Another Freeway Bike Hike comes and goes. Team Exermacise was down to three people this year, due to a combination of injury, other commitments, and general slacking off.
It’s a nice ride – the fastest 30km (or 10km, or 60km) you’re likely to do on a bike, at least in Perth. However, I’m now sitting at home about to set off on an 18km ride to uni – 18km of at least 75km that I ride in the course of a normal week – and pondering what makes the freeway bike hike stand out*. Possibly it’s just the socialising. The freeway actually makes it easy to socialise while riding – it’s much wider and everyone’s moving in the same direction. It’s much easier to strike up a conversation when you’re side-by-side and you don’t have to worry about pedestrians, cars or oncoming bikes.
Everyone’s favourite health insurer was in on the sponsorship gig, had plastered advertising all along the route. Also along the route could be seen tortured souls, presumably running on pure caffeine, whose official task seemed to consist entirely of clapping at the cyclists. There were a lot of cyclists. One person towards the end simply stood on the road with his arm pointed at the freeway off ramp leading to Joondalup – possibly qualifying as a form of torture.
However, upon passing beneath the hallowed inflatable finishing gate, we were blasted with festive music and numerous people distributing free orange Powerade**. It’s got electrolytes! I stuck to my cache of water, grapes and garlic bread.
** This brought back vaguely nostalgic memories of the exit from the central train station in Naples some years ago, except instead of Powerade I was being offered mobile phones.
* Possibly I should also be getting to uni and doing some actual work rather than just blogging.