My Big Trip - 72km On An Old Bicycle

This is going to be a walkthrough/tutorial/experience.

Trying to be independent is hard. In January 2017 I was still doing Rhythmic Gymnastics. I live about 37km from the gym where I train, and I was no longer going to be given a ride to training and back. There are trains that run to and from, but at the time I wasn’t working so had absolutely zero income to spend on bus tickets. All I had was the odd bit of cash from dog walking, which I treasured far to much to spend on something consumable.

My solution was to cycle it.

I started by searching Gumtree (similar to craigslist) for a bicycle. I found one for $25, and it’s the bike that I still have now. It needed a bit of a clean, so I watched some YouTube videos on how to do the chain and other bits and bobs and got it running pretty smooth.
I got a helmet from Kmart for $10, and some bike lights for night time cycling. This was about all my money at the time.

Next step was riding. The last time I rode a bike was at least 7 years ago. I could barely turn corners and couldn’t take even a finger off the handlebars without losing control. I ended up practising my riding every morning. If you’re a first time rider I found the things you need to practise are:

• Straight lines. I live on a cul de sac so I could practise on my street. An empty carpark would be fine too
• Turning. This took embarrassingly long for me. I found you have to tilt rather than turn the handles.
• One arm out. You’re going to need to indicate. When you lift one arm, I find it helps to sit up straighter rather than leaning your weight on the other arm and risk swerving.
• Looking behind you. Most important one. Once I’d started practising on the roads I’d try to look around as much as possible. Try not to swerve at all when looking behind.
• Roundabouts. Learning to give way to the right and being confident to go was hard for me. When you stop and are looking to enter the roundabout, stay in the middle of your lane rather than the left (or right depending on country). If you stay to the side, cars behind you can push through. I’ve been knocked off several times by people that valued 5 seconds of their time over me staying on my bike.
• Right turns. There are plenty of ways to do a right turn, but I find the safest way (if it’s busy) is to pull over and look behind until you find a gap. It’s better safe than sorry and doesn’t take up much more of your time. Make sure you indicate that you’re pulling over so cars don’t get confused.
  There are generally websites with the bike road rules for your country, so I’d recommend reading them.

It’s probably best to slowly build up the distance that you ride, but I decided to go from 5km to 72km after a week of cycling. Bad idea.

I live up in Playford, which is north of Adelaide. My destination was Grange beach, 36km from me. I had a gymnastics beach training. Training was 4:30-6:30, and I left at 1pm. I arrived at 4:05pm.
I ended up taking the route that my parents sometimes drive. The roads had a lot of trucks on and were pretty dangerous, so I’ve taken different routes since.
I set out feeling great. I’m pretty sure that I was shaking. From excitement or nerves - I don’t know. Once I reached about 10km I stopped at Macca’s. I didn’t have a phone at the time so these were my free wifi stops to let my mum know that I was fine. By 20km I’d reached my second stop, and was starting to really feel the heat. I don’t know for sure but I think it was around 38C (100F). I stayed there and had a snack, before heading off again. Unbeknownst to me, my front tire was flat as a pancake. I just though my legs were tired!
Once I’d finally reached Grange, after 2 hours and 45 minutes of cycling, I showered and got straight to training. Two hours of sprinting, stretching, balancing and throwing apparatus. I got about 10 minutes to swim afterwards before I headed home. I was exhausted, sunburnt and aching but glad that I’d done the trip. Now I knew that I could go pretty much anywhere!

Training with apparatus

Stretching!

My mistakes were plentiful though, so I’m going to share a few…

• Check your tires before you leave. Don’t ride on a flat.
• Your calves will likely get burnt the most, especially if the sun is setting.
• Take sunnies.
• Try to pack light and make sure the bag you take is comfortable to wear. I ended up rubbing through most of my skin wearing my drawstring backpack.
• Don’t assume that a car indicating somewhere is going to turn that direction!! Wait until it’s 100% clear.
• Pick a route that’s not along one of the main highways. Trucks don’t care if the breeze they make knocks you off and most cars don’t follow the 1.5m away from cyclists rule.
• Don’t ride full steam into a speed bump or one of those yellow bumps (is that an SA thing?)
• And don’t get lost. Multiple times...

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I share a lot of my adventures on Instagram. The account is public so you don't need to sign up to see my posts :) I start fresh each year, so if you're interested in seeing South Australia and all the beautiful things here then feel free to have a look as I explore throughout the year.