About time

I was sitting outside this morning enjoying the weather and in the paper whilst drinking a fresh brew I discovered this article. It is informing the world that cars shall be removed from Beach Road in one suburb on the weekends. About time I say, however the locals have other opinions. One such opinion is that it is rewarding cyclists bad behaviour. WTF? How about it will probably save some lives! We all have a opinion and mine is as one sided as the next, at least in the cyclists favour.

I have been racing bikes now for 20+ years, hey time flies when you are having fun. I can remember a time when the races were at Dunlop Rd on a Sunday morning and the bunch would roll down the beach post race. This was the late 80's early 90's and cycling was yet to be a boom sport in Australia.

This was when people like Phil Anderson were path finding the way and paving the road for todays Australians in Europe. He got very little air play unlike todays riders in Europe. Anyway when the bunch made it to the beach and wound its way along Beach Road there were few cyclists to be seen. Jump forward 10 plus years and each year particularly in summer the Beach Road is a mecca for weekend cyclists. I believe that at least 10000 riders use it on a weekend and that would be scraping the surface. I guess the issue is that as numbers of cyclists have increased and this has resulted in more accidents, some of which I have seen. To have the road clear for a few hours each weekend morning so the flow of traffic and dangers are reduced is not a bad thing. I guess the locals will be pissed off regardless, as they view the invasion by lycra clad 2 wheelers of their suburb an issue. No doubt this topic will get some air play in the media over the coming weeks.