For all those who haven’t ridden the Melburn Saturday ride, here’s a potted account of yesterday’s roll round…
For some, myself included, the 7:30 meet time has always been a bit of a challenge. I inevitably leave lateish, and this morning it meant I had to do a TT-style run down St Kilda Road.
The ’style’ of the ride has changed in the past few weeks, as our sergeant-major ndf has been picking backstreet routes in training for the forthcoming Melburn-Roobaix torture-test.* This morning it was the backstreets of Prahran, Balaclava and Brighton, before we jumped onto Beach Road to have a play with the Saturday morning pelotons.
(*Not really)
Some took it easy, others gave it some stick: the general idea was to regroup at the Black Rock clocktower for coffee and rubbish-talk before punting it back up the beach. We met a guy at the café who was rolling around on a 39-year-old road bike, with full old-skool Campy gear, all original, even the drivetrain! And of course his Brooks saddle was also original.
The run down to Black Rock was quick but as we rolled out of the café to head back, full of croissants and coffee, it became clear why… our tailwind friend was now our headwind foe! Heads down, we slogged back up to St Kilda. A large pack eventually caught us and a female Drapac-Porsche team rider riding with them asked about the ‘baseball cards’ in our rear wheels, which was more than a whole ride worth of male roadies had said to us…
A quick stop in St Kilda to regroup, then we rolled down St Kilda Road into the city, where the ride broke up and a few people headed off to start preparations for the Drags scheduled for the afternoon. A number of us ended up at the GPO cafe for a leisurely coffee/breakfast/lunch stop before riding down though Birrarung Marr to Abbotsford Cycles to tend to some mechanical needs. Abbotsford is one of those wonderful cycle shops that time has forgotten. They have great service and carry all kinds of gear for the more idiosyncratic bicycles of Melbourne – the perfect place for those riding vintage track bikes!
From Abbotsford Cycles, we rode back into the city, through Docklands to the Moonee Ponds creek Drain under Citylink, for the Drags.
...mj
