On 2006-10-29, ritcho (aka Bruce)
was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea:
>
> Hitchy Wrote:
>> I'll give ya bloody *novelty*.....Mt Macedon, 8am this morning riding
>> over the top & it starts snowing, -1 deg...oh well, methinks...could be
>> worse...& tho it did get worse....next minute its hailing bloody golf
>> balls!....Now I reckon me Met strad is awesome because of the huge
>> vents for airflow....I didn't reckon on getting concussion from being
>> attacked by golf balls!...bloody *novelty*...I reckon another few hours
>> & a few more stiff scotches (strictly medicinal you understand!) I might
>> be able to feel me nose again!
>
> You needed to wait until today. Cold, but not hailing. Mt Donna Buang
> was lovely for my first ride up there this morning.
I ended up doing a 150.06km ride (ok, I admit it, I did a few laps
around town when I realised I'd get home with 146km on the clock).
I went up to Baradine to have morning tea, then when I got back to
Bugaldie, I decided to go for a lap around the warrumbungles -- I knew
there was a road, and a sign said 57km to the national park (ie, I
would arrive at the park after having done 125km, with only another
40km to home past the observatory. But I took a "short cut"[1]. This
"short cut" saw me do about 31km of very poor condition dirt road. 1
puncture later, and a motorist who pulled up whilst I was fixing it
said "geez, you're a long way from Timor road. You probably just want
to go back into town and then come out the other way instead. Oh
well, the dirt road finishes in 10-12km, then you've got another 20 to
go". After 13km, I finally found the turnoff and bitumin. 44km of
very very slow lumpy and/or very soft dirt, on a road bike. Poor
bike. That works out to about 80km, of sealed road, doesn't it --
well when you calculate that you've got to go up and down every
corrugation
I bonked somewhere along there, and was averaging about
15km back into town on the bitumin. Ha, mum said the last part would
be easy -- all downhill. Except the several km long gradual climb
that I was doing at 12km/h.
So only took off 15 or so km from my intended route, added about 30km
of dirt on my intended route, and didn't get to go around the
warrumbungles, as my "short cut" veered to the north of the mountain
range, bringing me back where I turned off originally. Maybe next
time, eh?
I ended up being out on the bike pretty much all day -- 6 hours in the
end, plus a bit extra sunshine when eating and fixing all of 3
punctures (two of which because previous patches had failed -- it's
very hard to make a clean patch when there's red dirt getting every).
[1] Well, not really -- only had a memory of a very vague map to go
on, and had no idea whether my turnoff would be signposted, or where I
was otherwise meant to turn off. But I did look at the direction the
road seemed to be going in, and noted that the bungles *seemed* to be
petering out.
--
TimC
"If American bicycle advocacy leaders had championed the civil rights
movement, the "Dream" would have been reserved seating in the back
of the bus." - Jack R. Taylor
