Kickbike Report --Week One

After a whole week with my new kickbike I report back. I've been on it most days so I've had a chance to run/scoot it in. Aside from a few bird strike issues -- I have been attacked twice this last week by two separate magpies protecting their home turf 7 kms apart -- it has been an enthralling exercise in human powered transit and sweat.

Since I have been scootering for a few years anyway I find the slide foot change easy to do. It's like twister dancing -- a la Chubby Checker -- on the foot board. So the cadence is an easy mastering.

I think so anyway.

The thrill is that the high kicking and sweeping follow through you see kickbikers get up to is easy to do. You feel like an art nouveau insignia on a Rolls Royce or that you're re-enacting your own version of the stern over-reach scene from Titanic. Just close your eyes and hope no ice bergs are out and about the suburbs while you speed forth.

The challenge is to generate so much comfort from the relationship with the bike that it merges with your own person -- like Jimmi Hendrex and his guitar (which he took to the toilet with him whenever he was called) or the bicycles form The Third Policeman:

The gross and net result of it is that people who spend most of their natural lives riding iron bicycles over the rocky roadsteads of this parish get their personalities mixed up with the personalities of their bicycle as a result of the interchanging of the atoms of each of them and you would be surprised at the number of people in these parts who nearly are half people and half bicycles.

So hereon begins my new life and I begin to morph into a red, two wheeled scootering machine. I will post here a diary -- with images -- recording my progress and transformation.

A kickbiker's journey...for real begins.