‘Night Rides’

‘Do you often go on night rides?’ Alan asked me as we loaded our bike to return home from a Zamponistas rehearsal in Essendon.

The question struck me as odd.  I said something vague like ‘From time to time’.

It struck me as odd because we weren’t ‘going on a night ride’.  We were getting on our bike to go home.  The bike was our transport and night or day was incidental.  When riding at night, we turn on our lights, just as one would when driving a car.

A clever response might have been: ‘Only when it’s dark.  By the way, do you go on many night drives?’  That question may have seemed odd to him in a similar way to how his question seemed odd to me.

Our bike is our transport when travelling distances of a few kilometres such as Coburg, Brunswick, Essendon, Preston, Thornbury.  Night or day is incidental.

I realised that many people don’t relate to a bike as transport. Perhaps it’s more common to think of a bike as something for entertainment, recreation, or fitness.

When I was young, I wanted to go to Fiji to a scout jamboree.  Mum & Dad said they would pay half if I could earn the other half.  (An approach to encouraging saving and budgeting that set me up well for life.)  I earned money by delivering the local newspaper and delivering prescription drugs for the pharmacy (on my bike).  I knew Mum & Dad paid for a school bus to take me to and from school.  I proposed that if I cycled to school, they would save the bus fare and that could count as my earning.  They agreed.

On days that I had violin lessons, I strapped my violin on my bike under my school bag.  I typically carried a raincoat in case it rained.  (My recollection is that rain occurred year-round back then and was less predictable than now.)  In Winter, my deliveries finished after dark, so I used lights (a strict requirement from Dad).

Those childhood experiences set me up for life to relate to a bike as a means of transport.  I am grateful for that.  Thanks Mum & Dad.

I think every bike should have built-in lights and a lock and a place for carrying things, just as cars do.  These items facilitate using a bike as a vehicle for transport.  These aspects of transport should be just as easy with a bike as with a car.  I always ensure my bikes are equipped with these things. 

• I like built-in dynamo lights so they are not something extra to remember, and not easily removable to reduce the risk of theft.  Also, with dynamo power, flat batteries and dim lights are never a concern. 
• I like built-in frame locks (as are common in Europe but  not in Australia) because with these, the process of locking the bike is as easy as locking a car. 
• I like luggage racks and baskets – I don’t understand the popularity of cycling wearing backpacks.  Cycling, one gets sweaty enough without choosing to have a sweaty back as well.

With a properly-equipped vehicle, you don’t need to think ahead about whether it might get dark before you return, or whether you might need a big backpack to bring home the shopping.

When travelling and anticipating renting a bike, I bring these items with me to install on the rental bike (as discussed in Projects blog post).

A huge advantage of bike transport is the expectation of door-to-door service.  Last weekend at Maldon Folk Festival, we could have driven between venues or cycled.  We chose to cycle because I knew we could drive into the Machinery Museum and all the way to the venue part, rather than parking and needing to walk (and transferring to a wheelchair in the rain) for the last 100-200m of the journey.  One musician who drove commented that we got across Maldon faster than he did.