Biking

Biking for transport is a fairly easy thing to do in Melbourne.  There are lots of bike-only trails, and lots of marked bike paths in regular roads as well.  Drivers tend to be respectful of bikers that follow the road rules.  The only big impediment are the super steep hills.

Joel found a bike trail near his work, so one day in December we schlepped all our bikes to the trail.  It leads from his work in Heidelberg all the way into the city, if you care to Google Map it, but we only did part.

One of the first things I saw was this:

Awesome.  Just awesome.

The snakes kept themselves hidden happily.  It was a nice trail.  Fairly flat, which helped Ruth out quite a bit.  It wound through forest that was being reclaimed, so there were lots of baby trees planted everywhere.  The path led to a small lake and a golf course.

Then the path ran next to the freeway.  Along the way we came across these gorgeous birds.

Chain link was the edge of the bike path.  They were that close to us.  Wild.

Not even scared of me.  Probably because it knew it could kick my tuchus should it care to.

None of us touched them because cockatoos are super-aggressive and have very sharp claws and beaks.  They were not fazed by our presence in the least.  I guess living by a busy freeway makes you ignore all sorts of noise. 

Had we continued along it, we would have ended up in the city.  Instead we took a detour off the road, across a bridge to the other side of the freeway to a playground.  Nice ride.  We look forward to discovering more local bike trails.

I find overpasses scary because they are super high, as are the light poles.

A well-earned rest