Day 13: Rest Day on the Toolara/Tuan State Forest Boundary.

Woke up late, stayed in bed until I was starting to get hot and hungry. Dragged the bike out into the sun 100m away on the side of the road so the solar panel could do its thing. Today is slack so I faff a lot, emptying the bin and cleaning it out (it's amazing how much grot accumulates in the bottom of it), then cleaning my lenses and laptop screen. The latter had Hope pawprints on it as well as some suspicious smears that I suspect came from the same source. Then on to retruing the drive wheel - backed all the really tight spokes off half a turn, trued it then wound everything up half a turn. Hopefully that will settle in better now. I've also taken photos of the still-problematic cluster attachment. Turns out that there was too much bolt or not enough clearance, so that clunking I heard going up a hill a while ago was important. But it only lasted a few pedal strokes then went away... when the tail of the drive bolt broke off. So I'm now driving through a single 8mm bolt that's held in place by wishful thinking. This could be a bit sad, if it breaks I'll have to use a 6mm bolt and pedal very gently. But in happier news, I discovered that I can do donuts. Given a layer of loose gravel, because it's only the left hand rear wheel that's driven if I turn hard right (away from that wheel), and pedal hard circles the drive wheel loses traction and doesn't regain it, so I can do donuts. Yay!








Later on there was a bit of cloud and I thought the forecast showers might actually eventuate. But they blew over leaving us another clear, slightly chilly night. The mob arrived after this, and after a discussion about riding further (perhaps 5kms further), we decided to have dinner in daylight for once. I was thrilled :)




While I was lazing about, I thought it might be useful to mention the solar rig again. The panel now stays plugged in most of the time, and seems to collect enough charge to keep the battery happy just from being on top of the box during the day. At night I use it as a seat cover, so I don't have to sit on a dew-covered seat first thing in the morning. But when I do want to charge things up, I generally put the panel on the seat and point the quad into the sun as shown. That makes it easy to move to track the sun, and it's somewhere that it's unlikely to get damaged. Barring someone sitting on it, but hopefully it's a bit obvious for that.