Yesterday was Australia’s Ride2Work Day 2018.
This event is a national program that encourages workers to feel good and have fun commuting to work by bike.
The aim of Ride2Work is to promote the health, financial and environmental benefits of riding and encourage more people to ride to work. Ride2Work Day helps people who have never commuted by bike before to give it a go and allows regular riders to stay motivated and encourage their work-mates to get involved.
To be involved, participants register their ride on Ride2Work Day website. Registering is a way peak bicycle advocacy groups can better understand bike commuter behaviour and help leverage campaigns for better riding facilities to councils, local and state governments.
Most capital cities hold a Ride2Work Day breakfast event. I went to last year breakfast in Brisbane and this year we had a Griffith Uni crew meeting there.
It has been raining for a week in Brisbane, but when I woke up early. It was a beautiful crisp morning, and I was looking forward to meeting the other 8 Griffith Uni cyclists in at the Brisbane Law Courts Plaza, 7.00 – 8.15am for a free cyclist’s breakfast, coffee, chat with some fellow riders and to see what the stalls and tents had to offer.
I was excited!
I took Leki and we arrived in the city early.
So I took a little sojourn along the Brisbane River. Then I started heading in the direction of the Law Courts and ended up joining up along the way with another rider named Peter. We chatted as we rode along, marvelling at the beautiful morning and how lucky we were that the rain broke for this event.
But when we arrived at the event site, this is what we saw…..
After a quick chat with a few other cyclists and some phone calls, we found out the event had been cancelled due to rain – obviously!
Funny, none of us knew the event had been cancelled or had received any notification.
I checked the Bicycle Queensland website and Instagram before I left and there was no notification – hence heading out. A friend said later there was a short post on Bicycle Queensland’s Facebook page – not so helpful for those who don’t use Facebook – perhaps an email for those who had registered?
And nothing from the other Griffith cyclists either – interesting…!
No matter!
It was such a beautiful morning. I was certainly not going to waste this opportunity! So with Peter’s directions, I headed out towards West End on an adventurous morning ride.
Unsurprisingly, I had a great time!
I went scouting for a cool cafe to stop at before the morning traffic got too much, but ended up having such a lovely ride along the river, I just keep going!
I chatted to a few other cyclists and really enjoyed watching the city wake up.
I went to parts of the city I have not seen before and rode the long way back along the Brisbane River using a bike path I’ve never been on. GOLD!
It was awesome.
Tired, sweaty and happy – I then started to head back.
So despite the Brisbane event being cancelled- I had a brilliant ride to work.
I hope you did too!
