Last week I did my first long bicycle ride, I rode home from Macquarie Uni the long way. I did however forget about the whole dusk thing, and as I don’t have lights on my bicycle yet, I ended up riding the long but safer way and the whole way on the footpath 🙂
Ah well, I’m enjoying this bike business anyway, it is awesome fun and I’m getting fit!
We ended up buying some nice Apollo bikes from a great place in West Ryde.
I bought a very dorky-looking head-mounted light, based on those new LEDs that are all the rage now. Awesome for riding nights. Yeah I look absolutely stupid with it, but when did I ever care about that? 🙂
I made that choice for two reasons… one, you know bikes come and go here. Any improvements to the bike itself, would only raise the chance of it being stolen, and I don’t want that (this is already my fourth bike since I’m in Beijing). And two, a head-mounted light, although dorky, always points exactly in the direction I’m looking, which is sometimes much more helpful than straight ahead.
One of my excellent off-the-kerb bikes is an Apollo. The only thing which has ever broken on it (following much abuse) was a chain link. The bike’s light, efficient & came with nice, chunky tyres. Y’all enjoy yours. (-:
and the sore butt goes away pretty quickly if you keep at it 🙂
For a long distance ride, try the M2 or M7 (has it own bikepath beside the motorway unlike the M2) for 40Km or so
cheers
Josh