My sisters and I are to sport what The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills are to cleaning the toilet.  We know what it is, we know it’s important, and if we absolutely have to do it, we will. But there has to be a bloody good reason for it.

And so we found ourselves, at 7.00am on a glorious Sunday morning, dressed in various interpretations of cycling fashion, ready to pedal 10km, all in the name of fundraising.

No to put too fine a point on it, but FREAKING 7.00AM on a glorious FREAKING SUNDAY MORNING.

Cycling Sisters - Janey, Me, Kate

None of us is at our best in the morning. None of us rocks lycra. And none of us has ridden a bike more than a handful of times in the past, oh, decade.  Indeed, as my sister Kate helpfully pointed out to anyone who walked past my bike, it still has the little spiky bits of rubber on the wheels that say “this is a brand new bike”, which would be fine, except that I have had it for nearly 2 years.  Still, my bike (an anniversary gift from The Councillor, which shows how stumped he was for a gift that year) is really pretty – it’s not like I’m ever going to do the Tour de France.

Making fun of my bike did provide everyone with a bit of light relief at such an early hour. Apparently my bike seat was ridiculous in the extreme.  It’s true that I chose it especially for the supreme level of comfort it provided to my lady parts, but hey, after the ride I didn’t need use a pack of frozen peas in a way frozen peas should never be used. Up there for thinking.

Comfort Seat

Apparently this gives me away as a non-cyclist...

Anyway, there was a very good reason for all of this (aside from the opportunity to make fun of my bike) – we were riding in the “Brissie to the Bay” Bike Ride to raise funds for the MS Society. You may or may not be aware that my youngest sister Jane was recently diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. Which sucks. It did explain her munty foot though. Anyway, once Janey had gotten over the initial shock of the diagnosis, she decided that one of the ways of dealing with it was to throw herself into “the cause”. That is, to join in the MS Society’s extraordinary effort at raising funds to find a cure for this sucky disease.

The “Brissie to the Bay” Bike Ride is in it’s 20^th year and is Brisbane’s biggest charity bike ride.  There are 4 distances – 100km, 50km, 25km and 10km.  Guess which one we did?  The name “Brissie to the Bay” is drawing a bit of a long bow when applied to the 10km ride. The closest we got to the Bay was when we looked at the map of the route taken by the 50 & 100km riders and went “Geez, it’s a long way to the Bay”.  It did occur to us as we set off on our 10km ride that our sponsors may have been under the mistaken impression that we were in fact planning to ride from Brissie to the actual Bay. If you sponsored us on that basis, umm… it felt like 100km…?

Anyway, Janey formed “The J Team”, a crack team of family and friends determined to overcome an early wake-up call, muscle fatigue and coffee withdrawal all in the name of finding a cure for MS.

In the leadup to the ride, it was all about sponsorship.  We were more than ably led by Janey, whose shameless use of the “I have MS” card saw The J Team hit up family, friends, co-workers and tweeps for the remarkable total of $9,250.  Given that her original target was $3000, reaching nearly $10,000 is humbling and awesome.

Thing is though, once someone has made a donation, you are a bit obliged to go through with the whole ride-10km-thing.  Sure, when we agreed to do it, we were all “Yeah! We can totally get up at sparrow fart and ride 10kms and raise ten large to help Janey!”.  We made grandiose plans to train as though The Commando was standing over us. We committed to converting our teletubbie-like physiques to lean, mean bike-riding machines. We were pumped.

To be fair, Kate and Janey did train. Once. And Kate’s husband Jim is, in fact, training for the Gold Coast half marathon, so frankly he has done enough training for all of us. For my part, I did not one single thing, other than check my bike was still pretty. Also, we realised that my 11yo son’s bike was so small his knees hit his chin when he pedalled.  This was problematic, so as part of our family’s cycling preparation, The Councillor took him out to buy a bike that didn’t look like it should have training wheels on it.

My daughter Maisie rides on a tandem attached to The Councillor’s bike, so her preparation involved locating her Dora the Explorer helmet and deciding whether to wear pink sequinned boots or crocs. She totally gets cycling.

The Councillor and Maisie

I may have mentioned that not much gets me up at 6am. Flights, generally, are the only thing. Certainly not any form of exercise. But there we were, on the road before the big hand had reached the 7, on our way to meet our fellow J Teamers.

We gathered at the Park from where the ride would begin, and cheered on the more, umm, experienced cyclists as they left for the 50km & 25km rides.  The 100km ride had started way earlier. We are supportive, but not that supportive.

We limbered up – ok, we ran on the spot in the sun ‘cos it was bloody freezing; we carbed up – chocolate brownies are a well known source of carbs; and we planned our strategy for the ride ahead. The strategy pretty much consisted of “Has everyone got their phones with them? Good.” And “Wherever possible, let’s avoid falling in the river.”

With our numbers on our shirts (I know, we could easily have been mistaken for professional athletes) we decided, as a team, to start at the back of the pack, so that we wouldn’t disadvantage the other riders who perhaps hadn’t trained as diligently as the J Team.

And we were off!

Personally I felt it was a little unkind of the organisers to plan a route that took us past several cafes, all practically waving coffee and bagels as we rode past. But we had to remain single-minded in our effort to complete the course and prove to the naysayers (that’d be us) that we could do it.

The route was largely flat, thank God, but there were a couple of points at which we needed to bring out the big guns – i.e. use the gears.  As part of my intense cycling preparation, I had asked The Councillor for a quick lesson in how to use the gears. All 21 of them. Seriously, a 747 couldn’t have as many options as my pretty bike apparently has.

Unfortunately for Janey, she hadn’t put in quite as much preparation as me, and despite having a bike that was far more professional than mine (but not nearly as pretty), she had no clue about changing gears.  Although some might (unkindly) say you’d be lucky to roll a tennis ball down the “hills” on the course, they did provide some variety to the ride. And some sweat to prove we’d ridden like proper athletes.

About 1km from the finish line, we actually had to ride ON THE ROAD! LIKE PROPER CYCLISTS.  We felt so professional waiting at the lights with the rest of the traffic. Of course, proper cyclists don’t have a “comfort seat” the size of a laz-y-boy, but more fool them.

As we headed towards the finish line, we knew that some members of the J Team (alright, the children) had finished. Obviously Kate, Janey and I had orchestrated this so that the kids would be back in time to form an honour guard as we rode down the final 200 metres.  And God love ‘em, there they were waving their MS balloons and eating the last of the chocolate brownies.

But we did it. Each member of the J Team finished. And not one of us came last.  Yes, there were challenges along the way.

• Taking your water bottle out of its holder whilst riding, and not veering into oncoming cyclists, is trickier than it sounds.

• Pedals don’t work when the chain thingy has slipped off the cog thingy.

• It’s surprisingly hard to ride in between two witches hats. I don’t care if they’re a house-width apart – it’s hard.

• Being overtaken by a kid on a bike with wheels the size of a bread & butter plate is embarrassing.

Still, if Janey has to suck up MS, the rest of us were more than happy to suck up a little humiliation and the occasional brush with death.

Onya J Team!

5 members of the crack J Team

So I’m ok with spiders (alright, ok-ish) I have no problem at all with heights, but put me within oh, say 25 metres of anything feathered – no matter how small – and I will almost certainly have a 10-on-the-richter-scale anxiety attack.

I don’t actually remember when or how my bird phobia started – but I suspect it involved a trip to the Currumbin Bird Sanctuary during my childhood – ta for that Mum and Dad. Obviously there’s no chance I’ll be making the same mistake with my own children, thoughtful parent that I am. No Bird Sanctuary for you kids.

And let me tell you, having a phobia about birds is exhausting – they are bloody difficult to avoid. That is part of the reason I am not so much an “outside” person. Unless my worst nightmare happens – a bird flies inside (more on that later) – I can be pretty secure in the knowledge that as long as there are 4 walls, a roof and closed windows (derr – that’s what airconditioning is for) I won’t have a feather-induced freakout.

Of course, it doesn’t always go that way…

Many moons ago, before The Councillor was a Councillor, he was the Public Relations Manager at Brown Brothers Wines in Wangaratta in north east Victoria (not at all a crap job).  Anyway, at the time, I was living in Brisbane (long story – a whole ‘nother post) and we were flying between Wangaratta and Brisbane every few weeks.

The Councillor was living in a little cottage on a big property just outside Wangaratta, sharing with a 19yo girl (I know, I know) who kept chickens.  It was the country after all.  I was down on one of my visits, and The Councillor and the flatmate were both at work. I woke up late (well, I didn’t have to go to work) and wandered into the kitchen, where I was faced with – literally – my worst nightmare.  Someone had left the back door open, and every single one of the flatmate’s 20 chickens was in the kitchen. To make it worse, the back door had swung almost closed – but stupid chickens, having wings instead of arms, hadn’t been able to pull the door open to get back out.

So not only was the kitchen full of chickens, it was full of freaked out chickens trying desperately to get the hell out of there.

Not as hard as I was trying to get out of there though.

I’m surprised The Councillor didn’t hear me screaming from his office 10km away, but the residents of “the big house” on the farm heard me, and came flying down the drive brandishing a shotgun to deal with the axe murderer they were sure had me bailed up.

I was not at all embarrassed to tell them that a kitchen full of mad-eyed chickens was every bit as bad.

There is one other defining moment in the story of my bird phobia.

Several years ago we lived in Manly, in Sydney. I was walking to the ferry, which generally meant navigating my way around dozens of “flying rats” aka seagulls. I usually managed this by walking as though I was full as a boot on moonshine – weaving my way between the various gatherings of seagulls on the path.

On this day however, when faced with an enormous flock of seagulls (I didn’t like the group either) on the path, I decided it was time to harden up, and walk straight through them.  As long as they didn’t take off (just typing this sentence is sending shivers down my spine) I’d be ok.  It’s the flapping that freaks me out.  So head down, I soldiered forth.

All good until I got to the perimeter of the flock – at which point a hot chip came sailing through the air from the direction of a picnic table next to the path.  The chip landed in the middle of the flock – at the exact same time as I stepped into it.  All 15,000 seagulls (yes there were) took off at once, and I was in my own personal hell.

I screamed, obviously, and then marched directly to the picnic table from whence the chip had come and began a rant that went a bit like this:

“I can’t believe you threw a chip to those birds!! Can’t you read the signs?  Don’t you know you’re not supposed to feed the birds?! You’re obviously not local, or you’d know that the seagulls are just vermin! No local would ever feed them! I can’t believe you’d do something like this.” An on and on…

Now, I hadn’t taken any real notice of the occupants of the table, such was my indignation.  Until a lady from the table came up to me and quietly apologised for the errant chip, before going on to explain that the people at the table were physically and intellectually disabled, and one of them had just been trying to eat the chip, when he had inadvertently flung it in the direction of the seagulls.

No, there are no words.

And it’s proof that birds are the work of the devil.