Dan's Blog
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
This is essentially the same as a thought I had the other day except a helluvalot more eloquently put.
Cycling’s cheaper in Australia
When I came to Australia I only brought one cycling top and one pair of padded shorts with me, because I didn’t anticipate doing a great deal of cycling here. Now obviously since I have a bike I’m doing much more than I’d expected, and so I’ve noticed a real need to buy some more cycling gear.
As a minimum, I intended to buy one more pair of shorts and one more top. My first stop when looking at cycling tops was Foska, and I’ve quickly settled on a London Pride jersey. If I was living at home this would cost me just the £48.95 price tag and nothing for delivery.
So as it turns out, despite its £48.95 price tag and an added£7 international shipping fee, I don’t have to pay the VAT or GST (the Australian equivalent tax) on this. This means that it actually works out a whole £1.16 cheaper for me to buy this in Australia.
Similarly, I went straight to Wiggle to outfit myself with some shorts. Up until this point I’ve always worn normal shorts when cycling, but I have decided to give bib shorts a go (sort of the lycra equivalent of dungarees shorts) this time around. I elected in the end to buy the Altura bib shorts because I’ve always found them to be a great brand with all of my other padded shorts. In order to bring the basket total up above the £50 necessary to get free shipping I also threw in a pair of Wiggle bib shorts (admittedly to an extent it would be free advertising for them, but isn’t everything designed that way these days? Plus I do like them).
So with my basket total at £79.98, I went towards the checkout and again had the VAT removed from my order. This time it equated to a saving of £13.33 on my order.
In my head I can understand the logic, but I can’t quite get my head around the concept that I’m having products shipped halfway around the world and yet I’m making savings of £14.49 because of that. Nevertheless, I’m not going to complain about this at all. Clearly someone up there likes cyclists (although I do feel slightly like I’m shunning Australian business, but I honestly don’t know of any equivalent Australian cycling equipment companies).
After the popularity of my post with the comic from The System (at the time of writing this, 9 reblogs and 2 likes), I’ve decided to post a few more of the cycling comic from there in a quasi-series. Partly because I thought some of them are really good, and also it’s a relatively easy effortless post for me.
So yeah, see above for another comic strip taken from Rosscott, Inc. I’d never really thought of it like this before, but I like it enough to consider trying it if the right words come to me at the right time.
I’ve read a lot on the news about the snow in Europe recently, and yesterday I got an email from my Grandmother with this photo of her back garden (you did actually manage to attach it by yourself Grandma - I’m very impressed). I’m kinda jealous it wasn’t like this when I was home for Christmas, truth be told.
Reading about cycling again.
You may have noticed I’m really back into cycling recently. I think that on some level perhaps I’d been suppressing these feelings when I didn’t have a bike, which is probablytrue. Anyway, today I have another cycling post. This is an extract from a list titled The Urban Biker’s Checklist that I’ve stumbled across. I don’t necessarily agree with all of them, but feel free to head over on that link to read the rest.
You know you’ve been bicycling in the city for a while if…
…you can’t name most of the streets you travel on but you can describe the [traffic]light cycle patterns of every intersection in great detail.
…you can name every part on your bike that has ever stopped working.
…another bike passes you while you’re stopped for a pedestrian and you make it your life’s work to hunt down and pass that biker.
…you’re more concerned with the puddle in front of you than with the car on your left.
…a part of you really wants to see that guy on the bike going the wrong way without a helmet get hit by a car.
…you stopped caring how you look in really tight clothing a very long time ago.
…you don’t mind being passed by another bike as long as they look like they race professionally. Otherwise, it’s on.
…you know that the most important part of the weather report is the wind speed.
And finally…
…you love listening to other people complain about how long they were stuck in traffic.
Head over to genedoucette.me to see the original list.
