Silly question, mine of course.
He had gift vouchers to use for his shoes.
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SJ: Freshly refurbed EOT facilities in our temp office (we move into our new building in November)
NSJ: Glitch in hot water system has meant cold showers the last 3 weeks
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A little ride this morning. Tweed Shire, Northern NSW (only a metaphorical stoneâs throw from Qld border)
Small Joy : Seeing a beautiful Python beside the Trail. I did stop and take a Pic. Cool morning here so the snake was a bit lethargic. Pythons also are very lethargic when they have had a big feed but this one did not appear to have just had a feed.
Also had the first Maggie swoop of the season. Not a very concerted effort though.
Brisbanites will be planning their Ekka public holiday bike rides so be warned my Queensland friends !
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SJ: Heading over to Melbourne this weekend for my boys BJJ tourney. Been a few years since ive last been. Making it a bit of a family get away.
Iâll be sure to ask all the fixie riders to do a skid.
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Roughly where will you be?
That will determine if youâre likely to see any fixies.
Tournament is at the Sports Centre at Albert Park, weâll be in a Air BnB near by, but then the other days weâll be in the city.
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A feel-good little video with a delightful cameo role by a famous Aussie cyclist called Harry.
(Who is wearing a B2GC cycling top.)
Harry appears at about 15 minutes into the video.
Highly recommended, itâs a gem and only recently released 
SJ: A zone 2 ride being an actual zone 2 ride with the boys
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SJ: 60km@20km/h with 950m vertical gain. Didnât die.
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NSJ: got swooped, took a good strike to the helmet.
SJ: it was a Grey Butcherbird, probably my favourite bird, so thatâs ok.
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The swoopy bois are out in force at the moment. Got a good clip to the ear on Saturday, and on his 2nd go round he hit my shoulder. Never had that happen before. All up I think it was 5 different magpies having a go at me on the weekend.
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They are. One bugger hit my helmet hard but it felt like he got it with his body. Didnât do it again. I reckon it knocked the wind out of him.
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In Brissie this weekend.
So out for a snoop around of some old haunts, on the bike. Good time of year for it, as itâs warm but not too hot, and some of the trees are in spectacular flower.
And many of the roads were very quiet this Sunday morning which was good.
Some of the good old hidden secrets are still there. Newstead House, said to be the first sizeable house built north of Sydney, was built about 175 years ago. Nearby is a magnificent little Cantonese community Joss House, built in 1886. And last but not least, around the corner is the iconic Breakfast Creek Hotel, built in 1889, and said to be the favourite watering hole for generations of politicians, unionists and business people.
Some time later I found myself heading west on the Enoggera Creek bikepath. Very pleasant and quite busy with walkers, runners and cyclists but not impossibly so. i crossed the notorious Raymont Road, which is âa bit steepâ
One day about 35 years ago I was out riding with a gung ho sort of a bloke when he turned to go up Raymont Rd. He was on an Eric Hendren racing bike with 42/52 chainrings and a corncob freewheel. I said to him âyou are going to have to get off and walkâ to which he replied âdeath before dishonourâ and he went about about ten metres before his cranks stopped turning and he gracefully fell over into the gutter 
Soon I was gliding through the leafy suburbs of Ashgrove, always a pleasure on a nice day.
Then Into some âtiger countryâ around the little suburbs of Rainworth and Red Hill, where streets with a gradient of less than 20 percent are few and far between. Zigzag is actually the name of one of the streets ! In the âold daysâ before Sat nav systems, delivery vans and trucks would notoriously get lost or stuck on these steep and narrow streets. They still do occasionally.
It ended up taking me 2 hours to complete a little loop, with a total distance of about 35 km.
Heaps of fun on an old road racing bike.
But not 42/52 and corncob freewheel.
I used 36/46 chainrings and a 14-28 freewheel.
Only had to get off and walk about a 50 meters total.
Taken at the front steps of Newstead house
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Good photos on your Strava. 
Looked like a good morning. 
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found a $50 note on Raymont Rd a few weeks back, paid for my haircut!
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Is that your Van Werkhoven?
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Yes, itâs a VanWerkhoven frame that I purchased from a friend almost 2 yr ago.
It has been knocked about a fair bit, lots of scratches/gouges and the odd dent in the frame. But it is a good fit for me and I have done a backyard touch up on some of the paint defects .
Iâve got no idea of its past history but I reckon itâs circa 1989, and it has the trademark lurid colours that were all the rage late 1980âs 
I also suspect that most of these VanWerkhoven bikes were made for Roadies in Queensland and Northern NSW.
I donât think that a lot of them were made before Cannondale/Klein (and others) âdisruptedâ the Road bike market Down Under with their fat aluminium tube frames in the early 1990âs.
Iâm just running it with a 6-speed shimano downtube shifters, a Campagnolo RD and a Shimano cassette (that I probably modified slightly to give good indexing!)
Overall I think it would have been a âState of the Artâ Club Racer in the late 1980âs.
With the right gear it would be very nearly as fast as any serious 2026 Carbon Road bike. Perhaps just a tad heavier, perhaps a tad less aero, and a tad more flexy.
In the right hands, bikes like this terrify modern Roadies when they get caught and dropped by them
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