Riding to Coburg

Mid morning, I went for my daily bike ride. I am aiming for an hour every day, to lose 10 kilos. The sun was shining, but the wind was still cool on my chest. I’m wearing track pants these days instead of the shorts that I always usually wear for a ride, but it is winter now and even though I warm up once I’ve been riding for a time, shorts are still a shock to the system in which to start out.

I headed down Napier Street, through the Edinburgh Gardens, full of people with their dogs off-lead. I must bring my dogs here, I think, yet again. As I approached Park Street, I remember I was going to explore another bike path today, not cycle the same route, I am such a creature of habit, so instead of turning left, I turned right. I wanted to ride the old Merri Creek path, that I used to ride all those years ago, I thought about it last night. As it turned out, the turn off to the Merri Creek bike path it is just a little way along Park Street. I am so lucky living where I live, there are bike paths heading out in every direction, all one has to do is discover them.

So, I rode up the Merri Creek and it was fabulous, so changed and so much more developed than when I used to ride it way back when? Back then it used to peter out in a water logged goat track, long before it got anywhere near Coburg Lake. I laugh to myself, I wonder how many years it has been since the inner suburbs of Melbourne was home to flocks of goats.

All along the Merri creek, bits of land joined up to bits of land, and ovals, some girls sports field, the Brunswick velodrome, and then sundry tracks and scraps of land, the round bits of courts, and street ends, and bridges and sidings and the like all joined up to be a slash of land through the suburbs, separated from roads and cars. It is a whole other world, almost subterranean, but not quite.

There were lots of people exercising, and with their kids, in prams and out of them, on bikes, running, jogging, strolling. So many people with their dogs off-lead, about which I don’t care. Dogs should be off-lead, they should be free to run. It just becomes problematic when mixed with bikes. I wondered what the dog owners would say if you told them, bike riders accept that the dogs are off-lead, as long as dog owners accept that if one of their dogs runs in front of a bike and is hurt, or killed accidently, the dog owners can’t complain. It seemed a fair proposition to me, but somehow, I didn’t think it would fly. People aren’t inherently reasonable, people are essentially selfish or, at least, of self.

I set my timer for 30 minutes, at which point I’d turn around and then I ride for an hour by the time I got home. An hour ride is always my goal. Eventually, the concrete path turned into a gravel path, then it deteriorated to a mud track for a time in the middle there of the journey to Coburg Lake. And just as the concrete resumed again, my 30 minute timer sounded. So, I explored a bit further to the end of the dirty section that essentially became a maze of tracks along the river bank, and then I turned around for home.

I wondered why the middle section wasn’t sealed? But, all I could conclude was, it was for me to wonder. Presumably, the council in the middle didn’t care so much about its residents. I must google which council that is?

I followed a cute boy jogger home, for a bit, who had thick black hair, and a great arse and thick, hairy legs in his dark blue shorts. I followed him at a slow pace until I felt a bit stalkerish, well, a lot stalkerish, but he wasn’t looking behind, so what, then I passed him and headed home.

I was home just after midday. So, I rode for an hour and fifteen minutes.