On Saturday I got to go on an adventure. Holly needs a bike to get to work. It’s a half-hour walk that’s really crappy at the end of a twelve-hour day running around a kitchen lifting 20kilos of butter at a time, smashing your fingers under said butter and getting yelled at/needing to dodge the occasional cupcake being thrown by the chef. (I’m leaving out the story about the panicky bike-borrowing that happened this week, because I’m not sure if she’s got it in her queue of blog posts.)
So she went on Gumtree and found a used bike for a decent price. You can get a new bike from KMart for less, but she wanted a bike that was actually going to be good to ride, that was light and fast. Having bought such a bike in Vancouver last fall, I know what she means.
Anyway, this bike was out in Woolooware, across Botany Bay from where we live (yes, that Botany Bay), so I took a couple hours from my Saturday to take the train out there. I like how these suburban trains work here. If you live in a little town like Woolooware you’re still only half an hour from downtown Sydney. I don’t know if that’s what it’s like on the Go Train in Toronto, but this feels even more extensive than Vancouver’s Skytrain network.
I got to Woolooware and phoned the guy to get directions through the town to his house. Now, we have trouble with Australian accents, Holly and I. I especially find it difficult when it comes to names, since you can’t necessarily just figure it out from the context when there’s a word you don’t get. Case in point: Woolooware is down the Illawara Line though Holly’s best guess was Yellow Wire. We just looked at a map until we could piece something sensible together and happily it worked. For getting to the guy’s house I knew his street had a F in the middle and vowel sounds on either side. Maybe an R in there somewhere. It took a bit of getting lost but eventually I made it to Alfred street and went “That makes sense!”
I brought the bike back to Central Station on the train and then rode it home from there. My first time riding on the left hand side of the street. I remembered to be in the left lane, but I kept on trying to hug the right hand side of it. It was a little hard on my nerves but I got the bike home safely, and missed my bike back in Van City (but not that hill up to UBC).
