Dear Rouleurs,

It’s the second week of August and MMT is, to quote Shaun Micallef, ‘mad as hell’. Apparently, the Victorian version of overseas passenger quarantine was run by a bunch of muppets who didn’t brief or prepare their staff. Now all of Melbourne is in stage 4 lockdown and all of country Victoria is in stage 3 lockdown. Bummer…. The pic below shows The Age headline for the 3rd of August. In the end, the State Government didn’t have choice. The mounting mystery case list and sadly, deathtoll simply couldn’t be ignored.

The impact of that has meant has a drastic reduction in MMT’s time on the bike outdoors. People living in Melbourne are only allowed one hour of exercise a day and aren’t allowed to travel outside of a 5 kilometre radius of their home. The combination of those 2 restrictions has meant a lot of short, and some what frustrating rides inside the Red Circle of Boredom….

And there it is in all of its glory. The Red Circle of Boredom has meant a number of rides around Albert Park Lake and Fisherman’s Bend. If MMT had more than 1hour, he could have ridden to Williamstown and back. Being so close to the Bay has meant a large reduction in ride variety. Fortunately, MMT still has St Ali’s and Brother Bubba Budan in that zone so at least he has access to decent coffee when needed.

Now before MMT forgets the Red Circle of Boredom, is based on a rather heplful website, https://2kmfromhome.com/. The author is a fellow called David Bolger in the Republic of Ireland. You can find him here on Twitter: https://twitter.com/davebolger. It looks like his website received some serious interest from Melbourians judging by this tweet.

If MMT hadn’t seen this website on Strava, he may resorted to using a Melways (…remember those?? ;-), a pin, a piece of string and a pencil, to achieve the same end. Very old school geometry vs a new snappy website…the website wins. If you feel so inclined you can buy Dave a coffee here at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/devhaus. BTW, Coffee in Ireland must be seriously expensive at 5 Euro ie $8.23 AUD…ouch.

Any how, ride safe and stay safe

MMT in Stage 4 Lockdown