Human powered for all ages

By Ros Woodburn

All ages welcome: community teams allow people to keep racing HPVs after they leave school

If you’re observant you will lately have seen strange, canopied tricycles zooming around Tom Flood velodrome or other community circuits in town. It’s all leading up to the excitement that happens in late November at the Maryborough.

In Bendigo, HPV racing is a popular activity in 15 primary and nine secondary schools. But what happens when kids leave school? After the Maryborough event many students finish school and cannot compete in any further school team HPV racing. Many keen participants remain in the sport to assist younger enthusiasts, but for some that’s not enough.

John Taylor, a retired technology teacher and builder of trikes, saw the need to provide an opportunity for these riders to continue their passion for HPV racing. He helped instigate the formation of a central Victorian based community team.

“HPV racing has a unique quality which solicits a passionate following from many young people,” says John.

“The existence of community teams allows them to follow their passion beyond school so they continue to develop useful life skills like team work, physical endurance, driving skill, technological expertise etc.”

The central Victorian Wattle Racing team is made up of all ages, abilities, and male and female competitors. Speeds can average 45 kph over 24 hours of team racing, and all without any pollution, loud mechanical noise – just lots of sustainable huff and puff, and a bit of high tech material. And events for community teams like Wattle Racing are booming around the country.

The Australian HPV Super Series, run largely in South Australia under the auspices of UniSA, is an annual series of events designed to develop competitors’ teamwork, technological and engineering skills, enterprise and fitness and health. Known as Pedal Prix, the competition involves more than 200 teams from all over Australia and draws up to 35,000 spectators to its Murray Bridge 24-hour endurance race alone.

John Taylor explains that the sport has a spectacle of speed not found in other cycling sports, as well as providing a forum for technological innovation. “I believe it will continue to grow into the future,” he says.

Perhaps you have seen your youngsters enjoy the thrill of speed, teamwork, technology and design development. Want to have a go yourself? Check out pedalprix.com.au or chat with one of the many community teams now forming around the country.

Strange canopied trikes: they may look odd, but the competition is fast and serious at HPV events.

Bikes as machines

Flour power: a local pedal-powered flour mill is only one of the many machines
powered by bicycle. Photo: John Wells

By Ros Woodburn

The growing focus on using more renewable energy now has people looking at the
humble bicycle as a source of power rather than just transport.

It’s not a new idea – the old dynamo-powered lights that ran on your wheel rim have
been around for a very long time. They operate by spinning a magnet inside a coil of copper wire to generate a small electric current.

But lately, people like gym owners have been wondering why all that energy people
expend exercising can’t be put to better use. All over the world, they’re hooking generators up to exercise bikes to power room lights and fans.

Last year, Melbourne hosted a series of short films nights entirely powered by people sitting on their own bicycles pedalling to keep the show going.

Not to be left behind Melbourne, Bendigo hosted an energy event at the art gallery in
View Street at which the local ABC was broadcasting. It was entirely powered onsite via many busy legs pedalling.

While groups of people can collaborate to power events, the individual bicycle can
still star as a machine. With the commencement of the Bendigo Sustainability Group in around 2008 a few very interesting contraptions came to light.

The Sustainability Fair at Strathdale Community Centre showcased PepperGreen Farm’s Castlemaine Orange Juicer. Pedal for your juice, chat and enjoy your labours! With more focus on energy efficiency, one local family devised a domestic flour mill operated by pedalling. (Another family had a solar powered oven!)

Around the world, the bicycle powers many wonderful inventions. In South America a pedal powered water pump lifts 19–38 litres of water per minute from wells and boreholes up to 30 meters deep. Compare that to an electric pump that only pumps up to 12 meters deep. A simple bicycle-machine provides irrigation and drinking water where electricity is not available.

Even the concept of bicycle as transport is being stretched now beyond personal to
goods transport. A Melbourne landscape contractor uses a cargo bikes to transport gardening equipment around the suburbs.

Here in Bendigo you might now spot the box-style cargo bike carting kids, sacks of
chook grain, as well as general shopping – sometimes all at once.

Need to move house? Transition Darebin in Melbourne will call up a swag of people
with trailers and cargo bikes who’ll help you pedal to your new home.

Perhaps bike contraptions are worth a thought for the future of the planet?

Bicycles as cargo machines

Been to the market? Getting the produce home is easy on a cargo bike. Image source: www.worldwidecyclingatlas.com

By Ros Woodburn

The bicycle is such an individual, independent and efficient way of moving from A to B. The distances we travel and what we carry with us can vary enormously.

Cultures around the world have integrated bicycles into their way of life for centuries. Just think cities on flat river deltas of Asia and India. Today in the developed world we are offered cargo boxes, streamlined canopies, bamboo railed trailers, bikes with low-slung framed cargo “shelves’ and the amazing tri-shaws. A recent visit to Melbourne’s cargo bike shops revealed there are gardening entrepreneurs travelling by bike with spades, rakes etc slotted into special fittings; griddle food vendors with small spirit levels and chocks handy to level the bicycle supported cooker once in place for sales and the carrying of mates who are over .05 on the rear of the Yuba long line cargo bike!

The freedom machine in Greece

Ode on a Grecian island: looking across to Karlovassi during a bicycle trip.

By Ros Woodburn

Picture a Greek island in July. The ferry has been delayed due to high winds. We board a bus across Samos Island to our bike rendezvous gazing upon spectacular turquoise sea, olive groves and villages; but also a frightening scene.

We had moments of “we can’t ride bikes on these roads. It’s too dangerous – narrow, busy and very hilly”. We talked with the locals. “This is the worst and busiest road on the island. From here on your only worry will be the wind”.

Before we left Australia we weighed up two options: by car? by bicycle? For our brief six-day sojourn the dollar costs to hire each was about the same.

The decision was easy – travel by car can be too fast, too much sitting, too testing on the nerves and patience. Also, upon the return home, the waistline tells its own story.

Wind and roads notwithstanding, Samos Outdoors had already delivered our beautiful 28 inch wheeled machines with a lock, two spare tubes, a pump, fantastic contoured map and a local SIM card for our phone. No turning back now.

We had a solid rear rack and a sturdy front basket between us. Backpacks adorned our backs for the bigger journeys between key destinations.

Day 2 perched on our two wheels we slowly climbed to 700 metres. Eyeballing the pilot approaching the nearby airport we looked beyond to the plains then the Mediterranean Sea.

In the folded hills around us were small villages of tight lanes, red tiled roofs, iridescent blue church domes and citrus and olive orchards. The connecting roads were wide, good surface and not many cars.

It was hot. But there was plenty of water. Water comes to Samos from the Turkish Mountains and is pushed up into springs flowing naturally from tapped outlets in all the villages.

The experience for the next five days included siestas under the olive trees, eating fresh tomatoes, eggplants, cucumbers and melons; savoring fresh cheese, olives, with herbs collected from the roadside.

We stopped for photographs any time we liked, listened to the herd person and his livestock down in the valley….. and shared down time with the locals in the tavernas or coffee shops in the town squares or beachside.

By bike we were immersed in the landscape, slowly absorbing the people, the culture and celebrating being alive. Try it some day. I think you’ll like it too.