journey. The bike ride was far more direct and looked not to be too much longer than the ride to the city, but I can't ride every day, due mostly to weather and carrying instruments. From an organisational perspective it makes sense for that team to be with the rest of the people who do similar things, but from a personal perspective Parramatta has nothing at all to appeal to me, and eats into the time with my new family. Even if I don't go out in the city every day, I could if I wanted, whereas what little there is at Parramatta seems to shut down after business hours. So I got offered a position as technical lead in a different, but similar team, who are remaining in Surry Hills. I've decided to take it for six months, to see how the management thing suits me. If it doesn't very well then I can either revert to my old job out at Parramatta or look to the market for something different. Enough for now, I need coffee. Thursday, November 8. 2007Required Space
A Pictorial comparison of the amount of space required to transport the same number of passengers by car, bus or bicycle.
Tuesday, October 30. 2007Lycra
So, when I first started cycling I said strongly "NO LYCRA!" and today I found I had broken this pledge.
I blame the Netti factory sale. Suffice to say it is the fastest and most comfortable ride I've ever done. And also the most conscious I've ever been of my body. Trust me, there's nothing to show off. Thursday, October 25. 2007Things
Well, you can probably guess from the slackness in blogging I'm showing here that life has been busy. The most obvious reason is of course the baby who is showing all signs of being healthy, and arriving early December. The midwife thinks possibly earlier, but we'd rather it not because she is away until the end of November.
There's modern cloth nappies galore here now, and buckets for dirty ones, plus of course clothes, wraps, furniture, car seat, pram, you name it. I've heard it described as the biggest consumer spend a couple goes through (after housing), and it's truly scary what some companies tell you that you 'need' to have. We've been to birthing and parenting classes and spent countless hours reading stuff online so apparently we now know all, true experts in the field. Except it will of course have no bearing on the reality of actually having a child to look after 24 hours a day. It was interesting to compare out situation to others in the class though - we're much better off and more prepared than several others, so that gives us a bit of hope. Trying to organise a couple of short holidays before the due date too. Some other quick point-form news:
Posted by Alison Gould
in Cycling, Family, Honeymakers, Jersey Kerb, Net, Photography, Real Life, Travel
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22:15
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Tuesday, October 9. 2007Cycling Safety in Sydney
So, after another successful and safe ride to work this morning (once I'd fixed a flat tire, grr), it's nice to see that the fact everyone seems to 'know' about how amazingly unsafe it is to cycle in Sydney are simply wrong (Original SMH article here).
The main take-away point is that despite a 50% increase in the number of cyclists in the last three years, the number of cyclists killed has halved in the last ten (7 down to 3), and the percentage injured has declined. So, since 50% of car trips in Sydney are under five kilometres, why not join me and the 3000 other people that ride into the CBD daily? I ride 21km each way, and I still feel so much more refreshed and ready to face the day after riding than being crammed into a CitySnail sardine-tin train. Don't even get me started on surrounding yourself with 1-3 tonnes of metal and burning up several litres of fossil fuels only to sit in traffic that plenty of others seem to think is a great idea. The truly crazy thing is that I'm much faster through the traffic than they are anyway! Tuesday, September 18. 2007Again with the famousness by proxy
A little birdy pointed me at this telegraph article. The "friend" referred to in the first paragraph is someone you know if you are reading this blog...
Oh, and nice work Dave :) We used to have a rule in SES that if you got your mug in the paper you owed everyone a beer, I think it's time to resurrect that. An extended version of the story is in the current issue of PushOn, too. Tuesday, September 11. 2007Sydney Planning
Cycled up to The Rocks last night for a truly inspiring talk by Jan Gehl. This is the Danish guy who has turned global cities into places you might actually want to live, the closest success to home being inner-city Melbourne.
In a move with a change of making me respect a politician, Sydney's Lord Mayor Clover Moore has engaged Jan to provide his views on Sydney, which makes for amazing reading. (There will apparently be a podcast/vodcast of the talk available here - well worth your time). I think after our European travels, the main reason I want to live in places like Paris, Amsterdam, Munich or Copenhagen is that they are just great, friendly places to be. Cars have their place outside the center, but the right there in the middle is a place for people. To meet, to be entertained, to relax, and to watch. Sydney's CBD just is no use for that. The only public spaces worth talking about are disjoint, and at all times as a pedestrian you are less important than the car. Jan's work on other more visionary cities is but a dream here in Sydney. After the talk, I changed into my cycle gear and pedaled back to Kogarah. In the city traffic, making the best of what cycle 'lanes' are on offer. More nightmare than dream. Clover, I challenge you to step up to the plate and implement 100% of the recommendations when you get them later this year, as Melbourne did. Perhaps we will be less inclined to consider the Southern city a place to live, which we did much to our disgust after traveling there last year and being blown away by how good an Australian city could be.
Posted by Alison Gould
in Cycling, Environment, Sydney, Travel
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22:47
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Friday, August 24. 2007Live Green Festival
The City of Sydney is running a Live Green festival tomorrow, I'm going to try and make it. Have to get off my lazy bum and cycle in, I've slackened off a bit with the recent nasty weather.
Everyone's photos of the festival (including mine hopefully) will be on Flickr, which is cool in itself.
Posted by Alison Gould
in Cycling, Environment, Photography
at
02:42
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