The mornings bothers were forgotten in the heat and humidity of a quick 25km circuit on the Shogun (in thongs again) this afternoon. The heat was quite draining, but a little nap later in the evening was all that was required to feel refreshed again.
Posts tagged ‘Local Bike Routes’
Just a quick commute today to Pottsville for an on-site job. Rounded the trip out by riding around the Kanes/Wabba Road loop through to Cabba before home again. Managing a 27.0 km/hr average. Never dropping below middle ring and 4th gear, Why? I’m still trying to build up to the power/cadence required for successful little hill climbing on the Shogun. This requires me to unlearn all the easy riding gear habits of my lower geared Hybrid’s. Hopefully it won’t be much longer. Sometimes it takes a little bit of the enjoyment out of riding when you analyse everything during a ride….
Distance: 31.5 km on the Cypress.
Just thought I would post an image of the only part of My Commute which always scares me! You have been cruising along at about 30-35kms/hr with the 60kms/hour traffic to hit the climb to the top of Sextons Hill where the traffic merges to 80kms/hour and you have been riding along the 800-900mm verge against an Steel Armco Railing with lots of past evidence of bad driving only to hit this little beauty about 1/2 way up and no way of looking leisurely behind to see if trucks, 4WD’s or buses are about to take the left turn into Banora etc only to be confronted by NO Road surface space to make it past the Very Badly positioned Traffic Island. Sometimes I just ride over it and others I will turn into the intersection and wait for the traffic to clear before doing a U-turn to get back onto the Pacific Highway.
The Scary Bit on the ascent of Sextons Hill South Tweed Heads NSW
Thanks to Google Maps Street View….
Well what could you say? The event, to me was a quite over-rated affair.
A number of standouts being..
- Totally unco-ordinated
- Losing a bike rider less than 5kms from the start!
- No signs or signallers at critical intersections.
these were for the ride itself, which featured for me at least a couple of brushes with Eastern Brown Snakes and a 2 foot Goanna although NO Magpies! Also a long slog against an ever increasing NE headwind on the return ride (25-40 km/hr) with no shelter by anything resembling hills!
The Event, at which I lasted 10 minutes, was also, as classified by me, as…
- General feeling about the event - “A big group hug, with indifference to outsiders”.
- Lacking general information for “Guests“ (ie upon arrival, which was done in drips and drabs by the riders of Route #4 because of the lost rider [who was found safe and well riding with the leader], there was no marshaling areas etc)
- The person on the registration desk at the end was more interested in talking to their BUG mates than providing any pertinent information, even when queried!
- There was far too limited secure/safe parking
- Everything seemed disjointed and chaotic.
- Rider leaders etc were more interested in BUG fundraising by way of a raffel than the actual Bike2Bruns event.
- If you didn’t want to join their BUG then and there you were conveyed a pleasant feeling of irrelevance with a casual air of indifference. (ie left standing there with the same “You are dismissed” feeling you get after receiving a tongue lashing from a headmaster.)
All up a nice enough very FLAT 60 kilometer ride spoilt slightly by the addition of a lot of unnecessary crap. It will be quite a while before I bother to undertake another group ride such as this.
