Bicycling Guide to the Gold Coast

Today I visited a bike store at Palm Beach, and picked up the 2010 copy of the Gold Coast City Cycling Guide, a professionally produced brochure that includes 17 linked maps detailing how to ride from Yatala, north of the Gold Coast, through to Coolangatta, on the border with New South Wales. It shows both off-road and on-road bikeways, totalling about 620km of marked routes.

In the 1970s, when I was a Queensland teenager, it was common to see barechested guys dressed only in board shorts pedaling barefoot along the beachfront road, one hand on the bike handlebars, a full sized surfboard surfboard squeezed under the other arm.

I'm pleased to report that yesterday, during my morning stroll at Burleigh Heads, I saw someone doing this.

Back in the 1970s, beachfront cyclists like this didn't have a nice cycling guide like this one.

Japanese Friends Please be Hopeful

I'm normally a resident of Seattle, which, like so many of the US states on the West Coast, looks east to Japan as a place for friends, travel and trade.

There's not much I can add to the outpouring of support for the latest disaster. Everyone in Japan, I wish you the best in finding your family members and rising from the wreckage. To my former host students and house guests, Hoshi-san, Yo, Michiyo and Yumiko, I'm thinking of you.

Last Friday (Seattle time) my husband was at a fundraiser arranged by local kiwis for Christchurch earthquake victims at Kangaroo and Kiwi, a local pub/restaurant off the bike path, near Greenlake. They raised $16,000 for the cause.

Now, we need to also include Japan in our thoughts.

Mudgeeraba market chicken food

Live critters for sale at Mudgeeraba

Bananas for sale

Stalls at Mudgeeraba Saturday market

The hanging things are epiphatic plants, things that normally grow on the side of rainforest trees.

Saturday Farmers Market on the Gold Coast

I enjoyed the fact that at this stall at the Mudgeeraba bimonthly market, there are baby ducks in one "cage" and a human baby in the other.

I've discovered two things important to anyone who decides to ride bikes around here.

1. Weekends are great on the Gold Coast, with plenty of farmers markets to ride to, where you can buy coffee, pastries, fruit, organic greens, and snacks, as well as tropical plants, miracle potions, and dog treats, like "roo ears."
2. It's hot and humid in these parts so get on the bike early. 6am is the norm. I guess if you ride here, you finish by about 9am.