About Cycling and Triathlon

In 1979 when our ancient car went to the great junkyard in the sky, my wife, Lynne, and I decided to see how long we could survive without buying another. We didn't expect to last long and would have been surprised had we known it would be thirteen years until our next car.

Only a few months later Sydney experienced the first of a lengthy series of train strikes which were called by a small (in stature, not power) official of a major railway union. The strikes continued for several years until even his members realised he was more trouble than he was worth and voted him out of his job.

During the first few strikes I asked friends for a lift to work but when it became obvious that this was to be an ongoing problem I bought a bicycle.

When I told the salesman why I needed it he was enthusiastic but could scarcely have been expected to tell me the truth—I was past forty, overweight, and lived more than sixty kilometres (forty miles) from the office.

Lynne thought it sounded like fun and also bought a bike. We soon regained our fitness and became enthusiastic about riding.

Over the next few years we added running and swimming to our program and began to compete in fun runs, marathons and triathlons.

This was to be our lifestyle over the next decade until I ran too many marathons in a short period and killed my knees. Later, Lynne became very ill and was also forced to stop competing.

Of course few things ever go the way we want them to but, as we were to discover, it's the disasters that make the best stories in retelling.

One day I was in the office of the New South Wales Bicycle Institute swapping stories with the two men who worked there. I didn't realise that Neil Irvine, the editor of their magazine Push On, was listening in the next room until he put his head around the corner and asked me to write them down.

The resulting series of yarns were published in his magazine and form the basis for this Tomorrowland  segment.