2025 – Our Year of Bikes

In January we bought a new bike – a bright yellow Trisled Ahoogah – the Lamborghini of bikes. It replaces our 19-year-old Schwinn Sierra Tandem which has served us well and led to us having a much more active lifestyle than if we hadn’t bought it. 

We drove to the factory at Morewell to pick it up, where pedal locations and chain lengths were adjusted to fit our leg lengths.  The bike has two independent drive trains, and motor-assist on my drive.

Since January we have cycled 3000 km and added many enhancements – hydraulic brakes, blind-corner mirrors, lights and indicators (including in Antigone’s Lumos helmet!), a larger motor-controller display (speedo), puncture-resistant tyres and we have worn out and replaced my chain.  It is fun to ride a bike that makes everybody smile. 

We usually bring our bike when we travel with our caravan, so we needed to be able to transport it on the roof of our car.  This challenge kept me occupied for months.  The third iteration uses four aluminium channels (two for ramps), which are bendy, but work for loading. A steel frame supports the bike frame over the roof bars for driving.

In April, somebody admiring our bike said they were having difficulty selling a recumbent of their father’s in Tasmania.  It sounded like a good deal, so it prompted a visit Tassie to see old friends – Kate Fletcher (top centre), Robert Rands and Annette Horsler.  We bought the bike (a red Hase Trigo), and while there, configured it to tow our bike trailer. 

We had bought a Hippocampe Marathon running wheelchair in November 2024 and adjusted it to also function as a 4-wheel walker (left image) and a bike trailer as well as being a wheelchair for pushing while running (right image).

We use it most Saturdays for parkrun, typically travelling to and from parkrun with a support worker and with our bike towing it. 

I expect during 2026, we will both reach new parkrun milestones – 100 events for Antigone and 250 for me.

Conveniently, the new Trigo has the same motor and battery as our Ahoogah.  For longer tours with either bike, we could bring two batteries with us.

A new roof-rack challenge was to configure the roof-rack to carry the Trigo and trailer (as an alternative to the Ahoogah). 

Further roof-rack repairs were needed when we crashed into a friend’s house (over their carport forgetting about the bike on the roof) in May, and into a hospital parking garage (forgetting about the running wheelchair on the roof) in November.  Fortunately, the roof-rack channels were the weakest link, so the vehicles suffered only trivial damage.

In 2024 I had built a bat-cave-like bike shed in preparation for getting the new Ahoogah, but hadn’t thought about storing the running wheelchair or the Trigo.  Fortunately, there was just enough height to hang the running wheelchair over the bike.  A bike shed extension in June was needed to accommodate the Trigo, standing with its front wheel in the air.

I’ve been enjoying riding the Trigo and Mum has enjoyed trying it a few times too.  She is contemplating getting a 3-wheeled pedal-powered vehicle.

We considered taking our bike on the Great Victorian Bike Ride in November along the Great Ocean Road with thousands of other cyclists.  We did one training weekend along a rail-trail between Yass and Alexandra with our friend Hamish McCracken, which was fun.  Unfortunately, in late September a poor judgement towing Antigone in the trailer (turning left with a slope to the right) led to a fractured shoulder (neck of humerus).  This greatly reduced our cycling during the last few months of the year.  Maybe we’ll do ‘The Great Vic’ next year.

Bike rides have included:

• A few Critical Mass monthly rides
• Hoisting friend Fred Heesh onto the bike for a ride after he could no longer walk, one of the highlights of his last few months of life.  His friends invited us to join them on the croquet green!
• cycling over the Eastlink tunnels – very pretty – glad they didn’t put a freeway through it
• cycling between Coburg and Beaumaris a couple of times (64 km – our longest distance in a day)
• Merri Creek, Moonee Ponds Creek, new West Gate Tunnel / Footscray Road elevated veloway (very nice, with interesting views of the port facilities)
• Yea to Alexandra rail trail with our friend Hamish

I mentioned we can tow the trailer with either recumbent bike. We can also tow the Trigo behind the Ahoogah to make a 3-person tandem, though we have only done so a few times. Hase trikes are designed to be able to link together to make tandems. After reading about Hase’s 2003 world record for the longest tandem bike (92m, made up of 62 bikes and riders – in video from about 3:00), I was intrigued to try making a train by having the joined Ahoogah / Trigo tow our trailer. We tried it successfully with some neighbours on Boxing Day.

Other news

We helped Mum move into her new house, and, together with siblings Jim and Steve, emptied Mum and Dad’s old house of 40 years!  (a mammoth task).  Enjoying a bit more regular time with Mum, we continued visiting her weekly – every Tuesday.

We had a 3-month visit from our friend (and NDIS support worker) Ying, from China. 

We had met Ying in Broome in 2023 while we and she were all living in the caravan park; we were impressed with her wonderful enthusiasm and loving attitude, so invited her to become a personal care worker with us.  She worked for us every morning before starting her ‘cleaner’ work for the caravan park.  We enjoyed a professional relationship and a social relationship and prior to leaving Broome we tried to convince her to quit with the caravan park to travel from Broome back to Melbourne with us.  In 2024 we invited her to join us for a 4-week festival tour in March and April, but she declined.  In 2025, she contacted us and asked if we were planning another festival tour.  She was with us for weekends at Yackandandah Folk Festival (performing with the Zamponistas), Turramurra Family Music Camp and the National Folk Festival (performing with Shaking the Tree choir).  We also attended CresFest for a day.

Antigone had a stroke in 2021, and has others since, including this recent October and December.  We had a full change-over in NDIS support workers this year after the departure of Alex and Alana, who had worked with us since 2022.  We have a wonderful new team of morning support workers (Tahlia, Janey and Catherine) and also a personal trainer PT (Perry) who works with Antigone for 3 sessions each week.

Mobility decline – Since the recent strokes, Antigone is now using a walker most of the time.  A recent innovation is ‘traffic engineering for the home’ (shown below) which helps steering between rather than into things.  I am starting construction of a rear deck and ramp for easier wheeled access between our driveway and our house, like we did two Summers ago at the front (shown below).  Preliminary work has included a major pergola roof repair.

We are continuing enjoyment of Zamponistas (Newstead and Yackandandah Festivals), Shaking the Tree Choir (National Folk Festival) & One More Chorus.  Our Woolacott St community is wonderful, partially facilitated by a What’s App group. We enjoy our outlook to the new reserve under the elevated railway, and enjoy music gigs, especially at the Lomond Hotel.

Kathy’s and Diana’s 60^th birthdays.  Good to see Mina & Aemie visiting from Thailand.

2025 was bookended with community artwork on the fences opposite our house.  About 20 people participated on 1/1/2025.  On 1/1/2026 I plan to coordinate a work in a similar style north of the pier, but with colour choice less random.

With love from Bob & Antigone & Peppa                                  

PS After an early complaint about the lack of news about Peppa, I include a few more pics. As she ages, she increasingly enjoys laps, especially Antigone’s.