email: jplholmwood@bigpond.com

Ph: 0417 654 076

What a journey a bicycle can take you on! Ive been riding nearly all my life but the first new adult bike I ever bought was a Malvern Star Moscow tourer from Clarence Street Cyclery. I did my first Gong Ride on that machine in 1992 and it introduced me to the ineffectiveness of braking on steel rims in wet weather! A very valuable lesson. My intrepid eldest brother, a keen bushwalker and cyclist, was my initial inspiration for getting into longer distance riding and after numerous later Gong Rides and seven RTA Big Rides I was also starting to cycle to and from work in the city during the mid to late 1990s. This was when I first encountered some Bike North members doing the same thing and they invited me to join their fledgling Bike Bus operating between Hornsby and the CBD. Eventually, I joined Bike North itself in 2003. As Humphrey Bogart might have said, this was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Bicycles are amazing inventions. They allow you tremendous independence and they make it possible to continue exercising long after other forms of exercise become physiologically impracticable in older age. They also take you places you want to go to with a minimum of fuss and they bring you into contact with some wonderful people. Keep pedalling everyone. The bicycle is the future. PS I have a more modern Malvern Star now!