On two wheels

Once again, since this blog has “bike” in the title of it, it’s time for me to wax non-poetically about transportation and how many wheels I use.

Most days, I use two.  Two wheels and no motor.  I’ve been riding my bicycle to/from work just about every day.  Which means that if we don’t go anywhere on the weekend [which I think has only happened twice since we’ve been here], I can go weeks without driving a car.  And it’s actually been kinda nice. 

Now, I’m not a fast rider by any means.  They tried to poke fun at me for my coworker passing me on the way in to work one morning, and I just openly admitted that I’m not a speedy rider.  For example, one of the super-fit riders said it would probably take him 7 minutes to get from work to our apartment.  It takes me about 17 [more often 20, as I’m not usually in a rush]. 

And while that’s been great and all, I’ve been itching to ride my other two-wheeled vehicle – the one with the loud, rumbly motor in it.  Unfortunately, we’ve hit yet a third speed bump in that road, and my poor machine continues to collect dust in the parking garage.  The mirrors finally arrived early last week.  I took the day off work on my birthday and put them on, refilled the oil, and got a bit of fuel.  Battery wasn’t strong enough to crank all the petrol through the bone-dry system, so it had to go on the charger.  But I haven’t gotten any further than that because meanwhile, Ruthie’s been back and forth to VicRoads [their motor vehicle department] on my behalf, only to find that instead of an easy bit of paperwork and a couple hundred dollars for a permit, now I may not be able to ride the motorcycle at all.  It has something to do with how the motorcycle was brought into the country and us lacking a carnet de passage.  It’s all a mess, really, and I’ve send messages to the people who might be able to help – but I’ve gotten no where fast.  This, aside from frustrating, is fine because VicRoads said their policy department was going to have to make a judgement on if we’d have to pay some sort of tax on the motorcycle and they would get back to us by letter in two to three weeks. 

Poor motorcycle.  Just sitting there, looking pretty – all dressed up [in dust] and no where to go.

UPDATE: 

I actually wrote this on the 25^th – the day after I penned the previous entry.  [I just totally failed to update the blog with this.  Whoops.]  In the mean time, we’ve received the letter from VicRoads stating that I’m allowed to apply for the permit, but no instructions or anything beyond that.  Ruthie’s made an appointment with them, so maybe she’ll make some progress the next time she goes in there.  Fingers crossed.

-EP