High-res
on the bike on Flickr.
Via Flickr:
Melbourne reminds me of San Diego/Long Beach chill with the beaches and the Bay Area hip with the trams and bikes. A wickedly awesome public bike rental system they’ve got, but only so around the city center. Forget about taking your bike to anywhere else like St. Kilda where there’s hardly any station (Refer to the bike station map) And I tell you. Those bikes with industrial-scale heavyduty weight and sturdiness are not meant for little people like myself.
Case in point, at one point, a nice guy who was just walking by saw me wrestling with a bike trying to release it from a tight parking grip of the station. He came up and asked “Did you already pay for it?” I looked at him with a frustrating and puzzled look that says “Are you kidding me? Of course I paid for it. Do you think I’m some sort of retard who’s just wrestling with a securely locked bike with a helmet on cause it’s so amusing?” It turned out he did because he - an Australian of an average physique mind you - gave a little jerk and the bike just popped out like a properly baked Poptart.
I guess the point of this story is that he was a perfect gentleman with a cute smile and my upper body strength was non-existing. and whaddaya know? A month later, i seriously injured the other ankle and got to be on crutches for a month! An intensive upper body exercise cannot get any more consistent than that.
but i digress.
If my ankle - the one before the crutches - wasn’t so fucked up - or if I were slightly more inclined for a bit of tour to begin with - i’d’ve taken advantage of it more, especially with my weekly pass. When I got back to Seoul tho, I realized that they overcharged me for the weekly rental so I called to make an inquiry. It turned out, it was me, of course, who misunderstood the rate. However, the city apologized for not indicating how the weekly rate and overcharge works more clearly and refunded the extra charge! Generally, I must say my experience with people in and the city of Melbourne was extremely pleasant. Very much unlike my experience in Sydney… Dot, dot, dot indeed.
Those public bike rental stations are slowly popping up in Seoul now. Except they’re yellow here. :)
Leftovers from the Melbourne trip
Melbourne, Australia
