Just got back from some road riding in Noosa. Those guys have got the most amazing roads over there. They are just unbelievably smooth. It was incredible how much quicker you are on those surfaces. It seems the harder you push the more you get out of the roads.

There are also cycle lanes everywhere. And the word cycle lane over there isn't a euphemsim for "glass collection area or shitty, patchy seal'. They are so wide and the regular traffic lanes are so wide that cars don't even feel close.

I went out with a group while I was over there and we were going over a bridge with traffic coming towards us and going past us. In ChCh you tense up ready for a wing mirror or some other near death experience but instead everyone just passed and there was heaps of room.

Makes you realise how poorly our roads are designed and constructed. We are light years behind what they have over there.

Yep, and whilst here, they make you take to the footpath in narrow areas (ie under the Heathcote m'way), in Noosa they just paint bike symbols in the middle of the road (ie bridges). Certainly a different perspective to Chch!! If my Lotto numbers ever turned up, Noosa is where I'd live in an instant