Since beginning The Humble Vintage bike-hire service in Melbourne at the start of 2009, Matt Hurst has gone from strength to strength. Now, following the success of the cycling guide and map, Melbourne for Visitors and Casual Cyclists, Matt has embarked on a new adventure with Hardie Grant, The Casual Cyclist's Guide To Melbourne. Here, he guest blogs to tell us the story of how the book, the bikes, and the business came to be.

After starting the bike rental company The Humble Vintage in spring 2009, to my surprise I was often asked ‘what should we do today’? A lot of people would pull out maps so, with pen in hand, I would draw lines along roads, mark little asterisks at places of interest, write venue names in the margins, etc…

I had a bit of time on my hands that summer and wanted a graphic design project, so I started drawing what become Melbourne for Visitors and Casual Cyclists. With an A3 map on one side and a text-based guide on the other, it was printed on a friend’s old Risograph printer on warm recycled stock. The finished product turned out nicely and the response was great.

At the end of 2010, I was working on the fourth edition of the guide, while thinking it would be nice to do something more significant than the single A3 sheet, but had no idea what. Around this time Hardie Grant got in touch, saying they saw potential in a book.

Looking at other bike paths and ‘where to ride’ books, none of what was on offer really spoke to the people I know who ride around town. So I thought this was an opportunity to write a book about the city and the bike that had not been written yet.

But there was also an opportunity to engage with as many interesting locals as possible, which was a real driver. For a couple of months at the start of the year I emailed and called everyone I could think of – chefs, designers, architects, historians. I saw a postie cycling down Smith Street and stopped him. Likewise a courier who rode by me on Clarendon Street. I got lost in the State Library with crumbling old Melbourne-based journals from the 1880s, with beautiful illustrations and emotive language about this new device that liberated man from the horse and carriage.

(Image courtesy of Studio Pip & Co)

In the months that followed, endless late nights saw me settling into my sunroom til 4 or 5am, as the writing happened better the later it got. While I was writing, the contributions started coming in, and everyone’s enthusiasm really made it feel like something great was coming together.

In the end, the book is a collection of routes, rides, rants and raves about the city and the bike, written by me and an unusual gathering of Melbourne locals, most who ride, some who don’t.