My Commute

I have a few ways in which I get to work by bike.  I like the idea that I can take a different route every day.  It certainly keeps things varied and interesting and by doing so I can do certain types of ‘training’.  If I want to do some hills I’ll take a hillier route to work, or if I’m feeling lazy I’ll take a shorter route.

Living in the Blue Mountains but working in Chatswood on the North Shore of Sydney allows me to choose a large number of routes but in almost all circumstances it also involves using some public transport.  I’ll say upfront that I am no fan of CityRail.  The Sydney rail network is slow, expensive, not entirely clean and invariably has at least one crazy idiot per journey.  However, the saving grace is that there is, for the Blue Mountains trains at least, bike hooks to hang your bike up on.  This allows me to sit down and have a snooze without having to worry about moving the bike around to accommodate people getting on and off the train.  I always sit within line of sight of my bike so I can keep an eye on things, but in all my time using the trains with my bike I’ve never had an issue.

I use the train stations as a jump on/off point for my commute to work.  Because the trains I catch are express services I have a smaller choice, but that’s fine, I work around it and even embrace it.

My favourite commuting trips start or finish at either Westmead, Parramatta, Lewisham or Central Stations.   I can also ride to/from Blacktown and Strathfield, but I don’t enjoy them as much.  They are an option though.  Like a Datsun 180B.

Of course, I can always ride from home too.  That’s a bit longer, in distance and in time, but it’s not a bad ride when I’m in the mood for it.  Funnily, it actually takes a shorter amount of time to ride all the way to work – approximately 70km and 2.5 hours – than to walk and catch the train all the way from the Blue Mountains to Chatswood, which is roughly 2.75 hours.  Go figure…

I love riding through the city.  I guess that’s why I love riding from Central and Lewisham stations.  There are clearly defined cycleways and paths, decent signage and I get to ride with a multitude of different types of riders, from fully decked out roadies to fixie hipsters to tradies on old beaters.  I don’t care what they ride, as long as they’re riding (my thoughts on that are for another blog)…  One of the nicest parts of riding through the city is riding over the Harbour Bridge.  I don’t get sick of riding the coat hanger.  Rain, hail or shine its still fun and watching the sun rise as I cross it is beautiful.  Conversely, heading back through the city of an evening is gorgeous too as the city lights up.  It’s very pretty.  Riding from Lewisham is really just an extension of riding from Central.  It’s only an extra 5km or so but I get in an extra bridge (ANZAC Bridge) during my trip.  Overall too, it only adds an extra 15 minutes to my journey time.  The only hassle with this is that I have to change trains at Strathfield for a connecting one to Lewisham, but this is minor.

Riding from or to Westmead or Parramatta stations is also enjoyable.  There’s a few ways I can go from these stations.  I can ride up and parallel to the M2 Motorway (the M2 WAS a good ride but that’s also for another rant/blog) or I can follow the various bike paths and roads along the Parramatta River all the way to Rhodes before cutting across through Putney and Ryde to Chatswood.  This is a nice (almost) stress free ride and quite pretty as well, although for different reasons than riding over the Harbour Bridge.  I also enjoy racing the River Cat depending on the ferry’s timetable.  There are some drawbacks to going this way though.  As the paths are shared paths, I will invariably come across a dog owner walking their pooch off the lead.  As anyone who has watched footage of the Tour de France, dogs and bikes DON’T mix well.  Dogs are just too unpredictable and I’ve had the occasional run in with dog owners as I point out that their dogs should be on a lead and that they are liable for any damage their mutt causes.

There are also a myriad of other routes that I haven’t explored yet but those will come in time.  I have recently tried to put together a ride from Central to Chatswood via the ‘Three Bridges’ – ANZAC, Iron Cove and Gladesville, with not much success.  I got lost a few times and once over the Gladesville Bridge signage and paths were pretty much nonexistent, detracting from the overall experience.  But, based on previous experience, a new route takes a little while to hone and get down to be enjoyable so I won’t be giving up on it just yet.  There’s potential there for a good ride, I just need to figure it out.  Now, back to Google Maps… J