 So coming in at number 10 is Victoria Bitter and Cycling. You can get it right. That's right, that green VB can is the choice for all Melburnians and Victorians. It doesn't matter that it actually tastes like bitter horse urine. The fact that it is Victorian and VB has one of the greatest advertising jingles of all time. There's a bullet coming on about four. A hard-earned thirst needs a big cold beer. And the best cold beer is Vic. Vic Bitter. That's all that matters. To prove the prevalence of VB in the Melbourne Victorian Cycling scene, let's watch this footage at the famous Wallunga Hill stage at the UCI Tour Down Under held in Adelaide, South Australia every year. There you can see Nick White. He's from Greater Victoria, a place called Ballarat and has lived in Melbourne for a number of years now, from the UniSA team and during a race. This can't help himself. He's necking a can of VB. It appears that the lady in front of me is also a Victorian and if we rewind here a little, you can spot the Victorian cyclists in the crowd by the can that they hold. You can also spot a bloke from Invercargill, New Zealand, whom appears to be filming Nick's Rare End. That's where that footage will end up later on. Coming in at number nine is a good quality local Melbourne bike shop. I don't know about your local area, but where I lived in Melbourne, it was surrounded by good quality local bike shops. Hampton Cycles, Omara Cycles, Urban Peddler, Total Rush, the Bicycle Centres, the Giant Stores and I can't forget about my good mate Troy out at Cycle House too. There are simply so many good quality local bike shops in Melbourne and the thing about a good quality local bike shop is if you can find one, it will have a major impact on your cycling journey. You'll get on the right bike, you'll find appropriate rides and groups, you'll have the right advice for additional needs and you'll always be pointed in the right direction. So local bike shops of Melbourne keep up the magnificent work, which is a great segue to number eight on the list which is local cycling clubs. The reason being, I found my local cycling club through my local bike shop and Melbourne has so many great cycling clubs and great people that volunteer their time to put cycling on for the community. Personally, I've been fortunate enough to be a member of two excellent cycling clubs. The St Kilda Cycling Club and also Carnegie Corefield Cycling Club but I know that there are many other great clubs out there such as Hawthorne, Brunswick, Coburg to name a few but they all really fostered the growth and development of not only the sport but also the activity of bike riding in Melbourne and greater Victoria. So thank you to all those people out there working for zero dollars to help put on events, group rides and of course this is the one that's going to be coming in at number seven and that is Criterium Racing. Since moving away from Melbourne, I've come to the realisation that I took Criterium Racing in Melbourne for granted. There's so many options. You've got racing on the Sand Down Raceway on Tuesday evenings hosted by the great Carnegie Corefield Cycling Club. This is an unbelievable place to race but strangely and unfortunately numbers have been down a little bit in recent times. I have no idea why because I am personally throughing at the daydream of having a sand down in my local area. I'm not sure whether Zwift Racing has gotten in the way or people think they have immediate credibility to a 15 grand road bike with a $600 map kit and posted a pic on Instagram. Who knows but let me just say that if you've been thinking about racing and you live in Melbourne please get down to Sand Down on Tuesdays when it's back on. For all the skinny whippets you've got the Hawthorne Donut on Wednesday evenings which is a great crit course and an awesome atmosphere perched along the great city of Melbourne. For the old blokes myself included you've got the Masters Crit Racing back at the Sand Down Raceway on Thursday evenings hosted by the Southern Masters Cycling Club and then on the weekend it's a crit bonanza with Coburg on Saturday and Sinkilda who were once at the epic White Street and now looking for a more permanent racing fixture on Sundays and taking off at the same time on Sundays is the almighty Glenvale where I've come close to having my legs completely ripped off in an A-grade Criterium many times and where you can watch. Legendary crit races such as Tomy Nann Curvis rip out a win while getting advice on the sidelines from club legends and ex-Australian Olympians such as Mick Hollingsworth. Now I know I have left out a lot here so please give them a shout out below but the side effect of having so many Criteriums is where number six leads us to and that is Melbourne is the home of the crit pig. Now there is a proper internet definition of the crit pig on the Urban Dictionary and this was developed from a collaboration between many local Criterium pigs in Melbourne including one of the great crit pigs, Cow Douglas but this is how it goes. A crit pig is a little heavier than a roadie and may smell a little funny from time to time. They're always desperate to race their bikes rolling around in a pigsty. They call a Criterium track. When push comes to shove with little white envelopes awaiting they get ready to drop a shoulder and open their snouts while putting their curly tails in the air to go for the win. So just be aware if you ever travel to Melbourne town be prepared to be confronted with many Criterium pigs eager and throughing to race their bikes. Speaking of bikes this leads me to number five and that is custom bike makers and cycling headquarters. There are many custom bike makers in Melbourne town and also in the greater area and it really adds to the artistry and culture that Melbourne produces. We have brands such as Borm, Curve, Bastion, Prova and I'm sure many others you might like to add to the list below. Also many of the big cycling and bike manufacturers are headquartered out of Melbourne such as Specialized, Giant and Sram Australia who are actually situated out on the foothills of the Dandenong which takes us to number four and that is riding in the Dandenongs. The Dandenongs are roughly 50 kilometres from the heart of the Melbourne city and they're not to be confused with the suburb of Dandenong. Unless of course you've had a gut full of cycling and you're eager to improve your chances of getting your bike stolen then Dandenong could be a goer but the Dandenong Rangers or Mount Dandenong or whatever you want to call it that's the place to go. As you can see here we have some pretty impressive footage of a Melbourne lad called Trent who is actually completing a wheelie all the way up the most famous Dandenongs climb the one in 20. It took Trent just over 24 minutes to complete a wheelie up what is a 6.7 kilometre or 4.2 mile climb with an average gradient of 4-5%. I'll link to the video I made on this epic wheelie below if you want to check it out which was actually back in the bikechaser days but if you can try and look behind this epic wheelie you should be able to see tons of magnificent nature and scenery that surrounds. There's roughly half a dozen climbs like this around the Dandenongs that ranges roughly between the 5-20 minute mark which makes this place a place that is so close to a city of 5 million people one of the great cycling playgrounds in Melbourne if not Australia and if it wasn't for all the angry hillbilly drivers I just might have had the Dandenongs as number one. Let's hear what Trent had to say about the experience of doing a wheelie up the entire climb before we get to number three. Just note that Trent did fail the first attempt but obviously nailed attempt number two. Second time around it's like the boon is twice as hard, everything's twice as heavy and you just have to keep that concentration I didn't want to do it a third time. He started down at the coffee shop and I saw him come past and I thought there goes a knob at riding on a wheel at a coffee shop but he was holding it and I was on two wheels and chased him a lot of the way and to see him finish that's seriously impressive well done mate. Coming in at number three is the way I personally used to get out to the Dandenongs and that is on the Melbourne Bike Pass. Many road cyclists don't realise that Melbourne has a world class network of bike pass all around the city. Yes Melbourne doesn't have the separation lanes that you see in cities such as Amsterdam and Copenhagen but I am more so referencing the network of bike pass in the greater Melbourne region. You can see here I'm riding with the great David Sturt aka Stegels a cycling coach that taught me how to ride a bike properly and finally make the step up to A grade. Stegels loves the bike pass and showed me a ton before I left Melbourne at the back end of 2018. While you can't do bunch rides or complete all the training you'll want on a bike path they're absolutely awesome with base mobs and also social rides with friends. Cities including Melbourne big time are becoming more and more jammed with people and traffic and congestion and unfortunately the chances of cyclists getting in an incident is simply more prevalent. So heading out on the bike pass is safe and it actually teaches cyclists better skills often an aspect lacking in the person that took up road cycling in later life. Slowing the bike down turning sharp corners are all examples of some skills you will develop on the Melbourne Bike Pass making them a fantastic opportunity to hone those skills and stay safe while you ride. Now to flip that coin completely coming in at number two is the bunch rides. Melbourne has this incredible stretch of road from Port Melbourne down to a town called Portsea which is predominantly on the beach. You'll see many many cyclists if you ever travel along this route which is roughly a 200km return leg so a great opportunity for a big day in the saddle on a Saturday or Sunday I think they call it sorento trucking but where you'll find most of the action is between St Kilda and Mount Eliza and embedded in there are many many epic Melbourne bunch rides that are open to all. Just be aware that my recommendation if you were to ever attempt these bunch rides that I'm about to mention is don't do what I did many years ago that being just go out and give them a go with no bunch riding skills whatsoever. What I would recommend doing is join a local cycling club first ask to join one of their organised bunch rides or maybe try a guided e-grade criteria or latte lapse which I eventually did down at St Kilda many years ago and learn the skill of bunch riding first get confident with your skills and knowledge and then go hit up a bunch ride. So some of my favourite fast bunch rides in Melbourne include the Tuesday night champs the Tuesday and Thursday 5.45am and 6am north road rides the Wednesday north road long morning group ride and of course how could I not mention the hell ride. The hell ride would easily be the biggest and fastest bunch ride in Australia and it's a divisive topic trust me I tried during my time at running bike chaser for content purposes to get funding to make a documentary about this ride. In a bid to ease tension between motorists and cyclists a documentary is being made about the controversial hell ride along beach road. The new documentary about the controversial weekly event has again sparked heated debate. Unfortunately the funding was unsuccessful and the way I personally went about getting exposure to this project if I had my time again I would do things differently but everyone that rides a bike in Melbourne seems to have an opinion on the ride and opinions are heavily divided from all the footage that I took and the time I personally spent analysing this ride from different angles riding to the back to the middle to the front to the side while also following it in a car speaking to members of the community and riders all in preparation to start a documentary in my opinion this ride is greatly misunderstood. Yes bad things have happened and will continue to happen on the hell ride but those bad things from all the footage and time spent analysing this ride don't happen as a consequence of those cyclists that are regulars on the hell ride. In fact the regulars in the hell ride are some of the best riders in Australia rolling turns smoothly up the front and getting in a solid hit out before they may head out to the Dandenong's for more training to coincide with their training demands as national road series riders or even continental bike races In fact the pros as you can see Kuhn de Kort here will ride the hell ride when they're back in the off season So the actual true hell riders which is the top third of the hell ride create a very smooth, safe and predictable environment where the mishaps running of red lights and bad reputations come from is the back dirt typically filled with either people doing the hell ride for the first or second time or perhaps somebody that's just jumped on the back of the bunch after the tip of the hell ride has flown past them but the overarching fact is love it or hate it the hell ride is an institution and plays a big part in the Melbourne cycling scene and culture Personally I just love heading down to the black rock clock tower at 6.45am having a quick coffee with good mates having a chin wag with Jay and Anna from Omara Cycles and seeing all the faces and good people before that 7am start which is often escorted by some police motorbikes but the faces, the people this actually leads me to my number one point about the Melbourne cycling scene and that is the people this is definitely the thing I miss the most about the Melbourne cycling scene now that I am a Queenslander and the people of Melbourne make up for Melbourne having the worst weather in the entire country you've obviously got your characters like Lee Hollywood Turner I've been so busy I've been so busy seriously I've been so busy today mate a telecom there's one there another telecom another different type of telecom this is when I was a German champion when I beat Zabeel another telecom another telecom another telecom another telecom another telecom stole this you've got great bike store operators like J.O.Mara Damo Jones Gabe Sullins Troy Jordan Simon Coffin Shannon Johnson the list goes on you've got passionate club people everywhere giving up their time to help juniors and UBs develop their skills and confidence in the sport you've got some of the biggest national road series teams with their management support staff cultivating and driving opportunities for young riders you've got groups of like-minded people getting together advocating and sharing the word about mental health such as the Knights of Suburbia you've simply got outstanding humans everywhere in the Melbourne cycling scene and that is the cherry on top of an epic cable