A Quirky Celebration of Bike-Riding

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Saturday was the start of Bike Week, an event that is held every year in WA to celebrate bicycle riding and to promote cycling as a method for transport. The events that are run over the course of the week are always really creative, and have appeal for a wide range of people whether regular cyclists or not, so it’s really hard not to get involved in one way or another.

This weekend I spent a fair amount of time engaged with Bike Week activities, and I wanted to tell you about not one, but two events that I found really inspiring.

Pedal-Powered Movies

Movies screenings…with a difference! On Saturday night I went to a community movie screening of BMX Bandits (a 1980s film starring a very young Nicole Kidman), and the whole thing was powered by bicycles!

The setup is a collection of fifteen exercise bikes (the really old ones with a bicycle chain) and 15 Fisher and Pykel washing machine motors, which a local Physicist has engineered into a setup that can power a movie projector! The project has taken him 15 years, as every single piece has been picked up from verge collections and scrap.

Fifteen people pedal the bikes, which power the movie. The cyclists can enjoy the movie too of course, and if at any stage they get tired, bored or saddle-sore, they simply raise their hand and someone else from the audience steps up to take their place.

And they're off! Pedal Powered movie gets underway as the sun sets in Victoria Park.

And they’re off! Pedal Powered movie gets underway as the sun sets in Victoria Park.

It was so much fun! The bikes were never unmanned as the second that someone put their hand up to have a rest, multiple people sprang up to take their place. The kids in particular loved it, and would often get off the bikes having had enough to jump straight onto the next available one less than a minute later!

The Giro d Perth

The Giro d Perth is described as a “back lane bike odyssey” and is a cycling event held in Perth every year as part of Bike Week. You pay a registration free to take part, but it’s not a race, or even a ride in the traditional sense: it’s part cycling adventure part treasure hunt (with quiz questions and answers rather than treasure to find). The organisers describe it like this:

Giro d Perth Info

The Giro d Perth – What it’s About

Riders don’t even start at the same time; registration opens at 8am and you can set off any time between then and 10am. Plus yes, as it suggests above, you can stop along the way for breakfast – and many people do!

Giro d Perth

Stopping off en-route to answer a quiz question.

Back lane bike odyssey

The Giro d Perth takes riders through interesting backstreets and laneways around the city.

The great thing about the Giro d Perth is that it gets people out on bicycles onto roads. There’s a safety in numbers with so many cyclists along the route (and I’m sure some of the car drivers were very surprised to see so many wobbly, amateur cyclists taking over the roads on Sunday!), and its a really fun and sociable way to spend a morning.

If you made it to the Italian Club by 12noon (and there was no finish time, so it didn’t matter if you didn’t) there was a presentation by the founder. There were prizes, not for fastest team or most correct quiz answers, but instead for best decorated bike, best vintage bike and a couple of other categories.

He made a really good point: the “lycra brigade” are always going to cycle. This event isn’t solely for them (although they are welcome to join in – and they did). This event is about getting those people who don’t ride often, who don’t have fancy bikes, who maybe aren’t so confident, out on the roads and showing them that cycling is for everyone.

I was also impressed that there was minimal waste at the event. Your registration fee gets you a number, a map and a pen, but there’s no token throwaway medals or branded T-shirts, no fridge magnets or other unnecessary paraphernalia included. At the end, there was no giveaway of plastic cups or drinks bottles (most cyclists have them already, after all) – instead there was a big water tank so riders could refill bottles they already had. Perfect!

Water refill station

No single-use disposable plastic bottles handed out at the finish line! Instead they had a water refill station – such a great idea!

Both events were so much fun! A great way to spend time with family and friends, get out into the fresh air, get some exercise, and celebrate the enjoyment that bicycles provide. A weekend well spent : )

Now I’d like to hear from you! Have you ever taken part in any interesting or unusual cycle events? Have you ever seen any crazy bicycle events but not been game to take part? Are you a regular cyclist, and if not, what holds you back? Do you find the “lycra set” intimidating, or are you happy to cycle on the roads with your less-than-polished ride? The comments make the conversation come to life, so please let me know your thoughts by writing below!

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Why We Chose to Remain Car-Free

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I mentioned at the end of last year that we’d been deciding whether or not to buy a car, and this drummed up quite a bit of interest from readers. Car ownership can be controversial from a minimalist point-of-view, a sustainability point-of-view, a zero-waste point of view... I thought I’d write about why we were contemplating buying a car in the first place, what our options were and why we ultimately decided to remain car-free.

Some Background – Our Changing Circumstances

At the end of September, I started a new job. My office is a ten-minute walk (through a park!) from our flat. Glen has been working in the CBD for the last 18 months, which was a 45 minute train-and-bus commute, or a 30 minute cycle ride. There is no parking. In November, Glen’s office relocated from the CBD to another suburb. His commute is now a 1 hour 20 minute train-and-bus commute, or a 45 minute cycle ride. Parking is free.

We’ve known about this impending relocation for a while. Our new flat (which we move into at the end of the year) will be much closer to the new office – probably a 15 minute bus or cycle ride. It’s the 12 months before the move that are the issue. If I hadn’t just found a job where we currently live, we’d have moved closer sooner, but that was no longer an option.

Commuting isn’t much fun, and doubling your commuting time (with no compensation – it was the office location that changed, not the actual job) means losing a significant amount of free time. Glen doesn’t want to spend his evenings sat at bus stops.

With both of us working, there is less free time for errands, and a car might make things easier. We thought hard about the options.

Option 1: The Electric Car

The electric car appears to fit with our values. Scratch beneath the surface, however, and it raised a number of issues for us.

First up, electric cars are fairly new here, so there isn’t really a second-hand market. Buying a new car is expensive. One of the reasons I started working full-time was to save for the deposit for the flat. Buying a car would wipe out all that money. A new car would cost the same as my take-home salary for the year: they’d simply cancel each other out. Which rather defeats the point!

Secondly, there’s all that embodied carbon. Buying a new car is hardly a green option, whether electric or not. If we really needed a car, maybe we’d think differently, but this choice was more about convenience than necessity.

Thirdly, having an electric car without solar panels to charge it wouldn’t be ideal. The new house has solar but the current one doesn’t, so we’d need to plug it into the mains (powering it from fossil fuels). Our car port is not next to our flat, so we’d need cables and some ingenuity to manage to charge it at home.

All that convenience of having a car suddenly got remarkably inconvenient!

Option 2: The Conventional Car

What about a conventional car? We’d never even consider buying a brand new conventional car. Old cars are affordable (assuming they don’t keep breaking down) and older cars how a lower footprint, even when their fuel usage is less efficient. The embodied emissions of a car (meaning the energy used in the mining, transporting and manufacturing of the parts and the building of the car) are thought to rival the exhaust emissions over its lifetime. T

he older a car is and the more miles it has clocked, the better.

The thing is, we like living without a car. We’ve made it work for us, and we like the lifestyle. My husband feels that not having a car is part of his identity. You can justify anything to yourself if you try hard enough, but we felt that car ownership might be the start of a slippery slope away from the path we’re trying to follow.

Option 3: The Electric Bike

My husband was really taken with the idea of an electric bike. We have several friends who own them, so he was able to talk about them with people who could provide honest and helpful feedback. The appeal? An electric bike would make the 45 minute (each way) cycle ride to work faster, and less exhausting. The downsides: it’s still a bicycle.

There would still be days when it wouldn’t be practical. Going to meetings before work, or heading out after work, and the bike becomes a burden. If it’s pouring, you still get wet. if it’s a 45 degree day, you still get hot.

It wouldn’t be practical on the weekends if we were going somewhere together, as I’d still have my road bike. Buy two and the cost runs into a few thousand dollars. We have limited storage, they are very heavy and our flat is upstairs.

Option 4: Do Nothing

There’s definitely something to be said for doing nothing. It’s not about inertia or indecision, but about making informed choices. It’s a very minimalist approach to life – allow yourself to settle into your new situation before making decisions, especially if those decisions involve spending money and accumulating more stuff.

Rather than speculate that the commute would be too long, or the cycle ride too tiring, we decided that the best approach was to see how it actually panned out.

Why We Chose to Remain Car-Free

This year our focus is saving for a deposit on a flat, and spending money on other things is a distraction from this goal. Car ownership may give us increased convenience…but at a price. We’ve lived without a car for 3 1/2 years in Perth, and our circumstances have changed before, so there’s no reason why we can’t manage this latest round of changes.

My husband has embraced cycling to work. His current aim is 3 times a week, and whilst he found it quite tiring initially, he is definitely finding it easier. Rather than costing us more, his office move is saving us money (less bus / train fares), and his fitness is improving greatly! He is still contemplating the electric bike idea, but for now the pushbike is good enough.

Do you live car-free? Do you love the freedom it gives you, or find the inconvenience frustrating? If you have a car, is getting rid of your car something you’d consider? Would you contemplate getting an electric bike?! Please leave a comment below telling me your thoughts!

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