Dickhead of the week

Former Australian cricketer, uber-bogan and all-round oxygen thief Shane Warne has had a funny run of luck lately. Last week he had a bleat about cyclists riding two abreast, something that's perfectly legal in every state in Australia. Drawing on a fairly limited store of intellect, Warne managed to trot out many of the same tired old cliches that most cyclists would be well familiar with, to the delight of some of his dopier followers and the dismay of anyone who rides a bike. It's a familiar debate, we've seen it time and time again on the websites and blogs and comments sections. Nothing new or interesting here. For shits and giggles I've reproduced it below, read from the bottom up:

warne888 Shane Warne 

Please do something about it council and govt - single file all bike riding on the road or a ban for 12 months ! And pay rego - fair ?

13 Jan Favorite Retweet Reply

warne888 Shane Warne 

Ps actually if you are going to ride on the roads you should pay rego and have a number plate, only fair Once again,single file please !!!!

13 Jan 

warne888 Shane Warne 

Seriously I'm all for allowing bike riders to ride on the rd's etc but please act responsible and stay in file...

13 Jan 

Yesterday the plot took an interesting twist. Poor old Warnie was sitting innocently  in his luxury car at traffic  lights when for no reason he was attacked by a maniac on two wheels. Again his first post is at the bottom:

warne888 Shane Warne 

its amazing how things pan out, i have only been saying recently please bike riders obey the road rules and keep it safe for everyone ...

21 hours ago 

warne888 Shane Warne 

that i was being polite and careful and the drivers around him otherwise if anyone decided to be an idiot then he was in real trouble.

21 hours ago 

warne888 Shane Warne 

anyway, i drive off he rides off and everyone was shaking their head at this bike rider as he was being very dangerous. he was very lucky

21 hours ago 

warne888 Shane Warne 

can't move nor anyone else, i go to slowly move around him and he just moves with me, yep clipped his tyre and he then abuses me some more.

21 hours ago 

warne888 Shane Warne 

are you doing he abuses me i say get off the road, he stops in front of me and holds up traffic and just stays on his bike ! so, now i.....

21 hours ago 

warne888 Shane Warne 

he pulls out in front of me whacks my bonnet with his hand and pulls out in front of all the traffic, i yell out hey buddy what the hell ...

21 hours ago 

warne888 Shane Warne 

thump on my boot, looked in mirror a bike rider hit my car then held onto my car to pull himself through the traffic, lights change.....

21 hours ago 

warne888 Shane Warne 

guys stay with me here its important... so there i was driving home after a training session at the mcg.. pulled up at the lights, felt a..

21 hours ago 

The story got some play in the papers this morning, quoting Warne's tweets. Turns out the cyclist saw Warne's tirade and came up with a totally different version of events. Some highlights:

“What are you doing? You don’t own the road! Get out of the way” he yelled repeatedly. I shook my head and probably yelled something similarly inane back. Now even more agitated the driver continued to yell, “you don’t own the road”. 

"Before I could the driver lurched his car forward forcing my bike wheel and almost my leg under the front of his car. Dumbfounded at how overtly aggressive the driver had been and aware that we were now holding up the traffic, I pulled my bike from under the car and attempted to continue riding. My wheel was jammed against the frame of my bike and the chain was tangled so I had to carry it to the footpath to fix it."

Long story short, the bloke says Warne drove into him and failed to stop. He posted a photo of his buckled back wheel to support his version of events and reported the incident to the police who are apparently doing nothing because the damage to the bike is a civil matter. And oddly, Warne now just wants to put it all behind him as quickly as possible.

warne888 Shane Warne 

Have just seen bike riders version of events, please buddy - whatever ! I'm not going to get into a 5 year old tit for tat..,

3 hours ago 

I suppose it's too much to expect Warne to be some sort of role model. For a bloke who wants cyclists to obey the law, he's got a funny way of showing the respect he demands. By his own account he ran into someone and left the scene of an accident. He may have been a first-class cricketer but his conduct over the last week does nothing more than show him up as a first class dill.

How to avoid a dooring

The Age newspaper in Melbourne has recently run a series of articles on doorings: accidents that occur when parked motorists inadvertently open their doors in the path of cyclists. It gets people hurt in two ways - from an impact with the door or they crash into or are hit by other traffic when they swerve to avoid the sudden obstacle in their path. After two articles on a young man killed in a dooring incident, the paper also ran a story about a rider who was injured. Finally The Age's motoring section called for stickers to be placed on rear vision mirrors to alert drivers to the danger. It's nice the paper is looking out for cyclists but in my opinion this campaign has missed the point. One hundred per cent of dooring incidents can be avoided if cyclists take greater care and responsibility for their own safety.

Dooring is a well-known hazard for cyclists, it has been for years. It's also an easy one to avoid and here's how:

• Never, ever, ride in the door zone: the space in which an opening door would hit you. In practical terms this is about a metre or slightly more. A metre and a half and you're even safer. 
• When riding along a line of parked cars, keep an eye out ahead for signs of occupants about to exit. Look at the rear vision mirror, look for a head in the driver's seat, brake lights going off, for a door slightly cracked open. Pay particular attention to cars that have just pulled into a space. 
• Hold a steady and predictable line, do not weave into spaces between blocs of parked cars. Suddenly appearing from a gap is another good way to get hit. 
• And if your journey regularly takes you along a route which forces you to ride alongside long lines of parked cars, particularly if there are other hazards like fast moving traffic or tram tracks, give serious consideration to finding another route without these hazards. 

I have a feeling doorings are on the rise in Melbourne because the current bike boom has lured lots more novice riders onto the streets. That's something to be celebrated but better education is needed of some of the avoidable risks, such as dooring. It would be nice if people didn't fling their doors open without looking, but there's plenty of other things motorists should be doing to make us all safer on the roads and somehow I don't think we're ever going to get to them all. Cyclists have to most to gain by taking responsibility for their own safety, and now you know how.

166km so far this year.

An old friend moves on

Over the couple of years or so I've been reducing the number of bikes in the shed. I know the ideal number is supposed to be n+1, "n" being the number you currently own, but for me there's nothing smart about hanging on to a bike you don't ride and is taking up space. Over the last few years I've given away an old hardtail mountain bike and the folding bike I bought in China and sold my full suspension mountain bike and another folder I bought from ebay on a whim. Looking at last year's rides, I did the vast majority on just two bikes and if I had my way - and if it were possible to find a fast road bike which handled panniers and rough dirt roads with elan - I'd own just one which did everything.

Me on the Centurion during a triathlon in about 1985.

The hardest bike to part with wasn't a complete bike at all. My old steel Centurion frame has been hanging in the shed after I sold all my vintage Cmapagnolo gear on ebay three years ago. It's a lovely steel Japanese-made racing frame built at the height of the triathlon boom the mid 1980s, well made and still in fine condition. I've owned that bike since the year after I left high school and it was a bike I raced and competed in triathlons on, so being a little sentimental about it was perhaps understandable.

The bike has stayed with me over the years, through moves from state to state but languished in a shed for a while before I resurrected it as a flat bar road bike when I lived in Melbourne. A few years later I had the bike resprayed and restored it to its former glory, though the paintjob didn't last too well. I rode it while I lived in Melbourne, including a fun few weeks to and from the Commonwealth Games media centre and on a couple of Audax rides. It was as smooth and as fast as I remembered - responding easily to a kick in a sprint and the handling razor sharp.

After the 2007 restoration.

With my growing interest in Audax riding through and perhaps getting older, I've been putting in fewer and few miles on the old race bike and after stripping the last paint job back to the glorious original chrome underneath, the frame again hung in the shed awaiting another restoration that I knew would most likely never come.

A few months ago a friend at work who is a keen cyclist mentioned he was keen to put together a road bike but had a very tight budget of just $400. Richard is a mad-keen mountain biker but wanted something decent for his 20km commute to  work, so it seemed right that my quarter-century old racer should find a second life with someone who would appreciate it. I dug out a back wheel I wasn't using any more and some old cranks and other bits and pieces and pointed him in the direction of the fine folk at the Hobart Bike Kitchen and he was off.   He's done a great job of the rebuild and the bike even featured Ride On the magazine of Bicycle Victoria (which you can almost read by clicking the image at the top of this post and zooming in a bit). It's a fitting tribute to a bike which has served me well. I was delighted to spot my old bike in the rack at work the other day, it was like running into an old friend. Far from being sad or sentimental to farewell an old friend, I'm quite chuffed to know it's going to be going to be ridden and appreciated for years to come. 

105km so far this year.