Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Australia is a huge country with long distances; those are the main two things you will listen when you are offshore, but you never grasp the meaning until you have to walk, ride or drive.
As many of you might know by now, Kathy and I love to take walks for hours (main reason of our latest tradition, the seven bridges walk), but for everyday commuting is a bit troublesome to walk 20K, under this hot sun or the little-yet-effusive rain of Sydney.
To travel to and from work you will need to relay on buses, trains, cars or any other type of transport you might think of.
Sadly (and this one is a very hard critic to my follow country men and women) Venezuelans have the wrong appreciation of need; that is ‘you need a car for everything!’ or the very well known ‘Is impossible to live in this city without a car!’ (Wrote down two pages of complains justifying myself, realised later on is not worth it).
Before anyone jump with their fire-on torches in hand witch hunting, I would like to expose my ideas so you could later on tell me yours.
First of all, a car is not a necessity (unless you have offspring); the car as it stands is a commodity. Is a pricy sweetener of your everyday commute and as such you should be able to move around without you needing it.
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| Sydney's trains map |
Second, Sydney’s transport system is pretty good (in comparison to many others such as the NY Subway and NY buses, Spain train system and the list goes on and on. Although is not cheap and occasionally stops for 20 to 40 minutes is a system that I have been using for at least 29 months and I find it fast and reliable.
And Third, even though Sydney does not have an awesome bicycle system as Melbourne or Brisbane is a kind of city where you could easy start riding to and from work.
And, why am I writing all this?
I got a bicycle! WEEEEEEH
Bought it just before Boxing Day and it took 10 days to be assembled and delivered to me.
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| Here is the picture of my beauty. At the moment I call it Azzurra, but the handle bar has drops of blood product of my fall. |
So now I am going to start training to get to the office (at least 3 days a week), getting more active and blood flowing, maximising my creativity and hopefully my productivity.
At the moment I have done my first try to get to the office from home and totally failed it. After a long uphill ride, my legs started failing, I was panting and lose control of my bicycle; resulting in a less than spectacular collision of my body against the hard concrete (with the later on disapproval look of car drivers passing by).
Next couple of weeks will be intense training (trying to build up resistance and muscle strength) to then perform my second attempt to become one of those guys riding like the wind. Let’s see how it goes.
Cheers and till next time,
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9 Comments:
You have been very gentle with your fellow people.
I would say that Venezuelans cannot live without car, nor air conditioner, expensive cloths neither the last mobile phone just mentioning few things. But what it is worse they need to show off all their toys. And if they don't have it, probably they will try to make you upset in order to feel better. Anyway, no all of them are like that, just 99,99 %. Especially if there are more than 3 Venezuelans in the same room.
All the best in your ride to work.
Well yeah Pedro, I know the negative side of the people from the country I was born. Is a sad way to live, but I don't think any of those things really makes them happy.
In any case, everyone has their own demons and everyone has to discover their own.
Cheers.
Felicitaciones por tu nueva adquisición entonces.... =) Lástima que acá en Venezuela el tema de las bicicletas sea tan limitado... Primero por los precios super exagerados y segundo por la inseguridad (por nombrar solo dos). bueno pareciera que te queda algo lejos el trabajo entonces o estas demasiado fuera de forma????... Jajajajaja
Saludos!!!
Rod!! somos dos con bici nueva wiiiiii!!! Aun nohe comenzado mi entrenamiento hasta el trabajo, el calor no me ha dejado pero esta semana le doy!!
Por otro lado... Creo que Darth Vader tiene un punto de vista bastante feo de los venezolanos... Para mi es algo más como "como no puedo comprarme el apartamento y ser independiente, al menos me doy un gusto comprandome el blackberryvainaloca que salio hace 3 dias y cuesta 15mm"... Y creo que hay más gente bonita en Venezuela, esa cifra del 99,99% ... es como alta! Un poco de amor por nosotros mismos (a pesar de todo)
@eduardo, si estoy un poco gordo... pero uno de los grandes problemas fueron las subidas tan fuertes presentes en Sydney. Supongo que con un poco de trabajo las podre superar dentro de poco.
@adri, bienvenida al club, ojala podamos montar bici juntos en algun momento.
Hi Rod.
Hey such a beauty you bought!!.
Need training for your legs hee!. You can try running so as to build muscular mass and go on for long distances on your cycle.
Luck with it.
Yes, Rod, that's a pretty sweet ride you've got there :)
I'm sure it will be a piece of cake to make a 10 km distance with those tires ;)
Just be really careful at the traffic... then again, if you already drive a car that should already be in your nature.
Hey Rod,
Congrats! for that bikie mate!. Can you recommend me a good mountain bike to buy? What could be better: to buy it from amazon and send it to OZ or to buy it there directly?
I'm evaluating those options since I'm longer have inline skates.
Regards.
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