Mike On A Bike Episode 3: Liz Hart

In this episode we talk to Lizzie - AKA Frank to her friends - and see if we can cover the big issues of experience, regret, belief and wisdom.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:06

G'day listeners, welcome to episode three of the Mike on a Bike Podcast. I've spent some time thinking about what questions to ask my podcast guests. I'm interested in people. I realized a few years ago that I should have been an anthropologist. Unfortunately, it's too late now to do something about it. Oh, I can hear you saying it's never too late. But of course it is. A 50 grand hex debt at age 60 with 10 years to pay it off is just leaving a mess for my kids to clean up. My contributing years are nearly over, and I'll see them out as a bike mechanic and small business owner. And I'm very happy about that because it's a terrific job. In the meantime, I can play at amateur anthropology with my amateur podcast. I think I'm interested in four things: experience, regret, belief, and wisdom. Our stories tell of what we did to get here, and everyone would change something in their past. Our politics and religions give us a system to live by, and hopefully, along the way, we'll have gathered some of life's cheat codes and hacks that we could pass on to others. I'm going to try hard to answer these questions as I talk to people and hear their stories. Let's get into it.

SPEAKER_02 1:29

Right, you all go, I'm gonna pull up the rear. I'm talking to my friend Stephen.

SPEAKER_01 1:35

Yeah, we're having a good chat.

SPEAKER_02 1:36

You go.

SPEAKER_01 1:38

My guest on the podcast this week is someone who I haven't known for a long time, but we've come we've become very firm friends. We all know her as Frank because that is the best description of her personality. She's a very honest person. Lizzie Hart, welcome to the Mike on a Bike podcast.

SPEAKER_02 1:56

Oh thanks for having me, Stephen.

SPEAKER_01 1:58

Share with the listeners where we're at. We're riding mountain bikes.

SPEAKER_02 2:02

We are riding in the Werakatha.

SPEAKER_01 2:05

We're south of the Curry Township. There could be national parks, could be Crown Lands, great fire trails, lots of single track maintained, built and maintained by the curry mongrels. Lizzie, let's start at the beginning. Why'd you become a mountain biker?

SPEAKER_02 2:27

Um, I used to ride as a kid and I loved it, and I rode heaps, and I remember I used to get speed wobbles going down like big hills, and I reckon I was pretty good at it as well. And I also got hit by a car and almost died. And so for that reason, the fact that I didn't die was enough reason to take it up again.

SPEAKER_01 2:50

So can I just point out the cognitive dissonance in the two things that you just said, which was I reckon I was pretty good at it, and I almost died when I got hit by a car.

SPEAKER_02 3:00

Well, it wasn't my fault, really. It was the fact that a car hit me.

SPEAKER_01 3:03

The car's fault?

SPEAKER_02 3:04

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 3:04

Definitely.

SPEAKER_02 3:05

I mean, I may have pulled out on it, it's not the point. Uh and um when I woke up, yeah, I was like five or six.

SPEAKER_01 3:12

How old were you when you crashed?

SPEAKER_02 3:14

Like five or six.

SPEAKER_01 3:15

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_02 3:17

And um, and I woke up next to the tyre and some eyes saw the tyre, but my rosebank stack hat saved me. May I also just tell you a little aside?

SPEAKER_00 3:28

Yeah, come on.

SPEAKER_02 3:29

Which you can edit.

SPEAKER_00 3:30

We got plenty of time.

SPEAKER_02 3:32

I remember my dad used to work at Alcan our Neems Motter, and he's a bit of an autistic bloke like me, except I'm a girl apparently. Yep, and um mum called him home because it was a first aider, and you know, no one rang the ambulance back in the day.

SPEAKER_00 3:48

Yep, not for kids, not for kids. And they'll get better.

SPEAKER_02 3:53

That's what happened. I lied on the lounge for hours, the whole neighborhood was there, and dad walks in, and I'll never forget the face. He turns to me and he goes, You called me home for this.

SPEAKER_01 4:07

Right, you weren't dead.

SPEAKER_02 4:08

And I was like, That's when I knew my dad loved me.

SPEAKER_01 4:12

Yeah, sometimes the signs are really easily visible right there in front of you, and he's been as good of a dad ever since. Have you um have you ever discussed the uh the gut-wrenching moment?

SPEAKER_02 4:28

Yeah, no, we laugh about it. We laugh about it a lot.

SPEAKER_01 4:31

Good.

SPEAKER_02 4:33

But my point is they don't make them like they used to. Now I would have been in chopper to John under.

SPEAKER_01 4:41

Yeah, but that's alright, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 4:44

Isn't that good? I mean people need to be tougher. Isn't that eat a cup of concrete?

SPEAKER_01 4:49

But how do we how do we balance the need for people to be tougher and the fact that um childhood deaths have been declining because we've got things like choppers to the John Hunter?

SPEAKER_02 5:04

Yeah, good point. I I'll give you that. I think it's but I just feel a bit jealous when I see the chopper go and think about all the kids that got looked after, but not me.

SPEAKER_01 5:15

So you just want to have a ride in a helicopter, pretty much.

SPEAKER_02 5:18

Well, you can pay for that, but I don't want it to be because of a bike-related activity. Thanks.

SPEAKER_01 5:25

Fair enough. Yep, every ride is the one you want to come back from, right?

SPEAKER_02 5:31

That's right. And can I also just point out that I'm not supposed to talk while I ride because I fall off?

SPEAKER_01 5:36

Not every time. That only happened once, Lizzie. Yeah, and I'm here to tell you that it's a okay to talk and ride.

SPEAKER_02 5:45

Alright.

SPEAKER_01 5:47

We're supposed to be enjoying ourselves, we're out of house. And if that and if that enjoyment comes at the risk of being ruined because of a no talking policy. Yeah, you're right. I think live your life, live every day. That's what I reckon. I'm right, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:10

I should be Dr.

SPEAKER_01 6:11

Crash. You should be the MTB psychologist.

SPEAKER_02 6:16

I need to tell you about why I started riding. When I bought a bike about 10 years ago, and I went I and I like a laugh at myself. I went in. Oh, I run a mountain bike, but I can't I can't spend more than $500. And you know, you must just fucking lose it and roll your eyes. Like, a it's not really possible, and B, it's gonna be a piece of shit. I ended up spending $6.99. Yeah, there it is, which I felt was so much, yeah, you know, and like $700, you're kidding me. Yeah, you've got to be joking. And then, you know, obviously time passed and I learnt from that waste of money on.

SPEAKER_01 6:59

But did you get your $700 worth out of that bike?

SPEAKER_02 7:02

No, didn't even ride it.

SPEAKER_01 7:04

You know, you get a bloke that'll come in, bloke in his 50s, and you'll say, I want to buy a bike for some fitness. I talked to them about dollars per kilometre, that if they buy a cheap ship bike, it'll cost them three dollars a kilometre because they'll only ride it four times and do a total of 30k's on it.

SPEAKER_02 7:22

Yeah, but the problem is that a customer just thinks you're trying to upsell them because they don't yet get, yeah, because they aren't in the bike world, yeah, how much a $5,000 carbon bike will change your riding life. You can't ever tell that to that person because they just won't get it.

SPEAKER_01 7:44

No, they won't get it. Here's where honesty becomes the only thing you can sell, right?

SPEAKER_02 7:50

Yep. After my near-death experience as a child and riding bikes, I guess there was a time where as a youngster I must have given up on bikes.

SPEAKER_00 7:57

Right.

SPEAKER_02 7:58

Like I can't remember. And then the older I got, I started playing soccer and softball and baseball, and then boys came along and grog, so you know, and hangovers and sport and shit became less important until I started to get chronic pain in my early 30s, and then I started like doing a bit of running and a gym, and I just could never find a sport that didn't hurt me, right? And so I bought a bike in like 2016 or something.

SPEAKER_01 8:36

How much to spend on your first bike?

SPEAKER_02 8:38

That was my $700 bike, $700 bike, which I thought was the most expensive thing on earth.

SPEAKER_01 8:43

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 8:44

And do you remember what it was? I feel like it was a mongoose, right? It was like electric purple and pink, okay, and it was an absolute bucket of shit. Yeah, um, so I never rode it because it was uncomfortable. And then the pandemic hit, we moved to Adamstown to rent while we were building, and guess where Adamstown's right near Fernley and Glen Rock. Right. Ben had already been a mountain biker in his past, and so that began the process of me starting to learn to ride and upgrading multiple times with my bikes to where I'm at now.

SPEAKER_01 9:19

And this bike you're riding now?

SPEAKER_02 9:22

Oh, this is a Penny and Lux Trail, right? CF6 drill suspension carbon XC bike. Right, and I absolutely adore it. Does it have a name? Krusty Bitch.

SPEAKER_01 9:33

Crusty bitch. Is that what you call it on Strava?

SPEAKER_02 9:36

Yeah. So riding bikes has 50% fixed my chronic pain.

SPEAKER_01 9:43

Now that's great news. So your chronic pain is in your back, is it?

SPEAKER_02 9:47

Hips? Um no, well, I'm hypermobile, and so hypermobile people often live with pain.

SPEAKER_00 9:52

Right.

SPEAKER_02 9:52

Three rheumatologists told me I've got rheumatic um fibromyalgia.

SPEAKER_00 9:56

Right.

SPEAKER_02 9:57

I don't know, jury's out on that one in my mind. Um I'm fat, but shit happens. I work on that every day. You get nowhere.

SPEAKER_01 10:08

Yep. Um, well, you get somewhere. You're not the size you were when I first met you.

SPEAKER_02 10:13

No, well, I'm about 20 kegs smaller than that, but I've still got 20 kegs on.

SPEAKER_01 10:18

Well, these things they take a year to arrive and they take 10 years to depart.

SPEAKER_02 10:23

Yeah. But you know what, genetically, this is me, and I'm doing the best I can and I'm okay with me.

SPEAKER_01 10:30

Good. Do you have an internal monologue that that tells you something?

SPEAKER_02 10:35

Oh, that I'm like fat and not good enough, and so all that bullshit.

SPEAKER_01 10:41

Your voices inside your own head are negative, they're not positive, they're not saying, Oh, you're going alright. No, I'm very critical.

SPEAKER_02 10:48

However, I have been trying to master that. So, like on rides, I have like a mantra, yep, that I save a different one every day. Like, you know, I can do this and just repeat it over and over.

SPEAKER_01 11:03

Like, does it work for you?

SPEAKER_02 11:05

You're lapping people on the couch.

SPEAKER_01 11:07

Um, you're lapping people on the couch.

SPEAKER_02 11:10

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 11:10

That's great.

SPEAKER_02 11:11

It helps when you feel because I'm a bigger girl and I'm at the back often and I'm stressing that everyone's beating me and that I'm holding them up.

SPEAKER_01 11:21

Um, but you know your friends don't think that.

SPEAKER_02 11:24

I do know, but still it's hard for me, the person feeling it.

SPEAKER_01 11:28

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 11:29

Um, you know, like those mantras get me through when I need them.

SPEAKER_00 11:35

Good.

SPEAKER_02 11:35

But it's a matter of remembering to do it when you're in that bad head space.

SPEAKER_01 11:39

Yep. Are there days when you know that it would be bad if you for you if you got on your bike?

SPEAKER_02 11:45

Uh no.

unknown 11:47

No.

SPEAKER_02 11:48

Even when I'm injured, I've got footage of me riding one-legged with my broken, like my sore foot on a chair on my inside bike. The only thing that's bad for me is if I doesn't don't ride.

SPEAKER_01 12:03

Okay, very good. It's good that you know that. I often say I almost never want to get on the bike, but every time I do, I'm glad I did.

SPEAKER_02 12:10

Yeah, it's a bloody effort.

SPEAKER_01 12:12

It is an effort sometimes.

SPEAKER_02 12:14

And because, you know, we make it complicated with all our paraphernalia that we have.

SPEAKER_01 12:18

All our life shit, right?

SPEAKER_02 12:20

But like horns, groceries, oh yeah, just getting through life.

SPEAKER_01 12:25

Other people wanting, you know, time, time, commitment, and family and friends not always getting um how much commitment this is.

SPEAKER_02 12:36

Because you have to keep your fitness up. So you can't just ride once a month and expect to have a good time.

SPEAKER_01 12:43

Yeah, you can only do that with an e-bike.

SPEAKER_02 12:46

Yes, and so you know, you get the questions from people, oh, what are you doing this weekend? I guess you're riding. I'm like, yes.

SPEAKER_01 12:52

Yeah, because that's what I do. Yeah, that's what I do. Lizzie's honesty can be disarming. She could tell you where she is on the spectrum. Well, I don't know. All I know is that when you're friends with Lizzie, you know that her TMI moment is never far away.

SPEAKER_02 13:13

One of those shits that I have to do at home is Ben, he keeps wanting to root. I keep putting it off. Yeah. But you know, I had to go ride a bike. I said, Oh, can I do it when I get home from my bike ride? And he's like, Yep. And no, but then it w then it was dinner time.

SPEAKER_01 13:37

One of the things I've noticed is that cyclists view transport differently than most people. And I think this is because we know that there are viable options to just driving a car everywhere. You know, fuel's over three dollars a litre now. I haven't seen any uh, you know, car replacement bike purchases yet. But I think in another month, if it stays where it is, we'll start to see it.

SPEAKER_02 14:04

The problem is that we don't live in a 15-minute city.

SPEAKER_01 14:09

This came up this week. Now that petrol's so expensive, 15 minute cities are starting to look like a good idea. Now they always were good ideas, but there was this crazy opposition to them from who knows why. Well from the cookers, maybe from the petrochemical companies, right?

SPEAKER_02 14:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:31

That they're the ones that are most at risk from the from the installation of 15 minute cities.

SPEAKER_02 14:36

That's right. It takes me 50 minutes to drive 17 kilometers to work.

SPEAKER_01 14:40

And there it is.

SPEAKER_02 14:41

Like that's a Sydney.

SPEAKER_01 14:43

Yeah, it is a Sydney commute, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:45

Yeah, might as well move down there to get paid better.

SPEAKER_01 14:48

After riding for a while, Lizzie and I finally got around to discussing the big issues of who we are and what we believe. Here it is, there's the question. Who's your desert island person?

SPEAKER_02 15:01

My dog, my new dog. Look, I don't want to rag on my beautiful Ben, but he's not he's more suited to technical technology than living in on the land, shall we say.

SPEAKER_01 15:17

So you think that he would struggle um feeding himself? If Ben had a bike shop, would he be growing tomatoes out the back?

SPEAKER_02 15:25

I don't know. Put it this way, the other day Ben injured a skink and I had to dispose of it for him while he was crying.

SPEAKER_01 15:34

Wow. He's gonna be proud of himself for having that level of emotional availability, plus, he's gonna be angry at you for telling the story.

SPEAKER_02 15:44

Yeah, I turned him into a lover, not a fighter.

SPEAKER_01 15:46

A lover, not a fighter.

SPEAKER_02 15:47

And that's great, except when you're on a desert island when you need to live.

SPEAKER_01 15:50

Oh yeah, you'd be bored with that.

SPEAKER_02 15:53

My pop was a prisoner of war in Chengy and works on the Burma Swayam Railway. While in the camp, they had a little dog, probably a bit like Mole. Yeah, and um that dog lived for a fair bit until everyone got hungry enough and decided that he had to go.

SPEAKER_01 16:14

Well, it was the dog or it was one of the other inmates, right?

SPEAKER_02 16:19

They ate the dog. To my knowledge, they ate him, but my pop was a dog lover, hardcore dog lover, and he didn't eat him.

SPEAKER_01 16:28

Yeah, right. He maintained yeah, he said no I never ate any of the dog. But they did used to um because it's one meal a bit of protein and I'd rather eat.

SPEAKER_02 16:37

Yeah, and then your dog's dead.

SPEAKER_01 16:38

And now your dog's dead. Yeah, but um eating your friends is not it's not the best way to go.

SPEAKER_02 16:47

It's not, and then there's a fair bit of guilt associated with that.

SPEAKER_01 16:50

But if there was 30 people, those 30 people would pretty easily agree on which one of the 30 people should be the first one eaten. Well Lizzie, we're coming to the end of another episode, so I'd like to ask you if there's a message um motto, a thing that works for you, a message for yourself when you listen to this in however many years' time.

SPEAKER_02 17:26

Um I just think that me and everybody else needs to can really put yourself in other people's shoes because you don't know what other people are going through or what their partner what their heart is, why they act like they do, and that have compassion for yourself and others because that's why this world's going to shit. Because people just don't have um enough love for each other.

SPEAKER_00 17:53

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 17:54

In their families, in their workplaces, in their friend groups, in their homes, everywhere.

SPEAKER_01 18:00

Thanks very much. Lizzie, it's been wonderful talking to you. Lizzie, thanks very much for being part of the Mike on a Bike Podcast. It was great.

SPEAKER_02 18:09

Thank you.