• How to design intersections with riders in mind
• Separation on-road
• Behaviour change – effective programs, strategies and case studies
• Data – quantitative and qualitative including census analysis
• Effective Bike Parking – on-site and on-street
• Bike planning in outer-suburban and peri-urban environments
• Making the case – economic analysis and bikes e.g. Benefit cost ratios
• How to make bikes and public transport work together
• Health imperatives in local government and the essential roles that bikes play
• How to Community engagement and consultation with riders
• Developing the environment for recreational riders
• Overcoming barriers: The politics of bikes
• Around the next corner -  the implications of electric bikes
• Reducing speed limits
• Bike tourism and regional rail trails
• Closing city streets to promote bikes and physical activity

In a city that prides itself on how many people get around by bike on a daily basis – amongst those who ride that is, and those who are advocates for sustainable and active transport solutions – it has become somewhat poignant (that’s being kind, it’s actually dreadfully ironic,) that in the 2012 conference, the Keynote Address, given by the Honorable Terry Mulder, Minister for Public Transport & Roads, stated unequivocally the Victorian Government’s position that cycling has a future in the state of Victoria.

A YouTube clip of his address is below, but from the Bicycle Network Victoria website, this is a summary of what Terry Mulder had to say:

“I want to use today to formally restate the government support for cycling.

“Our position on cycling is quite clear – we recognise cycling as an important transport mode.

“We want to lift the status of the two wheeled option beyond solely recreational and into realms of very serious transport, to encourage cycling as a means of replacing the many short trips undertaken by car or public transport and to integrate cycling into the mainstream of private transport.

“I’m certainly keen to remove any stigma that might be attached to cycling that it’s not a valid mode of transport.

“I recognise that cycling is one of a number of ways we can meet the huge growth in demand for transport, particularly peak hour transport.”

What does a Keynote Address at the Bike Futures Conference have to do with bike mechanics, or bike technicians, servicing bikes?

I am an everyday cyclist. Riding off and on for 40-something years now, daily bike riding is a means of getting around. It is not an exclusive means, but it is a means I prefer. Cycling as transport is ranked above public transport, walking, and driving a motor vehicle, in that order. I ride to be healthy. I ride to make a small footprint on the planet. I ride because I enjoy it: no, I ride because I love it.

Especially with my kids.

By bike to the beach

I lead a reasonably busy life. I’m employed in a public health service 4 days a week, I’m a Dad to 2 children under the age of 7, and I need to do the ordinary things on a daily basis, such as taking kids to and from school or kinder, getting to and from work, housework, shopping, playing with the kids, going to the footy, so on and so on.

What I find difficult to fit in is regularly servicing my bike(s). I leave that to a short list of reputable Local Bike Shops in inner Melbourne, that I have come to know and trust over the last decade or so. Local Bike Shops such as Commuter Cycles in Coburg, Human Powered Cycles in Thornbury, VeloCycles in North Carlton, and Abbotsford Cycles in Richmond. Depending on what’s on in my weekly schedule, and where I’m going to be geographically, I’ll book into any of these shops with confidence.

I rely on these Local Bike Shops to expertly and efficiently service my machine(s). My trust in them is based on their professional expertise. What is most important to me is that these Local Bike Shops all employ qualified (and if not fully qualified, expertly supervised,) Bike Mechanics.

However, and this is the nub of my argument, it would appear that the expert trade of Bicycle Mechanics is going to be actively extinguished, by State and Territory-based governments across Australia ( the Victorian Liberal Government in particular), from an arbitrary, or at least misinformed view on the worth of Cycling as valid transport, Cycling as a valid career path, Cycling as an industry that generates billions of dollars of revenue and millions of dollars in tax revenue annually.

On the one hand, the evidence for a steadily growing uptake of cycling in Australia is clear. Naysayers may dismiss cycling as the exclusive domain of middle-aged males in lycra or ‘MAMILS’, first described in this BBC News Online piece in 2010, and now adopted as a term of disparagement in Australia, but 6 years of evidence obtained through the Australia-wide Ride2Work Day indicate that more people are in fact, cycling more often.

Why do people take up cycling? And what keeps them riding?

Recent evidence supports personal health, and a means of getting from A to B as the most important reasons. At least once a week, it’s reported in any reputable media outlet that Australia is in the midst of an obesity epidemic. As new housing pushes to the fringes of capital cities, obesogenic environments are created. New housing developments encourage a sedentary lifestyle; getting from A to B is in a motor car, because there isn’t public transport, let alone bicycling infrastructure, and it’s usually a short trip, less than 5 kilometres. A recent Victorian Parliamentary inquiry into Environmental Design and Public Health clearly stated that Australian people are becoming more obese. The findings of the Committee were: Urban planning contributes to obesogenic environments; as does car dependance, and infrastructure that discourages walking or cycling; a paucity of public transport also contributes. Most pertinent is ‘Recommendation 31′:

That the Victorian government:

• reviews cycling infrastructure, with a particular focus on improving for Melbourne’s outer suburbs and Victoria’s regional cities
• sets measurable targets and promotes activities such as the Ride2School Program to increase cycling participation, and review targets on an annual basis.

A slowly growing trend of cycling commuters choose to make a decision to confront hostile vehicular traffic, a dearth of infrastructure, and actively manage their health on a daily basis. In the Melbourne City Council geographical area, there is a daily average throughput of some 80,000+ cyclists. The Council recently put out a Draft Bicycle Plan 2012-16, with the clear aim of making Melbourne ‘a cycling city with safe and connected bicycle routes.’ The City Council’s goals with this Bicycle Plan are to:

• plan and deliver a connected cycling network
• build high quality routes for local cycling trips
• increase participation in cycling
• make cycling safer.

Melbourne City Council’s Bicycle Plan mirrors world’s best practice in encouraging and facilitating greater participation in cycling as active transport. This is encouraging more people to cycle more often.

There is a clear evidence based argument that cycling contributes very well to the Australian economy. Bicycle Industries Australia reported in 2011 that collectively, Local Bike Shops employ over 10,000 people, and raise $139 million in tax revenue a year.

The recently published Australian Bicycle Council’s ‘National Cycling Strategy 2011-16′ has one clear vision: double the number of people cycling in Australia by 2016.

In 2011, a consortium of the Australia Local Government Association, the Bus Industry Confederation, the Cycling Promotion Fund, the National Heart Foundation of Australia and the International Association of Public Transport, put together a submission to the Australian Government – ‘An Australian Vision For Active Transport.‘

The Report urged the Australian Government to:

1. Develop an integrated national active transport strategy that empbraces policy and planning for the major components: walking, cycling and public transport.
2. Develop clear and realistic targets for active transport and physical activity outcomes.
3. Provide local government authorities with substantial, sustained and targeted funding for active transport.
4. Support the development and widespread application of Healthy Spaces and Places planning principles.
5. Encourage active domestic tourism by funding major regional projects such as rail trails, cycle routes and hiking tracks.
6. Promote a safe environment for people who choose to walk, cycle or take public transport and review jurisdictional approaches to the legislative protection of vulnerable road users.
7. Fund social marketing programs to promote the many benefits of walking and cycling for people of all ages.
8. Support cycle training and pedestrian education in schools.
9. Provide incentives for employers to encourage employees to walk, cycle or take public transport to work.

What can be concluded from the overwhelming evidence that cycling participation in Australia is going to continue to grow at an exponential rate?

Potentially more retail sales of bicycles, parts and accessories. Potentially more bike shops selling more bikes: to MAMILS, Mums with kids, tertiary students in need of cheap transport, school-age children, the retired – all of them in need of personal transport, exercise and a social activity.

As this growing daily uptake of cyclists and the next generation of cycling consumers procure their bikes, how do they keep the bike in good nick? Do they hop on the Internet, go to a library to find books on bike maintenance, put up a notice in their local coffee shop looking for cheap (dodgy, backyard) bike maintenance?

No. They go back to the Local Bike Shop they bought the bike from.

After all, even VicRoad’s definition of a bicycle is that it is a vehicle that has two or more wheels, built to be propelled by human power through a belt, chain or gears.

This bikely vehicle, as a form of machine (some would say ‘The Beautiful Machine’), needs regular maintenance, to principally keep the operator of the vehicle safe, doesn’t it?

Who carries out the maintenance?

A qualified Bike Mechanic, surely…..

For now that is the case. But within a generation, probably not.

In Australia, the tertiary level business of educating young men and women with a technical trade is moribund. It’s official. In most States and Territories of Australia, there is a real skills shortage in trade level qualifications. COAG – the Council of Australian Governments – early in 2012 all signed up to ‘transform the nation’s training system’, and fix the skills shortage. So the Australian Government launched a website, for prospective trainees to find a course they’re interested in. MySkills purports to make the job of sourcing a traineeship easier. However, in the case of a Certificate III in Bike Mechanics, even though the course content is listed, according to MySkills there appear to be no providers that offer the training.

On the other hand, a quick Internet search finds 3 TAFE providers in the whole of Australia that do provide a Certificate III in Bike Mechanics: SkillsTech Australia, in Queensland; rather obscurely, the Motor Trader’s Association of New South Wales offers a New Apprenticeship in Automotive Bicycle Mechanics – I kid you not! And in Taree, on the mid-North coast of New South Wales, a picturesque seaside town with a standing population of 20,000, you can do a Certificate III in Bicycle Workshop Operations.

Locally, in Victoria, the one institution that had provided professional training in bike mechanics closed it’s doors to that option as recently as April this year.

In a city that has 80,000+ cyclists riding through it on any given day there is no longer training available in Bike Mechanics.

Remember Minister Mulder’s Keynote Address at the 2012 Bike Futures Conference? It just doesn’t add up.

12 months ago, the Liberal Government of Victoria dismissed trade qualifications in bicycle mechanics as a ‘lifestyle course’, which caused outrage amongst cycling consumers in the know. Cuts were made to other programs in the TAFE sector. The Federal Labor Government reacted, by threatening withdrawal of existing funding arrangements to Victoria’s higher education budget. Only June last year, the Victorian Minister for Higher Education and Skills, The Honorable Peter Hall, reported to The Age newspaper he ‘shared the “emotions of shock, incredulity, disbelief and anger” of TAFE leaders when he had to inform them of the cuts. He got to keep his job, despite speaking out of turn.

With a change of Premier at the beginning of 2013 – not a change of Government, though – the new Premier Dr Denis Napthine granted $200 million in extra funding to Victorian TAFEs. It looked like an admission of a mistake. But the money wasn’t earmarked for delivery of training. At the same time, Property Titles of all Victorian TAFEs were transferred from the Government to the TAFEs themselves, allowing them to ‘re-invest proceeds of sales of infrastructure,’ or in other words, to cash in what is deemed as no longer necessary: obviously, no more funding will be coming in the forseeable future. The Victorian Government wants TAFEs to operate in an ‘open and competitive market’. That is, to only provide courses they might deem to be a cash cow.

And there is still no training in Certificate III Bike Mechanics in the state of Victoria, or 6 of the other States and Territories of Australia, for that matter.

Why does this matter? And who cares?

The slow death of trades-based learning undermines the capacity of a society to be sustainable. With a skilled trades-based workforce, new infrastructure is developed, and can be maintained. Without trades, the tangible fabric of society slowly dies, while demand grows. ‘Trades’ is an organism that breathes life into any modern society. Trains run on time, traffic flows, goods are imported, exported, manufactured, assembled, and distributed.

The cycling industry is no different. Trades associated with the bicycle industry will struggle very soon to breathe life into cycling as a viable, sustainable, and active transport option.

For years the cycling industry (of which the servicing and mechanics of bikes is a significant part) has operated in a retail environment that has come to guarantee that any individual taking up the challenge of entering the cycling retail industry won’t be making a comfortable living. To be an operator in the cycling retail industry is pretty much to offer a community service. There’s no ‘money’ in it. The Australian Government held an inquiry in 2010 into the state of the retail industry in Australia. While the Australian dollar reached parity with the US Dollar, and then went above parity and stayed there, the retail sector in Australia found itself in the grip of a vice: consumer demand on the one side, financial regulation on the other. The disadvantage of competing with online sales continues to hit the cycling business very hard.

Local Bike Shops – that somewhat quaint notion of a shopfront retail business – cannot compete equitably with online consumerism. Don’t think you can’t buy a bike online. If there’s a particular bike you want, or there’s a certain type of bike you feel capable of building yourself, you can order whatever you want over the Internet, and have it delivered to your front door, often for less than the cost of buying a new bike from a Local Bike Shop. All too often, Local Bike Shops suffer the loss of loyal consumers to online shopping, for the very same products gathering dust on the shelves of the Bike Shop. And all too often, Local Bike Shops find themselves in the invidious position of assisting their once loyal customer to build or service the bike and associated accessories that haven’t been bought from their store.

Within a generation, Local Bike Shops won’t be able to assist disloyal customers build and maintain their bikes: the Art and Science of Bicycle Mechanics will become a lost trade, going the way of Coopering, Blacksmithing, Sailmaking, and Shoemaking, to name a few.

What is the solution? It’s possible to mount an argument for restoring what has been lost in funding cuts to the TAFE sector. In Victoria, the Shadow Minster for Higher Education and Skills, Steve Herbert, has taken it upon himself to mount a public awareness campaign, hoping to shame the current Liberal government into a change of heart. The current Victorian government seems to be confused about what this cycling business is all about.

What will help fix this mess?

Should the bicycle industry in Australia be helping itself? Is it time for a new business model? Maybe the bicycle industry has to orchestrate and manage it’s own survival, in line with a user-pays – in other words North American consumer model – way of business.  If there’s money for sponsorship of Australia’s first Pro-Tour Professional Cycling Team, and there’s money to be made in hosting the only Pro-Tour cycling event in the Southern Hemisphere, maybe that same sponsorship can fund the training of the skilled mechanics and technicians to keep cycling as a sport, cycling as a daily transport activity, cycling a s a ‘lifestyle choice’, alive?

The next generation of cyclist

Gracie’s off to kinder

In a short life of many milestones, Gracie commenced 4 year old kinder last week. She’s going to the University of Melbourne Early Learning Centre, a positively brilliant early childhood education facility.

Her big brother Max attended 3  year old and 4 year old kinder there. He feels kinda weird coming with me to pick her up at the end of Gracie’s new kinder day of play, learning, laughing, exploring, rest time, snacks, play, and exploring. She positively runs in to the class in the morning to the open arms of her teachers Suzanna and Amy. The teachers at ELC are all university qualified early childhood education teachers, but not only that, the teachers we have had first hand experience of with Max and now Grace are all such lovely warm-hearted, empathic, and fun to be with people.

With the assistance of Gracie’s Early Childhood Development Team at Melbourne City Mission Thornbury, ELC have applied for KISS funding to employ a suitably qualified early childhood education professional – either from within the ELC staff pool, or from outside – to directly assist Gracie throughout her kinder day. A decision will be made by the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development by the end of next week.

In the mean time, Gracie is having a ball. She was always a good sleeper; now she collapses into bed at night, exhausted. Reports so far from her teachers are that she’s a delight to have around, although I get the feeling that some extra support will be very helpful. The teachers are so child focussed in normal circumstances, they are going above and beyond with Gracie – her limited verbal communication, and propensity to get bowled over in the rush has required her teachers to doubly focus their attention on Gracie – which I can understand would be a bit tiring.

We haven’t connected with Gracie’s classmates ( or their parents ) yet, but her peers are connecting with her already. Max and I came to pick her up yesterday. While the rain sprinkled down, her class were sitting in a circle under the verandah with their teacher Suzanna, singing songs. When Gracie finally tore herself away from the group, after hugs and kisses from Suzanna, waving goodbye wordlessly to her new best friend classmates, a number of her new best friends just got up off the floor and one by one came over and gave her squeezy hugs goodbye.

Priceless.

It’s going to be a great year.

Every now and then I get a subscribed message in my email inbox with a short snapshot of where my children ‘should’ be at in their individual development. The advice is well presented, and has often been quite timely, as the kids have ticked off a few milestones in their so far short lives.

The snapshots of where Grace is at at different milestones have often been interesting reading. Frankly, there’s been a bit of pain involved, as at times, within the bell-shaped curve of ‘normal’, Grace rings a different kind of bell. But when I do check where she’s at – and yes, even though she’s only 3 and a half, give her time – Gracie isn’t that wide of the mark in her development.

In a nutshell, from the Raising Children Network site info on Preschoolers, this is what a 3 to 4 year old is up to:

“Three-year-olds increasingly know what they want and can express what that is” – Gracie always knows what she wants, she just has an unconventional method of expression.

“She’ll persist with a wider variety of tasks, activities and experiences, and will keep working to complete a task even if it’s a bit tricky” – oh yeah, that’s Gracie all right!

“Your child is continuing to seek and engage in sensory and other experiences. She’ll enjoy listening to stories, playing with friends and going on trips to new places” – yep, Gracie loves story-time in the evening, she loves playing with her 8 year old cousin Tayla, and Gracie is always up for a new experience.

“Your child is becoming more flexible in problem-solving and thinking through alternative options” – just 2 days ago, after her Monday morning swimming class she put on her own shoes; she just kept trying until she got them on.

“He’ll still understand many more words than he says” – am I blind to continue to believe that’s the case for Gracie? She continues to seemingly understand simple conversations connected to simple actions, such as eating, bathtime, play, and so on.

“Your child might begin to use more complex sentences that include words such as ‘because’ and ‘that’” – Mmm, not yet.

“At this age, your child might tell stories that follow a theme and often have a beginning and end” – ditto.

“She’ll understand directions that have more than two steps, as long as they’re about familiar things” – absolutely, for example, ‘Gracie, could you get the box of tissues and take them to Mummy?’, yes, she can understand and do that without any problem.

“From 3-4 years, your child will show more control and balance when he walks, climbs, jumps, hops, marches and gallops” – not yet, but Gracie loves the local adventure playground.

“Your child will be better at balancing, allowing her to ride a tricycle or bicycle with training wheels” – Gracie’s balance is still a bit wonky, but she doesn’t know the meaning of ‘give up’. At her Monday swimming class, one of the activities involves the kids climbing out of the pool, walking along the side, then out over the water on a floating rubber mat to jump in the water. Like a character from The Thunderbirds, Gracie slowly gets herself out, staggers along the side of the pool holding my hand, then flops onto the mat to slide in the pool. She’ll keep having her turn, when some of the other kids have already given up.

“Children this age are becoming more independent too, as they begin to have real friendships with other children. They’re also learning to recognise the causes of feelings and will give simple help, such as a hug, to those who are upset” – I’ll never forget the time Gracie consoled her big brother Max, who was experiencing a tearful episode of self-pity one day. Sitting on the lounge-room floor at home he was balling his eyes out. Gracie came into the room, sat on the floor next to him, reached  into a nearby basket of washing and dabbed his streaming eyes with a shirt, then stroked his arm. Priceless.

“At three, your child will show an interest in other children and copy what they do” – oh yeah, Gracie loves her big brother to bits, and if he’s doing something that looks vaguely grown up, she’ll copy it, especially at the dinner table. It occasionally frustrates Max, but he doesn’t really mind.

And the one thing Gracie loves to do above all else?

Gracie loves to dance.

Here are a couple of examples; the first one is when Max was having dance classes (although he’s since moved on to a children’s performing arts company).

And this one’s the most recent, Gracie as the Singin’ In The Rain Fairy. And big brother Max gets in on the dancing action too.

Priceless, and precious…

OK, so I’m middle-aged, and I use social media. WordPress – obviously – Twitter, and Facebook. Sometimes I find myself defending the use of this media to friends and family who are younger than me. What’s that about?

Last night, on the ABC here in Oz, “Mark Zuckerberg: Inside Facebook”, a doco from the Beeb was broadcast. I wanted to watch it to validate my ongoing delusion that Facebook in itself is not bad, evil, nefarious, insidious, and is actually just a tool – like a hammer – that can be used for good in the right hands, or evil, in the wrong hands. The obvious corollary being if you control the tool, and use it with good intent, no-one gets hurt.

So, after about 40 minutes or so of a glowing portrait of a geek made good, I wondered if the program was going to put the light on the elephant in the room, and that is that there is a public perception that Facebook is not all good, and Facebook as a tool actually can do harm. After gushing mili-second vox pops of Facebook users boasting of having thousands of friends on Facebook, I was beginning to feel a bit nauseous.

And then, when Peter Pan (AKA Mark Zuckerberg) explained the *Like* system on Facebook, the light went on in my head as to why Facebook sometimes has such a bad reputation. For those of you that don’t know, the *Like* system means that every time a Facebook user clicks on a *Like* button of the Facebook page of a company – Coca-cola, for example – the company pays Facebook: the more clicks on *Like* by millions of users, who are in essence giving a positive rap to that company, the more the cash register rings at Facebook Inc. And the more ‘friends’ you have, the more likely that *Like* system spreads for products, the more the cash register rings at Facebook Inc, and on and on it goes. The need to have friends almost at all costs, becomes insidious.

Let’s go back a bit. I’m middle-aged right? when I was growing up in the 1960s and 70s, there was still this quaint social institution called pen-pals. If you were a pen-pal, you corresponded with someone you’d not actually met; but what you wrote about took the form of a conversation. So, now I’m officially an old git, and I use social media, I use my chosen social media in the same way. It’s about having a conversation with someone, who I also think has something interesting to say. And my conversations are with people – and sometimes institutions – that I care about. I’ve never *Liked* a company or product on Facebook. And I’m not about to start.

On Facebook, my ‘friends’ are family – nieces and nephews, who are scattered around various parts of Australia – and groups that I have something in common with, such as the Chromosome 18 Group, and the Australian Rare Chromosome Awareness Network Group. That’s it. You won’t find me on Facebook if you Google my name, because my version of Facebook is – he says smugly – a meaningful and private use of the tool. Facebook for me is about friends and family, and groups, I care about, want to listen to, and talk to. That’s it.

There are many options with Facebook; how you set your privacy, how open you are to being friends with someone you don’t personally know, and are never likely to meet. But above all, Facebook provides a free and user-friendly means of having meaningful conversations.

At least I know I’m in the naive minority who think and do the same way. I know my limitations.

Will I still be using social media when my children are 20-something? Probably.

Will my children be using social media? I’d be very surprised if they didn’t. And they’ll use it properly too, damn it!

He’d done his bit in WW2, serving in the 2/7th Field Regiment of the Royal Australian Artillery, in North Africa and Borneo.

For many reasons, Dad didn’t volunteer a lot of information about his experiences of that time, but when he did, it was remembering the good stuff, the times when they had a laugh, not the times when fear and the chance of annihilation were present.

One story he did occasionally recount was, in the end, apocryphal of that time time abroad, when neither he, nor his mates could be certain about what was around the corner. And this story I’m recounting is in the context of an episode of remembering by my 5 year old son Max of ‘Nonno’, and what Anzac Day means now for Max. For a number of recent years we’d made the trip back to Adelaide to help Dad out on Anzac Day; either I, or my nephew Jonathan pushing Dad in a wheelchair at the head of what was left of his regiment in the Anzac Day march. The other night, at home with Max, at evening story-time, I reminded Max that we wouldn’t be going to Adelaide for Anzac Day this year, as there was really no need, now Nonno had passed away. Without a blink, Max suggested we go anyway, and push an empty wheelchair in the march, to remember Nonno: then he buried his face in his pillow and sobbed.

Anzac Day this year is in 5 day’s time. So I’m in a bit of reminiscent mood.

So to The Wizard of Oz.

Dad told the story occasionally to us of his special connection with The Wizard of Oz. Released for the first time in 1939, the story began with a night at the movies for his regiment in Perth late November 1940, just before embarkation to the Middle East. The Wizard of Oz was the main feature. The regiment arrived in Palestine mid-December 1940. Dad told the story: as they were marching in to barracks, someone started to whistle (against regulations? who knows?), We’re Off To See The Wizard, The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz – then the whole, or most, of the regiment joined in. It seems ironic now, and probably was at the time, that they were marching along to war, to a future none of them could predict with certainty, to such a light-hearted and optimistic tune.

We're off to see The Wizard

In October 1942, the 2/7th played a vital role in the Battle of El Alamein.

Artillery in action: Battle of Alamein

How many of those young men who had joined in the jaunt of whistling a happy tune didn’t return home to Australia, and family, and loved ones?

Dad wouldn’t dwell on the losses he experienced during his time in North Africa. I don’t mind that his stories of overseas service were only about the funny, the light-hearted, and the adventurous times. (The best story was when he was on duty as Officer-in-Charge, when a regimental contingent had a ‘night out’ at the local brothel…)

And so tonight, there’s a screening of The Wizard of Oz at son Max’s school. Max loves The Wizard of Oz, as he does many other musicals of the 1940s and 50s. We’re going as family. Any just maybe I might feel a bit sad; but then again, the movie is about hope, and optimism, and cccccourage.

Opening presents

Gracealena Ballerina

On a muggy mid-summer day we packed up the food goodies that Mum and Auntie Caroline had cooked and prepared until 2.00AM the night before, and off we went to the Clifton Hill Quarry Park playground, for swings, rides, cricket, home-made sausage rolls, cordial, cricket, soccer, rides, more cordial, and pink lamingtons.

Cousin Tayla, Me, And Zoe

Cricket with cousin Tayla

Home for ice-cream birthday cake (made by Mum & Auntie Caroline), time on the floor with new Lego, and then best of all, a swim in the backyard wading pool.

Ariel and Cindarella adorn the icecream cake

Gracie loves the pool

This is going to be such an interesting year for our Gracie. The crew at Early Intervention are helping us with an application to 4 year old kinder for next year (2013). If Gracie gets a place, she’ll have an aide (the Kindergarten Integration Support Scheme), and she’ll be at the same place that Maxie went to. All the staff know her, and would love to have her there.

As this year unfolds, it’s become obvious that Grace’s greatest problems are with expression and language. There isn’t anything she doesn’t get. Ask her to do anything within her physical capabilities, and she’ll do it; she’ll even try things she isn’t capable of. Always a trier. Like trying to blow out candles…

Happy Birthday to you!

As part of applying to go on the wait list for 2013, Gracie’s helpers at Melbourne Citymission Early Intervention have provided a progress update report to go with the application for kinder.

Jennifer (physio), Amy (occupational therapist), and Jo (speech pathologist), have put together some kind words about our Gracie.

Here’s a snapshot:

Grace is a delightful and social girl who is eager to engage with people and is willing to try any activity. She is patient and persistent and rarely gets frustrated. Her low muscle tone throughout her body makes some activities requiring postural control more challenging for her. She also has some difficulty planning new movements, which affects gross motor, fine motor and oral motor (language) functioning.

And I love this one:

Grace presents as an active socialble child who really enjoys being around other people. She enthusiastically participates in a range of activities and has a ‘can do’ approach to any challenges that occur. She is generally confident with new adults and is able to connect meaningfully with a range of people.

That’s our Gracie!

Happy Birthday To You!!

My siblings and I have worked together to distribute amongst ourselves items of significance from our family life: I’ve been entrusted with the family collection of photographic slides and 8mm home movies. (And Dad’s collection of woodworking handtools. I’ll use them to build a small off the beach sailing boat later this year. Stay tuned for that story!)

The slides and movies go back to the time before I was born, in 1959, and go up to the last few years. They are a significant slice of social history. My job is to scan the slides to be put up on my Flickr page so that my siblings and I – and eventually the world blogosphere – can also enjoy looking at this snapshot of Australian social history. And the 8mm movies….wow! Of course, they’re silent, but they’re filmed in rich Kodak colour, which is for those of you who know pretty wonderful. I’ll be scanning those movies to digital files and posting them on my Vimeo page with the same intent as the slides.

Which brings me to one of my favourite topics – home movies, and ‘slide nights’.

Home movies, were for my family, pretty much our only source of in-house entertainment when I was growing up. Some evenings, after dinner was finished, Dad would pull out the Bell and Howell movie projector, and we’d watch again and again home movies of family holidays, and get togethers with cousins, aunties, uncles, grandparents. The projector would sometimes just be set up on the kitchen table, to screen on the door of the fridge. The same with slides. In the darkened kitchen, with the musty smell of the movie or slide projector getting hot, we’d be transported to other times. We talked, we laughed, and we were satisfied in a way that good screen-based entertainment can be satisfying, and well, nurturing. They were times when we became briefly close and connected as a family, instead of the semi-connected individuals that I recall we were for most of childhood and adolescence.

In recent months I re-named my Vimeo page ‘Richard’s Home Movies’. A bit twee, but that’s what they are. Sure they’re out there in the world wide web for anyone to see, but they are an intimate portrait of my family life with my children and partner. These videos are comforting. And they are a record of our family life that our kids love watching. Max has even started make his own movies: “doct-u-mentaries”, he calls them.

And here is the most recent. Just a compilation of a few days in our life, that started with Chinese New Year celebrations in the city, and a day out when the kids and I went to the Melbourne Aquarium.

So this year will be the sort of fresh start that means day to day life is only about my family – my partner and the kids – and nothing else. I’m resolved to bring from my upbringing only the best parts of my childhood – as few and far between as those ‘best parts’ were – and use that as a basis to nurture the development of my family towards an entity that is not only connected in some uniquely identifiable way, but where we will be meaningfully dependent on each other in such a way that we grow together, all of us, no matter what highs and lows come our way.

And this year’s new journey began with Maxie’s first day at school yesterday. It seems like only the other day that he started kinder.

Day 1 of the next 13 years of schooling

Chromosome disorders don’t happen overnight. You don’t catch a chromosome disorder. You’re born with it, and you have it forever.

When our daughter Gracie’s pediatrician carefully, resolutely, and with a disarming and confidence-inspiring smile gave my partner and I the news late in 2010 that Gracie did have a chromosome disorder, it’s not overdoing it to say that we began a grieving process that will probably go on for some time yet.

My heart missed a beat or two for probably 15 minutes.

While I listened to the pediatrician tell the story of the rare disorder that Gracie has, and how the genetic testing was accurate – ‘there’s no doubt about the results‘ – one side of my brain was gathering in the facts, and the other side was going – ‘No! But she looks OK! She might be a bit delayed in her speech but she’s not abnormal! Does her beautiful smile hide some terrible truth?

While Gracie played with the well-worn well-loved toys around our feet in the pediatrician’s office, she didn’t stop being the girl she was before we entered the office on that fateful day. Gracie was smiling, happy, sad, hungry, tired, curious, giggling – everything she had been since she was born. None of that changed on that day. Nothing was actually taken away from her on that day.

If anything, what was taken away (in my head, at least) was any certainty about her future life panning out in the ordinary way that you expect an ordinary child’s life to do.

From that moment Gracie was no longer ordinary; and yet she was and still is, a little girl with ordinary needs. She’s ordinary, extraordinary, and rare.

A rare disorder isn’t ordinary, by definition. Gracie’s conditon occurs 1 in 40,000 live births. And yet her needs have always been quite ordinary. Luckily Gracie hasn’t needed the range of interventions that some children with rare genetic disorders do require. Sure, she’s getting physio help and speech therapy from the lovely crew at our local Early Intervention Service. Oh, and she now has orthotics for her feet. She just missed out on getting growth hormone treatment; phew! so no daily injections from me until she reached puberty.

So if Gracie is a mix of the ordinary – in her needs – and the not ordinary – in her condition, how could her condition be a gift, even a rare gift?

Well let me tell you.

The gift – and I will only speak about her as I see it – is that even though Gracie finds daily life difficult: she’s hungry, and can’t eat enough; she’s not hungry, and isn’t interested in food no matter what we do; she can’t run around after her big brother or her cousins, she’ll try though – stomp, stomp, stomp, stagger, trip, fall, up again, stomp, stomp stomp; she can’t tell us what she wants, or likes, or desires, or fears, or loves; she gets a mild fever sometimes, and that means she’s wasted for days afterwards…her special and rare gift is that she won’t give up.

Gracie wakes up smiling. Nearly every day. No matter what.

She just keeps trying, quietly trying.

She just will not lay down and mope in the corner. She’ll play by herself quite happily. She’ll flick through books from Max’s shelf, contentedly looking at the pictures, words, shapes, colours. She’ll stab at things on the page with her finger, look at me, and make a noise: “Yes”, I’ll say, “it’s a ball, a duck, a fish, a tree, a rainbow.”

Walking independently has been her biggest acheivement so far. We tried to help her, but she just did it herself. Running her hand along the passage wall to steady herself; pushing a little laundry trolley or block trolley in front of her.

She’s learned a handful of important signs from Auslan: drink, eat, more, down, finish, what?

And the best sign she’s learned isn’t Auslan. It’s blowing a kiss hullo or goodbye.

Gracie will be 3 years old in February 2012. The journey has only just begun. Who knows what the future holds?

Like any child that comes into the lives of Mums, Dads, brothers, sisters, Gracie has brought a rare gift, despite – and at the same time, because of – her rare condition.

A baby cino, and Anzac biccie and thou

Then back home for housework, and playtime in the cubby for Gracie. Distance travelled so far; about 6 kms return + 2 kids. Easy peasy.

Later in the day, after a phone-call from my partner who was at a one-day conference in beachside Elwood, the decision about dinner that night was settled. Fish and chips on the beach. Awesome!

My partner had the car. The options were – after I’d picked up the Max-man from kinder on The Blobinnator (our Xtracycle):

• Ride to a train station, and catch a train to Elwood, + or – The Blobinnator.
• Ride to Elwood, with the kids.

Easy decision, really. We rode, of course.

So it was Gracie (who fell asleep in the Pea Pod anyway), the Max-man and I, that embarked on a little jaunt from the inner Melbourne suburb of Abbotsford, to Elwood Beach: distance 14.73km (7.4 miles), at an average speed of 11.95kmh (7.4 mph). Not far or fast, but it was about 150kgs (330lbs) I was punting folks. It took me 1  hour 13 minutes.

First stop was the St Kilda marina, for a fortifying cafe latte, and juices for the kiddies. Sitting and watching the idle yachting real estate made the effort that much more satisfying.

Cafe latte and a coupla juices

And the ice-cream at Elwood beach tasted so much better for the effort when we made our destination.

The ice-cream was dripping down elbows: yummy yummy!

Then after we rendezvoused with Mummy, it was the long-awaited fish and chips on the beach.

Ackland Street St Kilda fish and chips

Now you might wonder what the fuss is.

Well, when my partner drove to Elwood earlier in the day, it took her about 1 hour. That’s about 12.1kms. In a car. One person, in a car. And at morning peak hour, she was surrounded by a lot of other cars. One person per car.

Later in the day, around peak hour, I rode – with 2 kids – a greater distance, and it took me a little over 1 hour.

This morning, as I was about to throw my leg over The Blobinnator to commute to work, my partner said she would’ve preferred – with hindsight – to have ridden her Xtracycle to the conference. Maybe next time. Although when you don’t know what the end of trip facilities are like, you really might not want to arrive at a conference all sweaty and rank, and nowhere to clean up. And public transport from our suburb to Elwood would have taken up to 2 hours. Absolutely crazy!

Isn’t it nuts that most people choose to drive though, when a bike can do the same job, in much the same time, at the same average speed?

Oh, and there’s that exercise thing too.

If you are a rider and commuting cyclist, and you want evidence for this, download the RiderLog app to your iPhone; the evidence speaks for itself.