Moz likes Bikes

Gardening!

2008-10-11T18:44:00.000+11:00

Today was another time I'm glad to own the quad. Since last posting Ben (TriSled) has added a Rohloff and two wheel drive. And 5kg I reckon, it's up to about 33kg without bin now. But it is excellent to ride now, traction is noticably improved and the Rohloff... is a Rohloff. So nice. I have a 30/50-ish double chainring on it which has a shifter but is pretty much loaded/unloaded gearing. Tyhe hub is geared down about 2:3 before the rear axle so gearing is pretty low. I could put a smaller chainring on (triple) to get decent gears for really steep hills when I'm loaded but I might wait until the warranty on the Rohloff expires.

Here's me weighing the beastie: (Click for large)

Total about 200kg of load. Felt quite good to ride (the garden shop is a long, gentle uphill from here so coming back is mostly a matter of occasional pedallingto get up slight rises in and overall downhill trend. I still managed to get a bit sweaty though.

More photos on moz.net.nz (Bibble is giving me the shits so I've just deleted the index file and left you to it)

Cheeky Transport xmas party

2007-12-02T21:18:00.000+11:00

My local bike shop have an annual party in the park with food and entertainment laid on. Pics and stuff on my site. I'm slightly sunburnt and very full of excellent food. Check out the photos...

Power Tool Selloff

2007-10-06T11:22:00.000+10:00

When Megan went overseas I bought a pile of tools and stuff off her, while she was in her "get rid of everything right now" mood, so I ended up with a few duplicates. Including some bulky power tools, so I'm selling those off. Pics and stuff at moz.net.nz, email me or ring me if you're interested.

Workshop construction continues, probably post more pics later but I'm still working on the bench, adding drawers right now, then a shelf. And waiting for Ben to send me bike bits.

Workshop!

2007-10-03T19:20:00.000+10:00

I've finally found a flat where I can actually build bikes. We have a single garage about 8m long by 3m wide with brick walls and no close residents. So I've started by installing 10 hooks along one wall to hang bikes on (and all the hooks are full, but we still have bikes left over). Between me (three bikes hanging, two not), Phuong (three bikes hanging) and Mitchell (four bikes hanging). Unfortunately that uses about 5m of wall and there's not much left for the quad and binbike (each about 2m long).

So I've bought a TIG welder and built a 2m long workbench that will eventually have a lockable shelf for the welder and tools, but right now just has a vice on it. This week I will hopefully get the shelf and drawers installed, and another shelf up in the garage to hold more of the stuff we seem to have accumulated.

I'll probably blog more about it, but mostly just update the page at Mozbike where I will describe the stuff I use to build the bikes you see here. You don't need lots of expensive tools, people like Alex have almost everything you need in a much smaller space and much lower cost, but I've been there and done that, and now I want something a little better. At Ken's place I built One Less Ute in a space exactly 5cm shorter than the frame, with no flat surfaces. It was not fun. Designing bikes to fit around the workshop is a bit of an avoidable limitation. So since it's my workshop, the bench is two metres long and there's a decent vice bolted to one end, and a nearly decent vice bolted to the other end. And I have a TIG welder. But I'm going to have to sell half the tools I got off Megan, having two circular saws, two power drills and a router is a bit much.

More details on Mozbike.com

20" Wheeled Commuter Bike

2007-10-03T19:07:00.000+10:00

I've destroyed two 8 speed Shitmano nexus hubs so far, they each lasted about 5000km before failing. I've decided they are just not designed for people like me. So I've got a third one in my commuter (a 26" wheel On-One "Inbred" singlespeed frame). I'm pretty happy with the bike except for the hub, but putting a proper hub into it would be quite tricky, and I'd have to buy another one (about $2000).

So instead I will spend way more than $2000 on a TIG welder, tools and tubing to build my own. I told you I was a really smart guy!

My plan at this stage is to put my 20" wheel Rohloff into a forth bike, this time a fairly lightweight commuting frame. Possibly even a frame that breaks in the middle so it packs smaller for transport. If the bike works I'll build one for Phuong too, as her existing 24" wheel MTB is somewhat on the heavy side for someone who only weighs 50kg or so.

But first there's tools to acquire, workshop to arrange, and bits to buy.

Rocco's version of One Less Ute

2007-09-19T18:13:00.000+10:00

I just got email from an italian called Rocco who was inspired by www.mozbike.com to create his own version of One Less Ute. it's very cool, and I like hearing from people that have done stuff like this with my help.

That's currently hosted on a site, www.piubici.org that promoted cycling in Milan which he's helped to set up. In Italian, for those who read that language. There's cool pictures for the rest of us.

Fancy Trailer

2007-09-17T16:29:00.000+10:00

I've been thinking about a replacement for MegaTrailer for a while now. MegaTrailer is big and old, and I've donated it to Bike Club. Basically, I'm trying to justify spending big bucks on a TIG welder and this is yet another project that will use it :)

Simple design, easy enough to execute, and should work quite well. I've got a proper write-up page on MozBike

Moving stuff on the quad

2007-08-26T19:39:00.000+10:00

Today was a little busy, I had megatrailer on the quad and was biking around the place for a couple of hours. Phuong went to a fan-dancing lesson and found a somewhat overstuffed couch and reclining armchair so we traded up. It's definitely better than our old couch (also found on the side of the road), which we put out the front and then neighbours in unit one grabbed it.

After our usual lunch at the Addison Road Organic markets (thanks Paul and Fiona) we rode off most of the way to work to pick up a single bed that Phuong found on Freecycle Sydney. That was not huge fun, Old Pyrmont Bridge road is pretty busy and there's not a lot of spare road space for moronists to go round me safely on the uphills. On the way back we found a queen size mattress so that got piled that on top. Then in Enmore we got a couch-frame for Phuong's futon base but luckily for me that turned out to be a lightweight steel frame rather than the big heavy wooden one that Kelly had. So, now we have a lounge organised. Yippee

Moving big things again

2007-08-24T22:47:00.000+10:00

As part of my ongoing (destructive) testing of the Trisled load-carrying quad I've been using it during our latest house move. Most of the work was done with a hired van, but we had a heap of stuff that wouldn't fit in the one trip, and I was keen to move by bike as much as possible. So I've been dragging stuff the couple of kilometres between flats (downhill, uphill, down, up, down then steep but short uphill... longest flat section is about 300m). Mostly I've been using BinBike because I'm riding that to work every day. That will carry most things, including Phuong's desk (1.2m long, tied to the rear rack) and it tows megatrailer for the ugly bits (my shelves which are 2.6m long). Of course, we destroyed another wheel doing that because megatrailer has cheap, trashed wheels from found BMX bikes on it.

But I've been using the quad for a few things. We got a washing machine the other day, so I took the bin off and put a bit of plywood in place, then rode off the get the machine. It turned out to be one of the new lightweight ones so that was no real hassle, but it attracted a certain amount of attention. Plus the weather has responded to our move by raining with some enthusiasm, so I've been using the bins to keep stuff dry as I move it.

This weekend I will be taking it apart and shipping the rear end back to Ben for a com plete rebuild, he's putting a Rohloff in it and hopefully two wheel drive. That should solve most of the current problems, so I can work on finding new ones :)

Longbikes rock!

2007-08-24T22:34:00.000+10:00

I was reminded today of my early load bikes based on the Long John design. There's now an online archive of the original designs at www.longjohn.org. My ones were of course a bit more agricultural looking, but they worked pretty well I think. The prototype worked but the steering sucked a bit, there's subtleties in the pushrod steering that take a bit of working through. I started with the simple, obvious style everyone else uses but couldn't get enough steering movement to make me happy. After a bit of faffing I ended up with the thing shown that worked better but still not very well.

The final version was called "one less ute", was made from chrome moly steel and was very light for its carrying capacity - around 20kg of bike could carry over 100kg of load despite the bike being nearly 3m long. The commercial bikes tend to be heavier than that, carry less, and have a much smaller load platform - mine was 1.5m long by 600mm wide. Plus the load platform folded upwards making the bike very narrow when folded, so I could park it in a hallway.

Back in Sydney

2007-08-05T11:36:00.000+10:00

I'm back, I'm working, I'm staying at Phuong's place while I look for a flat, and I'm about to go to a meeting. So instead I'm sitting at home reading blogs and I found this excellent music video... "Code Monkey" by Jonathan Coulton

Soon I will go to the Bike Film Festival meeting. Really.

Day 29: Cunningham's Gap to Warwick

2007-07-25T19:51:00.000+10:00

Woke at 4:30am for a pee, turned on phone to check time and got another SMS from Robyn hoping I'm ok despite her failure to help. Too early, so back to sleep. Woke again about 6:30am and got up properly. Photo times will spell out exact schedule, but shortly after I started I got to a sign "8% uphill next 5.7km". Yay.

Sure enough, 7.7km into the day I'm at the top of Cunningham's Gap and it's definitely rain forest... it's raining. I take photos of wet rainforest, wet cars, wet signs and so on. Stats for the uphill: 7.7km, 1:14 taken, 6.22km/h average speed, 18km/h max. I am about50km from Warwick, so will load ap, find raincoat,and venture slowly downhill. If it was dry I'd want to go really really fast, but in the wet with brakes only on the lightly loaded front wheels... no.

Later: turns out that the downhill is only steep-ish for 3km, then there's a long cruise down the valley at about 25kph with a gentle tail wind. Road surface ranges from amazingly good to appalling, so my speed sometimes drops below 20kph on the gentle downhills! Got caught by a local media photographer going into town, he's doing one of the "24 photos in 24 hours" assignments so I might make it into the local paper. Hopefully he'll ring me and I can scrounge copies of the shots, coz there looks like a cople of nice ones. I was a bit flat at that point, bad road surfaces make it hard to stay cheerful especially on drizzly days... wah wah wah, I'm just waiting to go home really.

But I make it into Warwick by 11am, then head to the info centre to book a bus ticket. They direct me to a bus company who can't help because their computer is down. So I use the 13... number from a phone box. The bike is at the mercy of the driver (as expected) but it's half price if it's disassembled... this could be fun. How hard am I willing to work to make the quad look disassembled? To save $27? Answer: not very hard.

Plan for the rest of the day involves finding a shower and internet, eating and trying to stay awake until the bus arrives at 10pm. Yay.

Later: public internet access here sucks. Two options, both are locked down and IE-only, so I can't upload photos. So I read, wait, eat and read until 10pm, the bike goes under the bus, I go into the bus, I get to sleep sitting up for the night. Yay.

Day 28: Boonah Shire

2007-07-25T19:50:00.000+10:00

Finally got to see a decent map and discovered that the "no good options" part is true, it's either crud roads then the Gold Coast, or lots of hills.

Woke into first light, decided I couldn't be bothered and drowsed until about 7am. Either way, into bed before sunset, alseep by probably 6pm, then not awake until nearly 6am! Holidays!

Rode about 25km into Boonah township this morning, noting yet another "NO DAMS" campaign on the way, and wondered what it is with all the locality signs along the way. None of them seem to have a shop or even a couple of houses opposite each other, but they all get a nameplate. Ah well, whatever. Going into Boonah there's an 8% downhill" sign but that only got me up to about 57km/hr... taking all that weight out has made a real difference. In Boonah I ambled around wasting time and getting a bit carried away with the shopping. Rang Phuong and chatted, have decided that just biking around aimlessly isn't really helping, I feel a bit bored and listless. So I'm going to get on the bus soonish and start looking for a flat in Sydney.

Then found decent internet access and $7 got me about an hour. Time enough to find my FTP password and upload the last lot of photos, then paste in the blog entries and spend a lot of time playing with email. Luckily nothing from Phuong coz those take a long time to read and reply to, but she was with me at the time and we didn't have internet access. Grabbed seom Google maps screenshots as a rough guide so I don't get quite so lost in the next few days.

The info centre at Boonah also gave me a paper map that has more details at least down to the NSW border, and that is useful. A map with distances and stuff! So now that I've ridden 15km out of Boonah and broken the axle bolt in the quad again, I can spend some time typing while I ponder the newer revised plan. I've put another mild steel bolt into the axle, so I can probably go another 500km or so on that before it too breaks. Or it might fail in Cunninghams Gap which the highway I'm now on apparently goes through.

So I have 59km through the gap into Freestone where I join the New England Highway which will hopefully have a selection of buses running through it and I can get to Sydney fairly cheaply. I'm tempted to pack up the quad and courier it straight to Ben, but that would leave me with a lot of gear and no way to carry it, plus I don't really want the quad to be in Melbun. Ben's building a new back end with better bearings (did I mention that the new bearing is failing already?) and better gearing, but the trade-off is that the intermediate drive will have higher losses all the time, rather than tragic losses every 1000km or so when the bearings fail. Or if you're a normal user, they'd probably not fail at all :)

So my plan today is to ride another 30km or so to the start of the hill, or until I find somewhere nice to camp. Or until the sun comes out properly. Or something. Patchy cloud, every time I think it's cool enough to ride the sun comes back out, but it's still not all that warm. I dunno, I'm inj a crappy picnic area and it doesn't feel very restful so I want to keep going, so probably I'll just ride another 5km to Aratula, then on until I find a camping spot. Phuong just texted to say the greyhound bus leaves Warwick at 9:55pm daily and gets to Sydney 14 hours later. So I can panic and try to do another 80km in ... 7 hours, including the gap. Or I can lie back, take it easy, and get into Sydney on Wednesday sometime. Then Phuong goes to Melbourne on Thursday for a week on a school outing. OK, time to pack up and move on.

later: Rode through Aratula which was basically two roadhouses and a motel, didn't stop. The road was nice though, smotth seal and a decent shoulder. About 5km later started climbing and have been climbing since (a whole 'nother 5km or so). I'm camped on a "national trail" that has glyphs for horse riders and bushwalkers, and the track quality certainly does not suit bicycles. But, as with so much of Australia, it's definitely seen a lot of motor vehicles. It gets me 100m or so off the highway and around behind a bit of a ridge so the road noise is not too bad. I didn't get here until just on sunset, and by now (6pm) it's definitely getting dark. I'm also definitely up a bit on the daytime level, but right now I'm feeding mosquitoes and not enjoying it, so off to bed.

Stats: 55.7km today in 4 hours, 13.76km/h average and 56.76km/h maximum. 879km total on the odometer.

Day 27: To Beuadesert and a bit

2007-07-23T11:26:00.003+10:00

It's Sunday the 22nd of July.

Woke as planned, had breakfast at the station then kissed Phuong goodbye on the 5:45 to the city. Sad, but I'll see her again in 10 days or so back in Sydney. My train doesn't arrive for 45 minutes, then it turns out that the timetable I have is only partial, or I misread it or something, because once I get off another train goes past a few minutes later. Perhaps I could have gone to the gold coast on a suburban train? Who knows. I wander off down local roads looking for useful signs, but somehow end up looking at the M1 motorway despite my best efforts. I'm somewhat handicapped by having a Brisbane map that ends at Beenleigh then a gap until my NSW map starts at Tweed Heads. So I use info centre maps and "welcome to the district" signs to give me vague guidance. This leads me to see signs like "Beenleigh 7km" about 12km after I've left Beenleigh, when I didn't want to go there in the first place. Bah!

Motorbikes everywhere, it seems that the minor roads make great entertainment for motorcyclists. They pass in one and twos and the occasional swarm. I stop for a chat with one bunch who are standing around a slightly dented motorbike. Not sure of the story, was too busy answering questions about my bike and why I'm riding.

I ride through Tamborine and into Beaudesert, so named because despite it being fairly busy the only things open are servos, and the main event is a meeting of the Monaro club (they all own Holden Monaro's, going by the big row of them there). I have pizza for lunch (crappy chain pizza) and get my first flat tyre for quite a while in the carpark of the (closed) Coles. I buy fruit and veges at a stall and milk at a corner store, then ride out towards Warwick. That's about 140km from here, so it'll be a couple of days. By the look of the map, there's nothing significant on the road either so I might be eating rice and two minute noodles for a while. But I manage to scrounge a shower and take advantage of the facilities to do a bit of washing as well.

12km out of Beaudesert the cropland finally seems to be thinning out, I see a few stands of trees and find a spot just off the road to camp for a while. It's noisy though, the road is busier than I expected. But there are farms and fences everywhere, so I'm reluctant to park the quad and wander away from the road. Hopefully the traffic will thin out, I really want a good night's sleep to recover from all the Phuong-related wake ups in the night. She doesn't need as much sleep as I do, and is more nervous bush camping, so I get woken up a lot. Last night a possum chewed its way into our garbage bag going after fruit bread crumbs, so about 11pm we both woke up and faffed about getting the food packed up and inside the tent (instead of just in the vestibule).

The major bummer today is that I didn't tie my washing on well enough, so I've lost a sock. I also forgot to turn the solar panel/battery connection on, so I've been carefully collecting photons into a disconnected battery all day. Hopefully the battery is ok with that, I'm currently sucking a couple of amps to keep the laptop happy but at least the panel is on so it'll have an hour or so of recovery charging tonight then more tomorrow. Allegedly the charge controller has a blocking diode in it, so I pulled the blocking diode off the panel but now the meter shows 20mA of discharge when the panel is plugged in but there's no sun. But Phuong has the soldering iron so I can't fix that very easily, I'll just have to live with it.

Stats: 75km today in 5:14, avg 14.3km/h max 57. Total 823km in 57:16 (14.2km/h average overall). Lots of undulating roads today, many long slow sections where I was barely at walking pace. I suspect I'm higher up than when I started as well, so at some point I should get a faster day when I mostly go downhill. Or if I get the bus in Armidale or somewhere I might do the downhill on the bus.

Day 26: Still around Mt Gravatt

2007-07-23T11:26:00.001+10:00

Woke up late, cuddled for a bit, ate breakfast, then Phuong wandered off to find railway stations with disabled access so she can get her bike on the platform easily. Have decided to stay here another day since there are very few people using the track and we're not very visible from it... and I'm very lazy. So I spend the day reading and sleeping while Phuong rides a lazy 10km or so shopping and looking at trains. Her conclusion is that it's going to involve stairs, so since I have to get up when she does anyway (she's taking the tent), I might as well go with her to the station and help lug her bike up and down stairs. We're both riding quite light bikes now that all the CANC-owned stuff is gone and our "group" gear is mostly gadgets that I'm not willing to donate to CANC (Maurice's solar panel and so on). I'm down to perhaps 70kg including 30kg for the quad (those two giant bins probably weigh 10kg between them, and suddenly a fairing doesn't seem so heavy after all). So the new plan is that we wake at 4:30am, pack up and ride to Banoon station, Phuong goes up and down stairs to the city-bound platform and I take the train 20km or so to get out of the worst of the city. The bike plan booklet doesn't really help this far out in the 'burbs, there don't seem to be any coherent routes and the main egress is via the motorway. So, train to Loonlea or somewhere, then ride.

Day 25: Around Mt Gravatt

2007-07-23T11:25:00.002+10:00

Phuong has hung out with me for the day, and seems pretty resigned to spending time with me rather than on CANC. But since her "week on the Cycle" turned out to mostly consist of riding into Brisbane, hanging out, then riding out for a total of three days of actual riding in the week she doesn't seem too unhappy.

We camped in the forest park about 10m off a track then early this morning packed up and from 7am sat in the nearby cemetery in the sun cooking rice for breakfast. Then I sent her back to look for campsites while I packed her panniers into the quad then read science magazines in the sun. Ah, sunshine :) Most of the day was spent shopping for food and reading material - Phuong has 12 hours or so on the train on Sunday to fill in, and I'm going to be slacking around for the next week or so. I've rung work and they're happy to see me back whenever I get back... things are still busy. Megan is still in Sydney, she will hopefully ring me tonight and we can catch up a bit and I might be able to help her out now that I'll be back sooner than expected.

Came back through the uni and showered in a disabled toilet, with me washing all the clothes I was wearing as well as shaving. So nice to be clean... after a whole one night without a shower. Back in Phuong's campsite, which turned out to be very close to the one I'd selected in the dark last night. Bizarre, but in a way not surprising as there's only once decent sealed path through the forest and the quad really doesn't do very well on narrow gravel paths. So now we're 30 or 40 metres further off that path from where we were last night. Closer to the motorway, further from the track and quite unlikely to be seen I think. And less likely to be something people care about.

Phuong just got mugged by a kookaburra. She had just cooked two minute noodles when the bird knocked the billy over, spilling half the noodles on the ground, then sat a metre away waiting for her to leave so it could snaffle her dinner. She is not pleased. I expect the bird will also not be pleased when it discovers just how bad two minute noodles taste.

Phuong: Two minute noodles don't taste bad!!!

All packed up by 5pm and inside the tent after dinner. Now to read and talk for a while.

The plan now is that we ride further out towards the end of a suburban train line tomorrow, then on Sunday Phuong trains into town nice and early for her ride back to Sydney. I will ride south for a week or so by myself and chill out a bit, then bus back. The quad will not go in a bike box, so I don't like my chances of getting it on a countrylink train. But the bus companies should have no problem with it as it will go under a big bus just fine. Even FireFly or Macaffertys should be able to fit it in but since they have less luggage space it might be tight if the bus is full. I will have to see.

Day 24: In Brisbane.

2007-07-23T11:25:00.001+10:00

Our meeting doesn't start until 9am, or 10am as it turns out Beck lied in an attempt to get the group somewhere on time. Phuong and I left early so we could chase train tickets, she's now going home on Sunday morning so gets to spend Sunday on the train. And she has to check in at 6:30am which means leaving Beenleigh at about 5:45am. Ow! But at least she gets sleep on Sunday night rather than arriving in Sydney just before her first lecture. We catch the group in a cafe next to the HQ and Phuong has breakfast number two with everyone else.

Meeting starts more or less on time, by a bit after 10 we have a plan for the pre-11am checkin, the Evan and Cassie go to do a school visit while everyone else works on the script for the presentation tonight. The check-in is even worse than usual, Valerie starts with a 20-minute dramatisation of her solo ride to Paul's place from CREEC the other night, which basically means she rejects the idea of minimising motor vehicle use on the ride, she would rather not have to make hard choices. But since the original discussion was framed in terms of sustainability, she can't attack that directly and instead focuses on the "counting grams of carbon" obsession of certain members of the group, their white male privilege and how that allows them to have better gear and thus an easier time of the riding. June's talk is more about her struggle yesterday and being made to feel guilty about using the train. People give me dirty looks, assuming I was involved. Beck is concerned that the ride focus more on anti-nuke issues and less on sustainability and other "mixed messages". Phuong is brief, so am I (we're running out of time), I mention that attacking straight-white-males is an easy out for the group but also frees me from any responsibility for my actions - it's not as if I can stop being a SWM. Evan is also unhappy about that attack, but more politely. We discuss the vehicle thing a little, then the group decide that once again motor vehicle use is entirely up to individuals. After this we get into a justification spiral, where people are purely competing for victim status, which prompts Cassie to make a particularly nasty personal attack that is one step too far for me, on top of all the other shit, so I leave.

Phuong and I bail back to Mandy's place and I vent for a while, then chat to Mandy briefly before we ride off at about 3pm to bush camp near Mount Gravatt.

This is the end of CANC III for me. This sort of uncontrolled encounter group stuff is not comfortable for me, and the personal attacks were just too much. Similar things happened on CANC II, which makes me suspect that this ride will not get any better. At some point I'll do a more analytical retrospective, and a bit of a write-up of what went wrong.

Sorry to those who were expecting me to ride the full distance.

Day 23: To Brisbane

2007-07-23T11:24:00.002+10:00

The plan for today is a bit tense. Valerie needs to ride about 10km to catch up with us after last night, then we all ride 2km to the Steritech plant for a brunch/protest until 11am, then we have 4 hours to ride 50km into Brisbane for a 3pm media event with the ABC. We have local guides, but that's still faster than the group as a whole normally travels and meals will be at odd times.

Woke late because we were inside with the blinds pulled, heard the rest of the group moving around and Phuong was starting to get restless so we got up. Breakfast was the usual confusion in someone else's kitchen then wandered out eating and starting to locate my gear. Evan was running a bike maintenance workshop looking at Valerie's gears and Beck's bike in general - she bought a pile of new bike bits up and Evan has been slowly adding them to her bike as we go.

Left Sue's place and travelled a whopping 2km to the Steritech plant for a wee protest and brunch organised by the locals. It's changed, there's now a biodiesel plant where the castle was and more development in general. The Steritech people apparently weren't expecting us as the gates were open, but the biodiesel place shut theirs. Bizarre. We hung out, got talked to, ate and met up with a few cyclists who had travelled up from Brisbane to ride in with us.

Left to ride 50kms at about 11am, as scheduled. Or possibly 35km to 40km depending on who you talk to. Sean Marler (who organised a few Cycle for Old Growth Forests or COGF's) has laid out a route mostly on cycleways and including some nice off road paths which we proceed to amble along after we survive the first couple of sections of nasty 4 lane road. The paths are excellent and Sean's directions (one copy each!) are pretty easy to understand, if showing signs of coming from a map rather than knowing the route.

Queensland drivers see to be well used to the "cyclists can use footpath" laws, and expect or demands that we do so. It's not so much that the average motorist is worse than in Sydney, there's the usual range from very polite through to careless, it's that the few aggressive motorists seem to be worse than their equivalents in Sydney. So riding on the road is a little more risky and noticeably less pleasant. The road-builders operate on the same assumption, with missing shoulders on many roads (especially minor roads) and very little on-road provision for cyclists... except where it goes completely the other way and there are great cycle lanes and signage. The signage is significantly better than Sydney, and I get the impression that aside from the obnoxious and omnipresent "cyclists must dismount to cross road" signs, it's quite easy to get around Brisbane using primarily or only the cycleways... hence the rude shock motorists get when they encounter a cyclists actually using the road.

After a while it becomes obvious that the ambling pace we've set is not going to get us to Brisbane Parliament in time for the 3pm appointment with the ABC. The group do no really seem inclined to worry about this until Evan and me go a bit spastic at about 2pm when we stop for a break and ice blocks (thanks Naima). So we split into a fast group and a slow group, only the native guides decide that they are the fast group and sprint off without any CANC cyclists with them., Eventually Evan, Georgie, Cassie, Phuong and I catch up with them when they stop after realising that they'd made a mistake. So our sprint through the wetlands was hard and didn't get a lot better once we hit the roads again. We decided to take the direct route, with much discussion amongst the guides as to the best way. What we used was pretty good, the hills were bearable but the traffic was a bit harsh. Evan was fading (again) for the last hour, I really don't think he's getting enough rest (or sleep, or anything really).

Arrived at Parliament about 4pm, well after the ABC had gone. It turns out that we covered just under 50km even with the shortcuts, meaning that my pessimism was once again right on the nail, and the people who went "we can go slow, it's only 35-40km" were... um, optimistic. Food not Bombs were there to meet us, along with a couple of antinuke types and a woman from Triple-Z (student radio). So she interviewed a few of us and we ate, then June arrived having had gear trouble and caught the train. By 5pm John was anxious to run off and see Mandy, his partner and provider of accommodation. I weasel my way into an early shower with him, so we struggle along while he restrains himself to the crawl that Phuong and I can manage. Shortly after we left the rest of the crew arrived, having had a much easier ride (55km in 6 hours rather than trying to do the last 20km in an hour but taking 90 minutes).

We end up with the fast group at Mandy's house and other people somewhere else, with a meeting at a conservation group HQ the next day. Dinner for me is rice, but apparently there was a curry later - Phuong and I disappear to the tent outside before that happens, having had showers and food. Mandy's place is pretty nice, backs onto the river, has a jetty and pool... and a bit of flat grass by the pool for the tent. She has a flat downstairs to put us in, but we share her kitchen. She's very cool, and John is a great supporter of the ride, after putting us up in his forest home he's persuaded Mandy to do the same! Yay!

Total Distance: 57.7km, 3:54 time, 14.6km/h average, 48km/h max. Total 699km in 47:43.

About 2km from Sue's to the Steritech Irradiation Plant, then 50km to Parliament in Brisbane of which the last 20km we sprinted in just over an hour (hard with the hills, erratic cycleways and heavy loads),then another 5km to Mandy's place.

Day 22: CREEC (Phuong)

2007-07-23T11:24:00.001+10:00

Phuong says:

We woke up and packed and June was ready to go, which was great! June had suggested we should go to Morayfields Shopping Centre, which was halfway towards tonight's destination, to do a stall there. So that's what we did. The stall didn't last too long before we were asked to move along by a friendly security guard. So we continued our trip. The ride was slow and quite comfortable. The weather was great and there wasn't much wind at all. We arrived at CREEC around 1pm. I spotted the playground that they had and proceeded to run around and play for a while and was shortly joined by Moz and June. There was a really cool earth-moving stationary playground toy that I'd never seen before and it was really cool! Moz and I decided to take a nap underneath the sails around the back. We woke up a couple of hours later to find Cassie had arrived. Moz, Cassie and I later cycled up the road (me cycling the Quad with Moz in the back) to find the pub 'cause we were craving for wedges. After filling our stomachs I chauffeured Moz back to the CREEC. Everyone else had arrived at that time (barring Evan, who we later discovered was riding his bike to where we were rather than catching the train). Paul was there as I was pulling up to the building and he had a go at riding the Quad. We all ate dinner and chatted to the other people who later arrived. The public meeting began and soon it was late and dark. Time to go home. Valerie wasn't going to be able to cycle the 10km to Sue's place and so took up the offer of Paul to sleep at his place, which was 1km away, that evening. So we set off into the night in one long line of flashing lights until we eventually arrived at Sue's. Moz and I quickly jumped on the offer of a bed and quickly took a shower and went to sleep. Others stayed up and chatted for a while before going off to bed. I'm finally starting to ride!

Day 22: CREEC - Caboulture Regional Environmental Education Centre and Sue's place

2007-07-23T11:22:00.000+10:00

An extremely easy day to day - the predicted distance is 14km :) We laze about as planned then head up the road to a shopping centre to buy junk food and June wants to try a stall. As expected it's fairly hard but the shopping is good. Except that I end up walking about 2 kilometres inside the bloody mall as I traipse up and down looking for stuff. Batteries at the opposite end of the mall to where I started, then internet access right back down the other end of a T-shaped mall, then finally back out the end of the T. But wait, must go back and visit more shops. But eventually that's over and with gentle prompting from a security guard we proceed towards CREEC.

Which turns out to be as far away as advertised (Whereis.com.au is like that), except that it's not number 98 in the street, it's about 500m past that house. We find it anyway, then wander in and chat to Wayne who works there since it's not even close to the 3pm official arrival time. We left the mall about 11, it was maybe 8km from the mall to CREEC... 3 hours of lazing about and napping until the group arrive.

Then it's all organising dinner, running round in circles... and discovering that public meeting consists of us, a couple of anti-nuke activists and a couple of members of The Greens who have an interest in nukes. So a couple of hours later we've learned a little and are ready to depart into stinging cold air for a 10km ride to Sue's place. Valerie is going to go to Paul's place about a kilometre away because Hope is not into night rides or cold air, then meet us tomorrow.

Day 21: rest day in Caboulture (Phuong)

2007-07-23T11:21:00.000+10:00

Phuong says:

Yesterday we had meetings. I cooked everyone dinner so I could get out of attending the meeting. Apparently the meeting was about group dynamics and how it had previously been operating, so no one really felt I had to attend. Which was good. Paul (guy from The Greens) rocked up to greet us. He had arranged for our free campsite and was coming to say hi. We stood around and spoke for a while, Evan held a bicycle workshop to fix someone's bike and we had dinner. Dinner was followed by another meeting about where and when it might be acceptable to use a motor vehicle. I can't quite remember the phrasing, but it was something along the lines of "in cases of distress, danger, sickness". And so that discussion went quite well. Evan left to go back to his brother's place, and everyone else proceeded to go to sleep. Cassie left and slept at her friend's place.

Today I rode the Quad into town with Moz in the bin, so it was quite entertaining to see the look on people's faces when they saw what was happening. We went grocery shopping and eventually found a library with free internet access. I rode around to find other bike shops while Moz used the library facilities. We later took the Quad to have its spokes fixed, then rode back to camp. June had wondered over to the campsite about 100m from ours and had friendly chats with the people there. They had a fire so June seemed to quite enjoy standing around there as it was getting dark. We agreed to leave around 10am tomorrow in order to continue the ride. So today was another relaxing day. Well, except maybe for Phuong who's carrying about 70kg I think, more than her own bodyweight in junk. Half of which is mine... an 8kg tent instead of a 2kg hammock, so that we can sleep together for instance. I'm not complaining :)

Day 21: rest day in Caboulture

2007-07-16T10:00:00.001+10:00

Beck, Valerie, Robyn and Gina are riding off to Bribie Island for tonight, leaving June, Phuong and me to laze around camp. Cassie is having another day off to do personal stuff but still feeling guilty for not going to look after her mother (who is sick). The plan for us lazy types is that I go into town to shop and upload more blog, then come back here so June can got hassle mall people over lunch. Phuong is going to clean stuff up and try to work out what food we have. Evan is at his brother's place and I was going to join him but think I'll probably just use an internet cafe in town instead. Easier and faster... no half hour train trip each way.

Am currently in the Caboulture library using free internet. Phuong is doing the pedalling, I'm a backseat driver while we shop.

Stats: no loaded riding, very little work. Did about 15km, half of that carrying Phuong, half being carried by Phuong.

Day 20: Landsborough to Phuong

2007-07-16T09:59:00.001+10:00

Woke around 6am, packed up and wandered over to the food area to discover that the others had cleaned and packed up a fair bit last night. Assembled rice and powdered milk then packed everything else while that sat (to make the milk taste better). Did not especially feel like eating, felt like riding, but ate anyway. Knees a little sore, muscles very tired, would have much preferred the 30km motorway option yesterday. Such is life, but try telling my legs that.

On the road a bit before seven I think, basically grinding along local roads built by cyclist-hating morons counting the kilometres and thinking of Phuong. About 25km later I reach the showgrounds, which luckily are on our side of town. Finding officials is easier than expected, I'm kinda wandering around the markets when a PA announcement directs me (well, ok, some woman they'd misplaced) to the office where I find Bryce and he agrees to guide me to our camping spot. There's quite a lot of camping going on, but way down the far end is a clear spot that's well out of the way but has showers and toilets. This is home! And it's free. And the showers are truly excellent, being the old high-volume units with apparently unlimited hot water... bliss!

I have no idea where anyone else is, so I post windmills to guide everyone else the last 100m, SMS directions to all and sundry then just pile all my sh... gear in one place, put the fly over it, then wander into town. The quad fair flies when it's empty, definitely undergeared... top gear lets me cruise at ~30kph spinning comfortably, but any faster requires concentrated spinning effort. So 30kph it is. Town is easy except that everyone seems to be headed for the showgrounds and the markets there, so there's lots of traffic. I get directions to a supermarket (hidden in an otherwise-closed shopping centre) and buy soap, shavers and food for the day. Then on my way back... PHUONG!!

Big grins and hugs later I grab some stuff off her overloaded bike and we cruise back to camp. Some faffing later we get the tent cool enough that we can stand being in it and have some private time. Or as Valerie calls it "being presumptuous". About 1pm the rest of the crew start arriving after their stall in the markets so Phuong gets a bunch of new names to forget and we have lunch again.

Evan and Gina are of course late for our 3pm meeting, I ring and they're due to arrive at the train station about 3:07pm, so rather than garble directions I take off with the empty bin and Phuong to meet them. Gina jumps in the back with some stuff and plays with the camera while Evan rides her bike. We're in camp and all ready to start faffing again at 3:30 or so. Phuong takes baby photos. Lots of baby photos.

The meeting starts with a check-in that lasts until nearly dinner time, so we have a pee break and bike servicing workshop then dinner before we get onto the follow-up topics, most controversially the car dependence one. People have been using cars just the way they would if they were your average ecovandal, and I've been getting increasingly cranky about it. Most notably one rider who seems to want full credit for being on the ride and therefore being a hard-core cyclist, but their threshold for "too hard, use a car" seems to be "if it's slightly easier". So we talk through that a bit and decide that billeting is not the way to go because it splits us up all over town and makes us dependent on being driven back to the meeting point at the convenience of our hosts. There's general agreement that we need to lift the threshold at which cars become an option. I express the idea that people who have left the ride can do whatever they want, but that riders have an obligation to fulfill the principles of the ride, sustainability not least amongst them. Supporters can do whatever, but they don't get involved in decision making. The remaining tension is over "days off" and what counts as one, I expect that Cassie will continue her pattern of frequently visiting friends along the way, or more accurately, getting friends to drive her around.

I also point out that we as a group need to be willing to stop riding early if there's a problem, and not fixate too much on making the destination every day. Especially because the bail-to-car option is unlikely to be available to Evan and I, as either of us would need an empty van or truck and a bit of time to get our bikes into a motor vehicle. But one thing I've been doing is kind of being ready to ride back 10km or so if the group needs to stop early, but I think only Evan knew that.

It's been interesting realising that my "green lifestyle" is quite different to many other peoples. It's something I kind of knew, but I still get regularly surprised at "environmentalists" who have all the same bad habits as their non-aware compaitriots. Or often, they just never challenge themselves to meet the standards they want others to meet - it seems deeply hypocritical to me at least that anyone would claim to be a greenie and still be able to easily reduce their energy consumption by the same 20% as everyone else in Australia, just by (say) reducing standby power use, using efficient lighting (and less of it), driving less and so on.

Anyway, the meeting goes better overall than I expected, and it's even a bit shorter. Phuong cooked dinner and managed not to turn into a kitchen nazi over the messiness that some people revel in. Sleeping with Phuong kinda works, she was cold and I was a bit constrained but I think we're happy, and the cold thing is vulnerable to technical solutions (the best kind :)

Stats: 33km, 2:06, 15.8km/h, 39km/h max (on flat ground :).

Day 19: Nambour to Landsborough/Steve Irwin's Australian Zoo.

2007-07-16T09:58:00.000+10:00

Up at six-ish and pack up ready to start playing with bikes and bamboo poles. Bruce has a workshop so I can drill holes for windmills in all the poles. Plus Beck has a rack for Robyn's bike as well as more bits to fit to hers. Robyn and I manage her new rack after Evan strips the spring-hook off it, and I find stainless bolts to replace the crappy zinc plated steel ones. Then it's more adjustments to give her heel clearance and I'm still out the gate at the scheduled 9am. So is Evan,which is a major acheivement!

9:30 sees us mostly assembled at the showgrounds for an unofficial anti-nuke parade that would almost be Critical Mass except for the car at the front. We do a couple of laps of the town centre then stop at the enviro centre to donate photos for a press release and have a cup of tea. It's after lunchtime now, so we head out to the organic shop a few kilometres from town to shop for staples and eat. A few nasty hills separate town from those shops and my knees do not like it at all. Evan is having the same problem, even though we're both carrying less than we were yesterday. Makes for a grumpy ride.

The locals lead us out of town and through a series of winding, hilly byways that apparently make for a nice ride. I'm not in the mood, I'd rather cruise down a nice busy motorway with lots of traffic, no hills and nice straight lines. A short, easy day is the requirement. By lunchtime (1:30pm) Ev and I are definitely struggling to hold it together, and Valerie has some gripe with Evan after he snapped at her at some point. This will no doubt be talked through at a meeting later, but for now Evan is working on Beck's bike and Cassie is trying to justify her car addiction to me. I'm trying to be patient but... the answer to "can I bring a car on the Cycle Against the Nuclear Cycle" is still "no". After a while Joe talks to me about bush camping a little and it sounds as though other people have talked to him since I did, as he's now focussed on bush and trees. It sounds as though a bit past the zoo is the best plan, so we agree to that and I leave.

Some time later I fill up water bottles at a playground near the Landsborough turnoff, then wander on down to the zoo. As suggested, just past the zoo is a pine plantation so after a photo shoot with one of the locals and a bit of exploring I decide to camp in "Science Area 24".Or near offer, the pines are easier to cook in by virtue of the dead zone underneath them. I cook rice then ring Evan. He's definitely off to his brother's place with Georgie on the train tonight, but will return in the morning. I toss up riding on but haven't seen a map and Valerie wants me to hang round. So I pitch my hammock in the pines and plan to leave early.

Stats: 43.2km, 2:54, 14.86km/h, max 73.6km/h (down the big hill from Eve and Bruce's place), totals 564/38:15. Big stats news for the day is that Evan now has a speedo again so the pressure is off me a little in the stats department.

Day 18: Noosa to Nambour

2007-07-16T09:57:00.000+10:00

The morning started well, I woke up, packed up and biked into town to buy milk and eat breakfast. So by about 8am I was sitting in the park waiting for everyone else to arrive. While I'm here I finally got around to taking photos of the solar rig. In the photo the solar panel is off to the right, power from this comes through the leads bottomright into the solar regulator sitting outside the plastic bin. This is a bit of magic electronics takes the roughly 25 watts at 16V from the panel and charges a sealed lead acid battery (top of frame inside the bin). From the battery I run a range of stuff through a standard car cigarette lighter outlet. The two multimeters display current (in or out of the battery, here we have 0.76 amps going in) and battery voltage (13.49V). The battery voltage when it's not on charge tells me roughly how fully charged it is, but in practice I use the no-load charge current to tell me, as that drops under half an amp when the battery is charged. Over to the left are the loads - the laptop and phone charger. The laptop uses about 1.5A at 16V, so there's an adapter that produces that from the 12V battery, and the actual load is about 2A at 12V.

Luckily none of the loads draw much current when they're not in use, so I can let group members charge phones unsupervised, and if they forget to unplug the charger it doesn't kill the battery (50mA... 20 hours of standby per amp-hour of battery charge wasted). The battery is an 18AH one, so charging it at the theoretical 2A the panel can supply will not bother it much. But I've never seen it get above 1A anway. All this was supplied and assembled by Maurice at EnergyCoop, and I'm slowly tweaking it to make it work better on the bike. I've extended the wires to the panel so that I can leave it connected on the top of the bin, and that usually keeps the battery topped up quite well. I get an hour or two of laptop (enough for the blog and photo editing), plus lots of phone charging and batteries from my LED lights.

We met the mayor of the shire, Bob Abbot, and we got a surprising amount of time with him chatting about stuff and getting interviewed by the meeja. Then we started the serious faffing, getting lost twice in the first four kilometres and just generally losing the plot. Many lessons were learnt, but my lesson was learned later in the day and was one of those "I knew that" ones... if you're going to ride a long day, start early and focus on that task. Instead we faffed, and barely got to Nambour in time for the public meeting.

Once we were on the coast it was the usual undulating meander but we were moving by then and eventually we got to see the sea! We were also chased by aphotographer from the paper that sent a reporter to see us this morning, I gave him a few photos but they wanted action shots apparently.

We continued grinding along the coast in the sun and hills, with June and Cassie a few kilometres ahead of us due to their 15km head start. Riding in the hot part of the day is not a lot of fun, and we're all a bit stressed for various reasons. Valerie never got around to eating breakfast, so she was a quite vague and her usually good direction-finding skills evaporated. Unfortunately this was one of the days we were depending on one person knowing the fine print because things were a bit complex, hence getting lost. Cassie's mother is sick, Robyn is sick, Ev and me are just very tired. Then half way through the day Georgie blew her knee. Then somehow before lunch Evan ended up with Valerie's trailer, so I said I'd take it after lunch. Much stress, I think the long day we planned has combined with the morning stuffups to make everyone a bit conerned about making it into Nambour in time for the meeting. Trailer sits on top of the bin without too much drama, but the quad is now very heavy indeed, but at least it's still sonmewhat aoredynamic (at least judging by how enthusiastically it goes downhill).

Evan and I take off after lunch and basically grind along together trying to get to the end of the day in one piece and without being too panicked about the time. The country is more or less flat and by a bit of inspired drafting we manage to avoid the worst of the headwind (I can draft Ev's trailer, but he can't draft me, so I extract a bamboo pole from my collection and use it to poke him when he goes too slowly (poke the trailer, anyway, and apparently it helps)). We meet up with Bruce on the edge of Nambour then start waiting for everyone else, luckily they're not too far behind because of the slow struggle we've been having. Both of us are kinda tired right now.

Then it's off through town to Eve and Bruce's house which is up a bloody great hill about 5km from the centre of town. But it's a nice house with showers for all and we enjoy it a lot. I use the shower-queuing time to find a couple of trees in the neighbours orchard to pitch the hammock, then discover that I've left my soap/shavers/handcream in Gympie or somewhere which sucks a bit. Need to shop. But not now, we need to be back in town for the meeting! Dinner is some anchovy quiche that I can't eat, so I havre rice. So do others, so 3 cups of raw rice disappear (pretty much all that Eve and Bruce have) so I find the remaining couple of cups that we have left and cook that ready for breakfast. Then Robyn, Evan and I ride into town, the rest exercise their auto addictions. Well, Ev gets a ride to the cop shop where they left Georgie's bike, then we ride to the CWA hall where everyone else is.

We're addressing the Sunshine Coast Environment Council, and things go fairly well. Valerie is big on the introductory circle thing, but there's too many people so just us riders talk a bit. I rant about bikes :) Misc talking continues, then we show an anti-nuke DVD before we split up for more discussion one on one. People like the quad, and the whole talky thing seems to go pretty well.

Afterwards we manage to get away fairly cleanly, but it's still going on 9pm by the time we get away. It's a bit of a struggle (again) up the hill, but I have to say the the quad goes significantly faster without anything much inside it (I just had the camera/laptop bag and my toolbag). Plus Beck bought presents :) I now have a minipump with a pressure guage so I can make sure tyres are at 100psi, and new tyres to test... Schwalbe Big Apple's, but they're only rated to 70psi so I'm not sure how they'll go, I'll probably put one on the left rear and pump it up to 100psi and see what happens. Using Ev's floor pump and wearing ear plugs!

Ring phuong, she's all prepared and excited because she leaves tomorrow to come up here. Then sleep, hearing the windy night but I think I got the expected seven hours or so until I wake at 6am.

Stats: 66km (about 60km loaded up), 4:36, avg 14.3, 65kph max, 521 total, 35:20 total time.

Day 17: John's place to Noosa

2007-07-16T09:56:00.001+10:00

John kindly offered to ride into Noosa with us as a guide to the back roads so we could enjoy a peaceful journey in and see some of his favourite bike paths. I was impressed,there's a long downhill on an old road that seems to be maintained mostly by a car club that use it for hillclimbs, so it's well maintained and there are barriers on the corners. We had fun going down!

10km later we were in Noosa, or at least some approximation of it (Terwantin). There's a town called T something, then a bunch of "Noosa Blah" localities, and they're all made out of ticky-tacky and it all looks just the same. Anyway, we arrived, John left to ride home and work and we sat in a park and talked about what to do. After a while someof us went to do a stall, Ev and me geeked out a bit then joined them,and we did a bit more media.

We wandered along a bit to Noosa Waters or something for lunch in a park where Wayne? and Bruce caught up with us. They make handcycles and stuff and are interested in the recumbent bikes, so we chatted and they poked things. I rang Ben because they'd been trying to contact him this week with no luck, so he got to explain being busy over my phone... but I assume sold a seat and had a good chat. So that's cool.

Today we have a choice between riding 15-odd km to stay with friends of Cassie (she's doing that), then 15km back in the morning before we start a long 50km days riding. Oh, and we have to be back by 8:30am to meet the mayor... in the park where we arrived today. I also want some time out, so after lunch we split up - the CANC circus disappears into another bit of Noosa to do more stalls and I split off to camp somewhere. The only campground that's not full is no fun - bare gravel tent sites with no hammock trees, so I bypass it (and text Ev to save them the hassle, since him and Valerie at least seem inclined to stay in town rathre than riding an extra 30km). I'm currently not-very-steath camped in the sports complex listening to rugby players running around under lights at 6pm. It's been a nice quiet afternoon, much hammock time (bought copies of "Autralasian Science" and "ECO", the laytter being a CSIRO publication). Now about to sleep I think, after I ring Phuong for my daily dose of missing her. Only 3 days until she arrives to join the ride for a week, much organising is taking place right now.

Stats: about 10km from John's place, but for the whole day: 25km, 2 hours, 12.4km/h average, 57.3km/h down the step hill just outside John's place. Totals: 455km in 30:44.

Day 16: Gympie to John's Place

2007-07-11T20:16:00.000+10:00

Stayed at Zela's place and slept in an actual bed! Wow!

She dropped me back at the gallery at about 7:45... I woke about 5:30am when it started to get light and the truck noises began, then about 6:30 wandered out and had a look at the garden and bird life. An hour or so later Zela and Greg got out of bed and started their day. I had packaged breakfast cereal for the first time in ages, then got officially shown the garden again before we took off into town.

Interesting discovery for the morning was meeting Dion and Sue who've bought an off-net house rather than built it. They have PV electricity, compoting toilet and tank water,plus a vege garden. Plus mild guilt because they just live there rather than having done a heap of work to build it. But I'm impressed because it demonstrates that you don't have to be a green geek whizzkid to do this stuff, just someone who's capable of reading electrolyte levels in a battery... it's not rocket science.

People started arriving just before 8am and we departed about 9am.

Evan and I decided to just sit on the Bruce Highway all the way so that we get wide shoulders and fewer hills all the way. Val and co decide to take the back roads where there will be less traffic but probably more hills and no shoulders. So we rode 30-odd kilometres to Cooroy and got into town about 2 at a guess. By the time Ev had hit the laundromat and I found the gallery with Robyn in it someone had contacted John and SMS'd directions around the place so we knew where to go from Cooroy.

John is a guy who rode up to the Peace Convergence and found us there, offering accomodation and contacts down this way. He's a cyclist who lives in a wonderful house out in some bush about 5km from town. It's so great - a big block with mature trees around it and a nice big house in a clearing in the middle. So quiet and peaceful. Well, until 7 hippies arrived :)

Day 15: Peter's Place to Gympie

2007-07-11T20:06:00.000+10:00

Woke early-ish, heard Ev moving around and said hi then lay in bed for a bit longer because I could... I'm leaving with the group at 8am rather than when I want to. So about 7am I get up, pack my hammock and start looking for food. Rice and so on in the usual fashion, then I refill my bowl with last nights dinner that I missed out on because it was ready very late.

I faff about packing group gear then ride gingerly uphill to the start of the steep side road that we came down, then dismount and push the beastie up that hill. It's pretty nasty and I really don't want to completely break the drive bolt that is already half broken. So the pattern for today is ride until I get to a steep uphill, then push. Luckily there's not too much of that so I manage to keep up with the rest of the CANC crew as we ride into Gympie.

I hit K&R Fastenings since they're on the way into town and the TV people have deferred us an hour. They're at the bottom of a steep hill... but luckily Ray takes the problem in hand and dispenses advice and bolts with some skill. So I'm trying mild steel bolts in the hope that they deform to match the hole and then stop, not shearing at all. Just in case that fails I have a few more high tensile bolts very much like the one that already failed. I am curious to see what happens. But much relieved, as I pedal up a fairly steep hill to get into town. Then pedal back to K&R because I left my solar panel behind, pausing only to drop most of a litre of chocolate milk on the footpath. Not the best start to the day, but I recover my panel (phew!) and catch up with the crew at the art gallery.

The TV crew is slightly late and Evan slightly lied about them already being here. So I arrive just ahead of the WIN TV crew. They interview three of us then we do a quick circuit of the block so they can show us riding our bikes. Then they take off and we head for a local cafe for food and coffee.

The day is spent eating, talking and shopping. I eat last night's dinner, most people have cafe food. We kinda take over the gallery thanks to Joolie who works here and is giving us wonderful support! She drives Robyn out to her place to sleep - Rob was pretty sick yesterday and felt better today until she tried to ride and discovered that she's very weak. So I reckon she's mostly exhausted and needs sleep. I think that everyone bar me and Evan have just had a bit of a rude shock, going from a bit of riding now and then on a light bike to fully loaded touring just about every day. So people are coping pretty well.

Tonight there's some sort of event at the gallery featuring us, and I'm gunna try to keep my head down. But for now, it's out into the sun to try to get the solar panel working again. A joint failed and on inspection I wonder if Maurice simply forgot to solder it at all - the tag looks very clean, and the wire that came looks as though it's just been tinned. So I'll have a play and see if I can get juice again... ok, a bit of heat shrink and some playing has made it worlk so much better.

Joolie's son Leon became enamoured of the quad and spent a while riding up and down the carpark. Now he's all keen to go cycle touring once he finishes school and escapes parental control.

The public meeting was a chance for the playwrights to practice their craft. Valerie practiced the quiz presentation then they gave the play they've prepared its first public performance. Useful critique from the audience and hopefully the real

Day 14: State Forest to Peter's Place

2007-07-10T13:00:00.001+10:00

Today was a bit ugly in terms of riding: a few hills; a head wind; lots of smallholdings so there's no easy camping. I left about 7am after getting up just after first light (6:20). Ev got up as I was packing the stove and clanking around with pots and stuff. So I'm carrying the stove and two pots as well as the remaining rice and sultanas. Probably 25kg of group stuff, plus the "group" solar rig at around 15kg I think. And the quad is probably sick, or at least I really don't want to break the remaining fragment of the 8mm bolt that connects the rear cluster to the rear axle. So I'm pushing it up most of the steep bits, and fretting about it.

I ride the 15km to the intersection easily, there's lots of trucks but a bit of judicious use of the shoulder makes everyone happier. The road is curvy as well as hilly, so there's lots of "no passing" sections. Hard on the trucks if I'm only doing 30kph down a hill and they want to hit 110 to get up the other side. About 30km into the day I reach the sign pictured, "kia ora" being ="gudday" in Maori but apparently something different in a local language here. I like the combo with the koala sign "kia ora koalas".

After that there's a roadhouse where I buy chocolate milk and chips for lunch, and get chatted up by a Jehova's Witness who tries to convince me that they are the "true Christians" but seems heartened when I say that at least the Witnesses usually have the courage of their convictions, unlike the usual sort who when offered the hard choice, call it "death or dishonour", invariably discover the merits of dishonourable living. Hypochristians, so to speak.

That passed, I climb back on the quad to challenge yet more hills, and yet more traffic. This is a pretty busy road although at least the shoulder is wider the around Miriam Vale. Almost half a quad wide all the time. I stop for organic fruit and chat to a prius driver while his family buy fruit. He's very happy about his car, and dismissive of nuclear power but doesn't seem inclined to hassle his MP. Such is life.

After much wandering through lifestyle blocks and more hills, I start looking for campsites. As expected the side roads are more of a shared driveway and there are houses and gates everywhere. There are also no inhabitants except dogs, so after a while I give up and stop at a random intersection (Window Road). I check down the road a bit, same deal, so I sit in the shade of the quad and eat more organic mandarins that I bought back up the road a bit. After a while a guy stops to tied his dog on before the highway and I chat him up for camping. He agrees (yay!) so I text everyone else and sit back to wait.

By some bizarre coincidence I happen to have phone reception here, well the dodgy reception that only works if the phone is up against a big lump of metal and I'm not earthing it. So I get a bunch of text messages when that happens. Amongst other things Megan has decided not to rent her apartment to me, so I ring her and use speakerphone mode to keep the phone working. Well, she rings me back and her job has got even worse, they've finally decided to actually send her to London and the only reason she's on her way now is that they can't get plane tickets. So while I was out of cellphone range she gave the place to a real estate agent to manage. Which means she has a few days to get all her stuff out, clean the place up and vacate, and I have nowhere to live when I get back to Sydney. Which is a bit of a bummer. So I ring Phuong to tell her, and then ring Ev to find out what he's up to. They're a couple of hours behind, and not liking the headwind.

An hour or two later Robyn rocks up, then Evan, and so it goes until we're all here. Camped near Peter's place, using his water (thankfully not having had to carry water up all those hills. Except June, who seems to need to always carry a couple of litres). Dinner in the dark again, mildly annoying hammock site, but it's a lot better campsite than I feared we'd get.

red dirt with green crops This was pretty striking as I rode past, I've been meaning to get a shot of the very red dirt they have up here and this looked good. Caution land mine and your guess is as good as mine as to what exactly this means. I suspect it's a menacing version of "KEEP OUT".

Stats: 46km, 3:27, 13.3km/h average, 46km/h max. 361 total in 23:47. Yes, it was a slow day. Between pushing the beast, the slight headwind and a fair bit of faffing looking for water and a campsite, definitely felt slow (the rest of the group did about 40km today)

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

2007-07-10T12:55:00.000+10:00

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.

Day 12: Maryborough to a state forest

2007-07-10T12:42:00.001+10:00

I got little sleep last night despite feeling exhausted, and woke still drained. Packed up early, then had to faff about waiting for a supermarket to open so I could stock up for a day on my own.

The road to Tin Can Beach is boring, as only pine plantation roads can be boring. first it's 20km in a straight line to a turnoff, then turn right and 20km or so later it starts undulating a bit and there's even a few gentle bends for added excitement. I talked to Phuong for an hour or so, coz last night was not good for her - we talked just enough for her to know I was upset, but by the time I could ring her I was tired, grumpy and impatient, so that didn't work very well at all. But today is much better, I'm starting to feel closer to her again.

Also talked to Beck who is still in Sydney and stressed. She's in the process of delaying her trip up to join the ride by a day so she can do more in Sydney, she doesn't have her bike ready and so on. But Phuong is helping with that tomorrow and I think I helped a bit just talking and suggesting she palm more off on Phuong. I am very, very grateful that Phuong is still in Sydney and still helping.

After riding 20km in a straight line I turn the corner and... stop. Well, why not, it's not as if have any real riding to do today. So I spend some quality time with the camera:

Eventually the pine plantation turns into burnt pine plantation, then military firing range with pine plantation, and at the 45km I'm supposed to stop at it's still pines on one side, guns on the other. There's been no potable water since MB, and only a pretty lunch spot at about 25km to liven up the trip. I dunno if I am going to be able to cope with a whole day sitting in a pine forest tomorrow. But I have to play with the quad again so maybe I'll manage. I'd also like to text Ev though, and I don't have reception. Just saying that after the 25km river spot there's diddly squat might not make his day, but if we're lucky there'll be a camping spot in the next 5km or so that's ok, so they can just do a 50km day. Otherwise they camp where I am or somewhere very like it. Looking at the map that seems unlikely, so I might just do 60km or so into Gympie and leave them to it. Camping in pines sucks. But it looks as though it's 60km from MB to the end of the pines if we're lucky.

Stats: 44km (reset on the edge of town), 3hours, 15kph, 43kph max speed. Totals 314 in 20:10.

Day 11: Moz is grumpy

2007-07-10T12:39:00.000+10:00

Well, that was a bit exciting. June and I are not getting on very well, so earlier today when she hassled me yet again I told her to fuck off. Which caused her major trauma.

I started the day in a mood where I needed to have some time by myself but I hadn't been able to get it, or really made the effort to articulate that need. I was grumpy yesterday because of that but pretty much sat on it, and decided I would try to take off from Maryborough a day before the rest so I could chill out by myself. But instead this happened, so now I've had to deal with a meeting where we-the-group try to use a group process to work out why I can't deal with groups of people very well. I end up in tears, but hopefully managed to communicate that time out is no more optional to me than food or sleep. June is cranky because apparently I make her feel inadequate or something for being old and frail. So she's responded by niggling at me and trying to make me feel bad.

My problems seem to start with articulating my needs clearly, and a lot of the time just with feeling that I have a right to tell other people what those needs are. I got a lot of intense pressure to be social when I was growing up, so I have particular problems sometimes with telling people that I need space. But not other times, because when I'm ok I am quite aware that I need to be unsocial... but when I really need that I often can't tell people. Which is a bit of a bugger. So I went through the meeting process kinda willingly, even though it was painful, but I am getting better at it... a more articulate inarticulate person :)

I ended up talking with Ev out under my fly while the girls talked stuff through inside. But that was very late, we started with another very late dinner, then faffed around, then started the meeting about 8pm. So I didn't get much sleep.

Day 11: Into Maryborough

2007-07-06T14:38:00.002+10:00

I slept in, despite failing to tell Evan etc effectively that I wanted to so they were concerned that I was unwell. The mob left only 15 minutes or so late to have coffee as "Sexie Coffee" until Ev and me joined them about 9:30 for departure. On the way up we paused to get Robyn to take a photo or two for Cheeky Transport and Phuong. Ev is ... fond of exposing his belly button, shall we say:
the boys loaded up
we is cool

Rode about 8km into town, easy road and we were just on the edge of town as I suspected. Found the park, then the rotunda and were there a bit after 10am for our 11am media appointment. I do some group photos and manage to not offend the other artistic directors too much I hope.

Currently unpacking at June's daughter's house, so riding for the day with a load: 15km, 1 hour, 40kph max speed. The plan is that everyone else is going to have lunch in the park, then someone will come back so I can do internet for an hour or so. There's a dog here that I don't trust not to go through my gear, and I really can't secure it except in my bike. I also want to buy a metal box about 15cm high to put under the solar box+camera box so that those are at the top of the bin and accessible. Packing has settled down a bit, but I am wondering if a few more bags for stuff might help. On the whole I think not, but I'm still kinda grinding ideas through in my head. Evan seems to carry as much volume as I do, possibly more, and I want to try the experiment one day. Now, photo processing.

Group photos (bigger images linked):

Day 10: The Bruce!

2007-07-06T14:38:00.001+10:00

Today was a suprisingly cruisy ride. I was on the road about 7:40 after Evan got me up at 6:20 or so. No phone reception again last night, or more accurately the usual "enough for SMS and to make calls, just not enough to get anything useful out of them".

The road was excellent this morning, I got twenty kilometres of flat, straight road with a really nice smooth seal and a slightly theoretical tail wind, so that got me through the first hour. Truly excellent riding, and there was a shoulder too. So I made up a wee poem for the road gods, and then thought I should write it down but didn't. So it remains a sacrifice to the road gods alone. But thanks also to the Queensland roads people.

After the there were a few more bumps in the road and the odd bit of crappy chipseal, but I was still cruising along nicely. Rang TriSled to get Ben to post some tyres up for me, Schwalbe Big Apples with a kevlar belt in the hope that they'll do better on the left hand rear wheels of both Evan and I (those spend a lot of time in the dirt and Ev's been getting regular punctures in that tyre). I turned in to some dormitory suburb about 10km outside Maryborough looking for a shop and water, but it was pure slumberton. But there's a bit serious roadhouse a little further on, so I rock into there and have hot chips for lunch at about 11am.

After a wee break I did a bit of a scouting mission and found a moderately ok campsite with a track leading in a more promising direction. Then wandered back towards the road and sent a couple of text messages telling people where I was. Just pitched the hammock and Robyn came back to where I was, turns out that everyone except Evan decided to visit the roadhouse first.

We ended up camping well off the main road but in the ok-ish site where we can see the roadhouse (hence,they can see us) but we're kinda hiding and hoping for the best. Hopefully in the photo you can see road and signage in the background, the roadhouse is just off to the left a little. Once agin people are using the daylight to faff about, so dinner will be after dark again. But at least the rest of the mob managed to get out of camp this morning before 10am.

Day 9: Through Childers.

2007-07-06T14:37:00.000+10:00

4th of July, on this day the US celebrate their defeat of the British in a colonial war a long time ago. I wonder if the native americans have an equivalent to Survival Day?

We camped a little way out of Bundaberg in a small National Park. Valerie found this interesting jawbone - horizontal incisors and split canines. Quite a nice campsite, we sort of spread out around a random spot on the track we were following. As usual I was up and away fairly early compared to the rest of the group, and a couple of hours later I was happily sitting at the top of a steep hill waiting for the rest of the mob. I have a wee word with the avocado orchardist whose tree's I'm sitting under,and he's ok with me/us being there. When Cassie arrives she asks if it's ok to pick up windfall and he's fine with that.

Three hours or so after I got there everyone else arrived, at least as far as the top of the previous hill. There's a big dip, see, and from the top of one side the other side looks longer and steeper than it actually is. So they had a wee rest break there and after a while Robbie rode over to tell me that. So I walked back and got June's bike and rode that up standing on the pedals because (as you'd hope) the bike is much too small for me.

We sit and eat lunch and faff while the day cools down a bit, but we really need to ride more than 25km today so there will be more riding later. The only excitement is when someone stops their car and a passenger gets out. Ev says hi but the girl grabs my pack off the top of the quad and starts towards the car - Ev yells, I jump out of the hammock and start running, she drops the pack and runs for the car. So nothing stolen, but it was close and if she hadn't dropped the pack I would have lost the pack, my headtorch, and my pillow. So we're grumpy with a blue station wagon, probably a Toyota Camry, rego 118 BYE or BYC. Will have to chat to the plod next time I'm in town.

About 3pm we get moving again, the goal being to get to the A1 near Childers and do about 10km towards Maryborough today. That proves pretty simple, we stock up on water then I find a dodgy campsite next to the main road and we settle in. There's not a lot of good sites visible, and it's getting dark so first usable site it is. It's not too bad, an old rest area/roadbed so we have a wall of dirt between us and the road for the most part. Except Cassie and June who elect to camp up on the flat above the rest of us, directly exposed to truck noise all night. That makes them less happy the next morning than they expected when they chose the nice flat camping spot.

I end up with Valerie and Hope next to me, which isn't as bad as I expected, I managed to sleep through any noise that Hope makes and instead enjoy a nice view of the stars as I pitched the fly to give me that. It was a warm night and I enjoyed it.

42.46km ridden, 2:45 taken, 15.3kph, 54kmh max. To date: 203km in 13:13 hours.

Day Eight: 16km to Bundaberg.

2007-07-03T11:17:00.001+10:00

Evan was up before me! Wow! Had rice ready from last night so getting up was quick and easy. Sat round watching people feel cold for a bit then took off. It's only 16km to town so I would like to get there around 9am and get the most out of shopping hours. That's easy enough, I was there by 8:30 with only the minor challenge of a bridge into town that has a "bikes use footpath" sign in a dumb position, from where it's very hard to actually get the bike up the curb and onto the footpath. So I head for the council offices to explain the problem and talk to a nice transport dude called Tim who's very helpful and shows me his multi-modal transport plan for the city. It's all very exciting and he seems likely to change the bridge approaches! Cool!

Then I start looking fort a bike shop and end up at some expensive joint in the main street, but they have Hookworms so I can change out my left rear tyre that's full of little bits of glass and small cuts from previous bits of glass being removed. There's still a fair bit of wear left in it, so I'll keep it as a spare front tyre.

I do free Internet at the library, but their machines are locked down to only run FireFox and physically hidden, plus I can't bypass the popup blocker so work web mail is inaccessible (it's one of those joyous things that emulates Outlook really effectively, but only if you have IE with security at its lowest setting). Talk to Martin at work and discover that the release I was working on before I left has still not shipped. So much for that panic. Phuong emails me to say that having been unfaithful already she's now thinking more about polyamoury (her version is more like an open relationship, I only find out things after the fact), so I spend some time crying in a local park instead of doing the public meeting.

When group arrive I find that Evan has lost his cellphone, which is why he wasn't answering it. The rest of the group hang out with a "Make Poverty History" evangelism crew who have two busloads of enthusiastic young people winding up the centre of town. I spend that time talking with Phuong then some of the group trying to get myself back together. About 2-ish we start leaving for the good bike shop out on the east side of town.

The bike shop is indeed good, it's another one of those "rent is cheap" huge places with some decent stuff for sale. Robyn gets a front rack and panniers, the rack is a Bob Yeuh that kinda works with her suspension forks but doesn't really looks good for carrying weight. Neither does her rear rack, really, but this way she can definitely carry more than before. Since she's one of the stronger cyclists this is good! Evan and me a get a box of some NZ-made energy bar things at a reasonable price (about $5.40 each), and will be on selling them to the rest of the crew as well as stocking up ourselves. I also picked up some more Eneloops for about $5 each, so will be trading some of those for bars.

Panic sets in because we're scheduled to be at the Landcare centre at 4pm, so Ev and Cassie take off and are possibly there more or less on time. Robyn and me wait for her rack to be installed then hit a vet for doggy bags (strong, waterproof plastic bags).

At Landcare we eventually got a photog from the local rag who took a pile of shots and hopefully we'll get a reasonable article. You just never know. Apparently there was TV at the Poverty thing (they have a great media setup) and we got filmed as part of that. But the actually coverage was a pan across cycles and no mention, so not really a win for the team.

Day 7: to nearly Bundaberg.

2007-07-03T11:16:00.001+10:00

It's the first of July! And it's Sunday.

Last night we had a late dinner (after dark) preceded by a Moz dinner (rice) that everyone else shared. The cooks were kind enough to keep the spicy bits separate from the dahl, so that was nice for me (and Hope), seeing as we don't like spicy foods so much. After dinner was a meeting where everyone was pretty tired so I'm not sure we resolved anything of great importance. June is really struggling and is going to start using public transport where she can, because we managed to decide to still not get a moron vehicle. Which makes me glad I stayed up for the meeting, I'd be annoyed to wake up and discover this had become DANC instead. But have decided I need a bit of time by myself, so will be riding early tomorrow. June will be getting a lift with Pete and Gillian in the "it's not a support vehicle, it's just full of ride crap" troopy. They're going into Bundy then back home, so will drop her at the campsite at about 50km, which should be 10-15km out of Bundy.

I slept in until about 6:30 or so I think, woke up to ducks on the dam after hearing dingoes overnight. Nice mist over the dam to look at, but too many trees to see much of the sunrise. Had a bit of breakfast while I waited to see if I could take the stove or saucepans, but no-one had cleaned up last night except for me cleaning my stuff and putting lids on pots etc to discourage scavengers. Left my tarp under the food and took rice and oat bags as my share of the communal gear. Robyn still in bed at 7:30 so I couldn't take her lightweight stuff (she is willing to carry more, but only has rear panniers). Out the gate at about 7:40, with porridge still to finish cooking behind me.

Riding was pretty nice, felt slow, I suspect my rear tyres are down to about 80psi again and the difference between that and 100psi is quite marked. The road is undulating and fairly steep, so riding the snail is pretty slow. I'm only hitting about 40kph on the down hills, but going up the other side I'm often in bottom gear. As usual there are no sealed shoulders to speak of, so motorists just have to wait. Most of them do, and the only two big trucks I manage to see in time to get off the road for. Much of the time there's "no overtaking" markings, so things can get a bit hairy when some moron gets impatient.

I stop about 9:30 or so when I see a bunch of kurruwongs discussing something, and discover they're pillaging someone's banana palms. They're no fun to take photos of (plain black birds) but I have a go anyway. I finish breakfast and stretch a bit before leaving about 10am. That was about the 25km mark I think. My discover for the day is that my new speedo has separate trip counters for distance, time, average and maximum speed, so they all need to be reset one at a time. I only did trip distance so the rest will be a bit approximate for today.

After that it's more of the same until I reach a shop and stop for chocolate milk and a bit of grocery searching. I get fruit buns but no real joy, it's a tiny general store and there's no good fruit or veges. I get a little bit of water and chat about camping spots, but the one suggested is 2-5km down a side road, probably 25km from Bundy and doesn't sound particularly brilliant, so I decide not to bother. We really want to be 15-20km out when we camp, so everyone can get into town quickly tomorrow for the media and stuff that's been booked.

I stop by the river and have a look around, there is half decent camping but no river access that I can see, unless you count bouncing through vines of uncertain depth for 30-40m down a bank by the bridge. Since I haven't seen the troopy yet and I'm only at the 46km mark I ride on.

Once I'm out onto the plains it's all sugar cane and windbreaks. At about 49km I stop and try for phone reception to see if anything interesting has come in, and learn that Val is only about 15km behind me and is stopping for lunch. Pete and Gill arrive with June and we chat, then Pete drives me up the road a few hundred meters to check out a possible campsite. It's better than I expected, so we go back to get the quad and swap me for Gill and June who'd been left to guard it. And eat strawberries.

So it's 2:30pm, I'm all set up for camping, the solar panel is doing its thing and I'm up to date with my blog. The hammock is providing shade but it's hot inside it, so I'm underneath feeding mosquitoes and trying to think of a better solution.

Eventually the rest of the group arrive and I crawl out of bed to join them. An afternoon nap does wonders for my equilibrium. By the time I'm out it's starting to look like sunset and Evan is holding a bike workshop over Gina's bike. It needs some cables replaced and she's not inclined to do it, so Evan takes the chance to show Val and Robyn what's involved, helped along by Hope (who like all babies loves things that are dirty and sharp. Poisonous is just a bonus). She is still at the "investigate by putting things in her mouth" stage, so it can be quite funny watching her.

Dinner was nice but late, again. Then off to bed.

Day 6: Miriam Vale to nearly Rosedale

2007-07-03T11:15:00.002+10:00

I rang Ben (TriSled) this morning during the prolonged faffing stage before we left. Despite the faffing I managed to leave my tea infuser behind. Anyway, I forgot that it was the weekend so I rang Ben at about 8am and woke him up. Oops. We talked anyway, I gave him a bit of a rundown on how the quad is going, whined a bit more about the lack of a Rohloff and the main outcome was that because the left rear tyre is really doing it tough he's going to see if he can scrounge up a Schwalbe Big Apple with a kevlar belt in it, which should last a bit better than the Hookworm that's there now. That wheel is driven, so it works a bit harder, but it's also the loaded wheel that spends most time in the dirt and the glass zone on the very edge of the road. The right hand side wheels are mostly out where the motor traffic clears the road surface pretty quickly, and they're at the high side of the camber so they should have an easier time. The mini pump that I carry is great for such a small pump, but it only gets up to about 80psi before further pumping is just about impossible. So I need a better pump too.

On the bike I'm having a nice, easy day riding along a quiet road. I'm riding behind Val again and Hope is being her usual co-operative self despite the late start. After about 25km we reach the lunch spot at "the Fingerboard" junction where you choose between Agnes Water, Miriam Vale and Bundaberg. There's a really great fruit and vege stall run by a local farmer, so we are having lunch sitting under a tree near the stall. Val bought a pineapple and a rock melon herself even though we have group money, because she didn't think those would last long enough for anyone else to have any... but I got a little bit. Hope is more into smearing than eating solid food but she's keen to participate.

The rest of the mob roll up over the next hour or so and we have a leisurely lunch. Another hour and a half or so on the bike sees us at the next big intersection where we are due to camp. I' end up riding with Evan for once, and he's got nothing in the trailer - Peter and Gill are driving out this arvo to spend the night with us, so a lot of stuff is in the troopy. So much for a non-supported ride. Bah. I've got my usual 100kg or so on board, which I'm getting used to. Having the tires pumped up helps a lot.

Now that I have my speedo hooked up: 51.3km today, 3:09 taken for an average of 16km/h and a maximum of 60km/h. Arrived about 4pm I think. Camping next to a dam somewhere.

Phuong: more puncture repair patches etc from my collection. Also bolts etc. Bring lots of spare space :)

Day 5: Miriam Vale "rest day"

2007-07-03T11:15:00.001+10:00

Since it was a rest day I stayed in bed until after 7am (hot and hungry). The hammock is great but temperature regulation is not the best - it's not really big enough for me to get out from under the sleeping bag, so once the sun hits it I pretty much have to get out of bed.

Major operation for the day was flipping the bins on my bike - Robyn got me a giant bin that matches the one on the quad but is 150mm or so higher (the rim and base are the same size). So I took the small bin off and bolted the big one to the bike, then fiddled with the ocky strap mounts to get it working better. Now I have a half-ocky in the middle of each side to hold the lid on, and those are tied off on the lid side. The existing ockys stay attached to the lid and hold the solar panel in place, so I can just release the half-ockys and lift the lid off. In fine weather I only need two of those, and releasing one of them lets me hinge the lid up to get stuff out. I can't quite do that while I'm riding, but it's very fast.

Then I used about 3m of red reflective tape making the back more visible. You can also see the panel on the top, and all the stuff that I'm strapping to the outside (I was supposed to post the lock, meter and spanner back to Sydney but forgot).

The rest of the mob worked on banners and contacts, and we did a wee bike workshop in the afternoon. As usual no-one got everything they wanted to do done in the time, but I think we got most of it. There's banners and flags painted, and everyone's bikes are running.

I also fully charged the battery in my solar system and hooked up the extra multimeter so I can see voltage and current at the same time, and the meters are hardwired. The kind people at energycoop.com.au have lent me the solar panel and set up the regulator and everything for me so I could spend more time doing other stuff before the ride started. I'll post about the setup later, but it is big enough to let me run the laptop as much as I want, charge my phone, and recharge the AA batteries in the lights and stuff. Very cool!

Day Four: To Miriam Vale

2007-07-03T11:14:00.000+10:00

The group had decided we'd try to ride together, so I expected it to be harder than riding by myself. This was a 60km day that was always going to be pretty hard. Once we arrived Ev and me weighed our bikes and both are over 100kg excluding rider. But that's harder on Ev as he only weighs 55kg to start with, so he's pushing nearly twice his body weight, whereas I'm only at slightly over mine. But we both really felt the 60kms.

When we woke up Anne said she couldn't handle the cold and her dodgy gear (she doesn't have a sleeping bag, just a doona, and her tent is crap). She barely slept and just shivered all night, and she's been struggling a bit with the riding. Oh, and she gave up smoking when she started the ride, so that's not easy either. So she pulled out, and that took a bit out of the rest of us at the start of the day.

We rode about 200m to the campground up the road and got water, then a couple of km to the servo on the Bruce Highway. So I didn't get warmed up until after 10am, when we started on the highway. The road was pretty stressful, lots of big trucks and not great shoulders. We stopped again an hour later at another roadhouse and had ice creams. This was where we'd originally planned to camp last night, so about 11:30am we are at the start of the planned ride... hence the 60km day today. Hope was losing the plot by now, so people lost interest in riding together and I took off to the lunch spot at the half way point, about 10km away.

Lunch spot was harder to get to than I expected, in retrospect because my rear tyres were probably down to 80psi or so instead of 100psi. I hung out there for a while, dried out my fly and some other stuff and took portrait photos of the riders.

Cassie arrived after half an hour or so and started official lunch stuff for everyone (I graze, so there's no preparation), and I hung around until everyone except Ev and Val had arrived. I was just ready to go when Val appeared on the horizon, but Hope was sleeping so she wanted to just keep rolling. I chased off after her.

Hope woke again about 10km out of Miriam Vale and we stopped so Val could feed her a bit. Georgina arrived a few minutes later, just as I was getting twitchy so I took off and left her to help Val. I was getting seriously tired by that point, and the last 10km were not much fun at all. But by the time I got there I had a text message with directions to Pete's house, and a quick phone call cleared up the fine print, so I was there by about 4:30pm. Much relief! Pete is Robyn's father and an amazing host... him and his partner Gillian drove around scouting roads for us, gave us beds and showers for two nights, fed us and (most important) let us use their Internet connection :)

Day Three and a half: out of Gladstone

2007-07-03T11:13:00.000+10:00

Left the library to find that everyone else had arrived and were variously shopping and eating. I had chatted to a few locals while I was waiting outside the library, as expected, with only vague promises to go and talk to their MP resulting. Need propaganda! But once Val arrived it was all hands to the pumps and we moved down to the shopping centre and set up a stall - my big bin as the table and some flyers. Anne got a few contacts to maybe start a local environmental group, which would be cool. There was a bike shop as well, so I picked up some decent tire levers for Val/Anne and a front QR skewer for my towing hitch.

Left town only an hour and a half behind schedule, but without Evan and G who had wandered off. Val decided she needed to go (the baby gets fractious towards the end of the day), so her, Robyn, Anne and I took off out of town. Towards Calliope, which was the best way according to what some local told Val. Unfortunately there are two more or less parallel roads and Ev, G, Cassie and June were on the other road. So we went from running late and hoping to find a campsite while it was light, to being quite fubar'd. Then Cassie got a flat and couldn't work out how to make her pump convert from Presta to Schrader, so that stalled her and June. In the dark. So they got a lift with a guy called Bob who had a van, and eventually found the lost leaders (us), camped down a slightly ugly side road in the kind of "least awful" site you expect when it's getting dark.

We set up tents when we arrived, then I started cooking (hammocks rock for fast set up). Food was interesting, I used my tiny MSR gas stove to cook rice in the big soup saucepan because it was that or my tiny billy/plate deal. We had rice, carrots, bok choy and capsicum with a packet of dried vege soup, and waited for Ev to bring the big stove and other food. As you'd expect, some of the rice was cooked, some was crunchy, and there was a burnt bit over the wee spot that the stove actually heated. But people seemed quite grateful.

Ev and G rolled up as Bob was unloading the van, by which time I'd swapped with Robyn and was on the side of the road waiting while she helped in camp. So once the other half of the group arrived we all wandered into the camp and ate. And ententicated, and so on.

After dinner we had a meeting/debrief and talked about how shit some people had felt, being lost in the dark with no food. I felt moderately unhappy that some people we're so reliant on the group functioning perfectly at all times, and hadn't really thought about "what if". Evan, once again, had bonked but only mildly, but so had Georgina so both of them were pretty unhappy when they got to camp... and extra 10km or so of riding after they'd expected to. Camp was a good 15km short of the target, but we knew that would happen at about 3pm.

One thing that's becoming obvious is that some people have never cycled any distance before, let alone cycle toured. I think our website was a bit deficient in explanations of what was involved, and the "30km per day" is biting us on the bum because people have arrived expecting to ride at most 30km on any given day (I am shocked to have that happen after we had the same problem repeatedly on other rides), but instead we're trying to average 30km/day including rest days, so it's 50-60km/day the days we actually ride. So some people are simply struggling with the distances we are trying to cover, and others with the gear they need and don't have - it makes a real difference if you have a decent tent and sleeping bag for the cool nights, polypro clothes for the wet days, and random gadgets like decent tyre levers and a head torch. Waterproof panniers are nice, but plastic bags work pretty well. Val with her Aarn trailer as well as panniers is probably overkill for most people, but the trailer mostly carries baby clothes.

Day 3: To Gladstone, Queensland's Toxic Town

2007-06-27T12:35:00.000+10:00

From Mt Larcom into Gladstone. About 30km, and the weather has turned nicer. It's almost ideal cycling weather - overcast enough to keep the sun off and the temperatures down, but not raining and not looking likely to. But the road is still fairly damp and there are puddles any time I leave the sealed bits (yes, I'm fussy :) I rocket into Gladstone in about 2.5 hours, averaging between 10 and 15kph, just like every other day so far. My gear is starting to dry out a bit which is nice, so things should start getting lighter. I'm also getting things set up, so I know where stuff is and I'm starting to get an idea of what gear is extra junk that I can probably get rid of.

Arriving in Gladstone is a bit of an experience, first there's the cement and lime works (smells alkali and awful), then a trip across an estuary to the power station (huge, with many power lines leading inland), and over to the left is a giant pile of coal and to the right a collection of chimneys suggesting more industry. The town itself is apparently fairly compact, not that I'd know since I turns up a really steep hill at the first opportunity (there was a sign saying "library carpark", so I decided there was probably a library up there too.

Currently sitting outside the library with my gear spread out a bit, charging the battery and drying stuff off. At 12 I have a computer booked for an hour of (free) internet. Yay civilisation!

No supermarket within sight, and the cafes are pretty ordinary, so I'll have to wait for other riders to arrive before I can wander off and get food. Mind you, at 10:30am I really shouldn't need another meal just yet. Val arrived about 11am and wandered off to look for laundry facilities, then got back at 12 so I could come in and play on the internet.

Wow, 40 minutes to check email and paste in about 4 days of blog posts. Happy days.

Day 2: to Mount Larcom

2007-06-27T12:31:00.000+10:00

Woke at 6am, it was (still) raining. Quite warm overnight, almost uncomfortably so. Got out of bed about 7am and kicked the rest of the group into life. Was on the road by 8, after doing my 20 minutes of baby minding for the day. It's surprisingly hard to pack up when one arm is occupied by a baby. And the baby was unwilling to just sit on the quad seat... too many dirty things to chew on within easy reach. So we had a brief struggle over which bits of the bike are edible, then I gave up and just babysat.

The weather remains poor for cycling, 10/10 overcast with occasional breaks in the drizzle. Anything you leave outside will be wet in short order so it's a bit hard on the new cyclists. So we're sitting in a cabin at a roadhouse just outside Mount Larcom while it drizzles outside. And I have mains to type up my blog :)

We're now knee deep in our second meeting. First we did about an hour of "are we going to keep riding or what", and the answer was no. Val has rented a cabin, so has Anna. Both are wet, cold and not able to do another night in the rain. I expect I'll crawl out of here after dinner and camp along the road a bit. Then it's straight into a strategy/planning meeting. For about two hours. I'm hungry and well over meetings by the time the meeting starts. An excellent time to pull out the laptop and start typing stuff up.

I wandered out about 7pm during a break in the rain and found a campsite up the road a little. Easy enough, I just wanted to pitch the hammock and sleep. Only real note for the night is that the hammock quilt thing is worthless, as soon as there was a breath of wind I felt quite excessively cold so I grabbed the thermarest and slept on that in the hammock. So there's $100 or so that I need to do much work on the make it useful. I've already safety pinned the cover to the hammock to try to reduce air circulation, and tried to make sure there's loose cloth so the air gab exists even when I'm in it. But I obviously need to work on that some more.

Day 1: Rockhampton to the side of the road somewhere

2007-06-27T12:29:00.000+10:00

(25 June): left a park at 11am in Rockhampton after a blessing from a minister and rode to Different Cycles for initial repairs. We spent a couple of hours adding bits to our bikes and watching the shop owner try to make Evan's bike/trailer work properly. Ev took delivery of his new Kotzur bike and trailer the week we left for the ride so there's a few first-time bugs to work out of the system. Mine is working pretty well, I've got most of it set up properly after a month in Sydney. Adjusted the toe-in on the steering and now it's noticeably easier to push the quad along.

Rode most of the day through drizzle (well, the bit from 2pm or so when we were actually riding). We're on the Bruce Highway so there's an awful lot of really big trucks. And in the wet they throw quite a cloud of water as they pass. Comfortable cruise on the quad with a big load is about 15kph.

Val has her baby Hope along and it's not enjoying the cold and wet at all. Towards the 40km-ish mark I somehow ended up out in front of the group with Val, and about 4pm she stopped to do baby stuff. I cruised on a little looking for a campsite. We ended up on the other side of the railway line from the main road, camping in a small band of trees. Trees and prickly pear. Anyway. We camped for the first time and cooked dinner as dark fell.

Covered about 30km in about 2 hours.

Day Minus One

2007-06-27T12:06:00.000+10:00

We bludged pre-ride transport organisation from the Peace Convergence that happened at Yeppoon/Shoalhaven over the weekend 23/24 June. The ride starts tomorrow so we're in Yeppoon and heading towards Rockhampton later today. 40km or so, no big dramas assuming the rain stays away and we manage to leave more or less on time.

Georgie had only briefly ridden the recumbent before the ride started, and never with cleats on her shoes. So while we were hanging around the camp she decided to practice doing that. A certain amount of concentration is needed :)

Did peace action stuff most of the day. There was the big Peace Convergence parade/march at lunchtime, then the open mic for another four hours. The parade had a lot of people and some quite well done costumes.

... it turns into a giant pineapple.

Somewhere between 500 and 1000 people marched - I was a little surprised at just how many people turned up.

Radio interviews from 5pm to 6pm, then rode out towards Rockhampton. Most of the gear travelled in Robyn's boyfriend's troopy so we could go faster and therefore stay later in Yeppoon. Evan bonked really badly half way after towing the trailer for a while with a flat tyre - luckily the trailer was empty so the flat was just kinda annoying rather than completely tube-destroying. But we should have had dinner before we left Yeppoon, so instead Evan ate one of my power bars. They look like partly-digested ... um, bran, yeah, bran, that's it... kinda brown and fibrous. And don't taste much better. But he ate it anyway.

Once we got to Rocky we rode straight thru and thanks to help from Pete and Robyn in the car managed not to get lost. We stayed the night in a house attached to the Catholic Church (thanks to Evan working for the ANU), then met up the next day in a park for our official departure.

Preparations II

2007-06-19T10:49:00.000+10:00

Once again, no photos. Sorry.

Changed the rear axle bearings in the quad on Sunday because they were making nasty noises. That took an hour or so of thumping things at Megan's place but it's done now and the quad is noticably easier to push. Martin also set up the front brakes properly at work yesterday so that helps too. But it's raining quite enthusiastically in Sydney this week so I'm riding BinBike today. I need to buy more stuff, so I'm up for my third trip to Bunnings today unless Phuong has an outbreak of generousity and does it for me. That would also save me money, because going into Bunnings and Coventry Fasteners is always an expensive experience.

Am also piling stuff up in Phuong's shed ready to go. Carrying the stove round to her place last night showed that the tap on the fuel tank tends to vibrate open while I'm riding. Which is bad - fuel all over the place. So that needs to be sorted out. I also need chopping boards, knives and peelers. So more shopping.

My hammock is up in Phuong's shed, so I will try sleeping in that tonight. Or perhaps tomorrow, it's supposed be "gale force winds and heavy rain" tonight.

Off on CANC soon

2007-06-13T14:17:00.000+10:00

I'm getting ready to go off on Cycle Against the Nuclear Cycle III soon. Next week, to be precise. Much preparation still to be done. But I have the leave from work organised, and I have a new bike to ride on the tour (new tour = new bike, naturally). I was thinking of taking BinBike but was chatting with Ben at Trisled and got talked into buying his prototype four-wheeler (half way down that page).

The quad carries a bit less than BinBike it's a lot more stable and the load is all in one place. Three recycling bins plus four panniers is a lot of stuff, and that's pretty much what I took to Peats Ridge Festival over new year. That's what the bike will take, but I wimped out and only took one bin in the end I think (it all weighed about 80kg anyway). The quad just has one (big) bin, and that bin can have two recycling bins dropped into it but that still leaves me with four panniers left over. Hopefully this will reduce the amount of junk I end up carrying.

I'm doing logistics for the ride, and right now I have a stove (3 burner liquid fuel, 8.5kg fully fuelled compared to ~50kg for the same in LPG) plus 10kg of pots and utensils for it. Presumably at some stage I will also acquite food, but I have barely begun to think about that (see: stuff to do). I'm probably taking Maurice's wheely bin sound system solar panel and battery, hopefully with a laptop-powering attachment so I can run the laptop and charge stuff off the panel.

Meeting tonight!

More NZ Tour

2006-09-11T20:51:00.001+10:00

I've finished off the Christchurch-to-Nelson section, and started on the Christchurch south loop. I'll probably add some panoramas to the first section but i shot them hand-held and i'm currently spending time fighting pano stitching software. The free Canon thing only does small panos, and Photoshop's automatic thing is just bad. So i'm playing.

Anyway, 2004 and 2005 tour diaries.

Cheeky Monkey Moves!

2006-09-10T13:17:00.000+10:00

Well, the transport shop is now in Georgina St Newtown. To celebrate the crew had drinks in the new shop. Some of us wandered along to commiserate with the somewhat frazzled kids... moving the whole shop quickly after a week of being up in the air while the new shop was still being organised.
But it's done now, all that remains is the tidying up. "all". Giggle.

Anyway, good to see the new shop up and running, people were wandering in off the street even on Friday night with no signage or anything. Cool.

There's a couple of photos on my site

Fat Tyre Hassles

2006-08-31T20:54:00.000+10:00

BinBike can (largely by accident) take very fat tyres - the limit is chainline rather than frame tubes and the front fork (which is easy enough to build anew). Given my current silly ideas about riding around Cape York next year, fat tyres might be just the ticket. Plus I've managed to get both a 42T and 36T chainring into the bike and the adjustment reach on the rear dropouts is just enough to let that work. But I cannot for the life of me actually find fat 406 tyres. Talk about grumpy, Trev.

The basic problem seems to be that the BMX stuff is built around 20" OD wheels, so the fat tyres used in trials riding are mostly 20"x4" but on a smaller than 406 ISO rim. I'm not really into swapping rims mid-ride to change tyres. It's bad enough just changing tyres.

There's the Schwalbe Big Apple which comes in a 60mm or 64mm size depending on whose website you look at. But that's a slick. In kinda vaguely knobbly tyres I've found the Snafu Rimjobs (my fave tyres when they were rated at 130psi, but now only 100psi) which are 50mm (2.1"). Which is not at all like 4".

I've been talking to a trials dude and actually got some 20x2.7" tyres off him, but unfortunately this is where the imperial sizing thing bites you in the bum. See, the outside of the tyre is 20", so the inside is 18" or 19" depending on who you ask (one tyre is actually a 19x2.7", but both are 369 ISO which according to our man Sheldon is actually a 17" rim Actually, they're 396 which is even worse - they're only a tiny fraction smaller than my rims. Still, Steve at MontyBikes has offered me a refund). Now, I kind of vaguely knew there was something fishy about this stuff, so I mentioned that I'd be running a 64-406 tyre on the same wheel but unfortunately the trials guy missed that, and so did I. D'oh!

So if anyone knows where to get fatter 406 tyres I'd love to hear from you.

Cheecky Monkey is moving

2006-08-30T18:56:00.000+10:00

While I remember, my favourite bike shop is moving to Newtown. Cheeky Monkey has been a fixture next to Central for a long time now, and it's a big part of my cycling life. They don't just sell stuff, they foster the cycling community and that means helping Critical Mass as well as more formal groups like BNSW and directly talking to councils and stuff. Which is very cool.

Now they'll be closer to my place but not so much in the CBD any more, so that'll be different. Big thing is lots more space! More toys. I mean, "valuable and useful equipment for cyclists". Yeah, that.

West Coast, NZ

2006-08-30T18:49:00.000+10:00

The Wet Coast, I mean "west coast" of New Zealand is famed for being in the roaring 40's, the band of sea around the southern hemisphere occupied only by South America and New Zealand. The wind just blows round and round and round. So the windward side gets lots of rain. 10m or more every year in the south, as little as 3m up towards Westport.

I rode through Arthur's Pass and down into Greymouth, then up through Punakaiki to Westport. One of the better days I've had touring, lots of stuff to look at and a few interesting things to do. Downhills! Keas! Bare, windswept beaches. Wet, wet subtropical rainforest. No leeches! (I've been in Oz too long). Nice camp site. Not much rain.

Not lazy - Touring NZ

2006-08-29T21:07:00.000+10:00

I am not lazy, just busy.

I've finally started putting up the photos and stuff from my cycle touring round New Zealand in the summer 2004/2005. I came back with lots of photos and immediately went to Tasmania for a couple of weeks (more photos) then came back and started a new job. After a month of that I finally found a place to live and could set up my computer. Somehow the urgency of the photos had gone by then.

But now that I'm playing with photos again and have a bit of time to spend on it, I've started going through the NZ trip. So, start here

I went over for solstice, my gran's 90th and for a holiday. I spent two months there, and biked from Christchurch up to Nelson via the west coast, then up onto the Takaka Hill for a night, then after solstice biked from Christchurch down through Tekapo and did a bit of the Otago Rail Trail before heading back to Christchurch.

With any luck I'll be putting up a few days travelogue every few days.

BinBike

2006-08-20T21:47:00.000+10:00

Not a good weekend for binbike really, Megan is working (work working) and so I haven't been able to go round and play.

During the week I picked up a headset extension to get the handlebars up another 100mm, the 400mm stem was just too short. I've also got slacker grips on it, the ones with big palm rests on them and mini-barends (bull bars). Did I mention that Dave at The Monkey found us seat posts fat enough to fit in without shims or anything. 34mm. Impressive!

Also got my MR16 3W LED light from the ATA. And some other stuff. The light is really good - because it fits inside a regular mount it's easy to use, and the integrated optics and electronics are reasonable. So until I get the optics fitted to my 5W LED that should do. I got the optics from the ATA too, but no mount or enclosure. More work to do.

Yesterday was more moving Phuong trips, towing megatrailer with binbike (Mikie Quick has photos... eventually I might get them). The over to my old flat (2 years ago) to rescue my shelving unit, then we ended up taking it to Phuong's place so she can use it (3.5m long, 2m high, comes apart into 3 pieces) but that meant a 5km trip on busy roads and me riding along with the back wheel lifting off the ground on every decent bump because a 3.5m long load on a 2m long trailer... you work it out.

Today I finally serviced the Rohloff, and discovered that I've lost the service kit bits that make it easy - there's a bit of tube with an adaptor that screws into the bung hole. So I got oil all over everything while draining out the old stuff. bah! But the hub is much quieter now it has (more?) oil it in, so that's probably a good thing. While doing that I also switched to the old, trashed 42T chainring and discovered that I can go faster now :)

This was while looking for Meccano so I can play with stand ideas. The monkey sells quite nice two legged stands, but the shortest one is still very long, and hangs very low when up and lifts the bike very high when down. So I'm trying to work out whether I can make a stand where the legs are linked but not rigidly, so they fold up into a nice compact thing under the BB when not in use but still spread out enough to hold the bike. I expect not, but I want to have a go. And an excuse to buy toys is always good. Too bad the local toy shops mostly specialise in cheap plastic crap (warning: just looking at this stuff makes your kid dumber), and the one decent place (Kidstuff in Parramatta Rd Camperdown (no website though!)) had Lego and Meccano but not metal Meccano. I'm grumpy. So I'm scouring eBay for affordable second hand stuff.

I reckon I've done about 150km on the bike now, and it's going well. Still no paint job, pannier rails or stand, but I'm close.

Trailers

2006-08-20T21:31:00.000+10:00

I got a friend to build me 12 trailers recently, and now I'm trying to sell them. Because I think more people should have bike trailers. Proceeds will go to fund bike activism in Sydney. More details on the Mozbike Mass trailers page. They're the latest incarnation of my shopping trailer, first seen in 2001 and refined over the 10 or so that I've built. These ones have laser cut hitches and dropouts, and are MIG welded then powder coated.

They're a two wheel trailer with a simple string hitch that fits over almost any bike axle - quick release or not. You need 5mm of spare axle length. Two wheels makes it stable, the low hitch means it doesn't throw you around as much when it's loaded, and the spring reduced the effect of bumps and means you don't have to worry about breaking it - you can hang the empty trailer on the handlebars while it's still attached. Load capacity is about 50kg (the wheels will fail at some point if you put too much in it, which is quite comfortably more than 50kg).

The major lesson for me is that cheap powder coat is not very good, but sand blasting would have pushed me way over budget. My "market research" (ie, asking random people how much they'd be willing to pay) plus experience selling previous models suggested that about $200 a mental block kicks in and the trailer goes from "cool idea" to "must budget and do research". Once people start looking at the market they usually end up buying a $500 trailer instead, because it's lighter ~~and stronger~~... not as strong and ~~cheap~~ more expensive and, and ... something.

So anyway, I have 3 of these left in Sydney and four more in Melbourne. If you want one email me.

Riding BinBike

2006-08-08T17:21:00.000+10:00

Now the bike actually rides. So I put a bin on it and went round to an old flat to get 40kg or so of books that have been in the shed for 18 months. Not a bad test given the nice steep hills between here and there. With a load on the front the steering tends to oscillate, I suspect because there's no weight attached to the steering. The solution will probably involve reducing trail or adding panniers to the front wheel. Or just living with it, because it's quite bearable (it just stops be riding no hands with a load).
The other main observation is that the 36T chainring is just too small. And my old 42T chainring is very worn... all that time on the tandem has taken its toll. But with the wheel right at the back of the dropouts as shown, I can use the 42T ring without changing the amount of chain (or using an idler) - I just slide it right forward. The problem is that I only have about 2mm of further adjustment when the chain wears. Which is not good, since I'm probably going to switch to a 38T or perhaps even 40T for main use and want an even smaller chainring for the ugly bits. But then, 36T does seem to be good for the hills (I test rode up a steep hill too), so perhaps for off road or gravel road touring it would be good - much smaller and I can't balance, but 36T does get me to about 30kph in top gear. Much faster and I should be coasting anyway.
There's rumors of a wild plan to tour Cape York (but that's just an idea), and because of that (and really, because I could) BinBike can accept quite fat rear tyres - hopefully 4" but definitely 3". 4" will cause chainline problems I think, unless I get a really, really long bottom bracket. I'm not convinced by recumbents in the dirt, I think I'd rather ride an upright. And not just because of my Barrington Tops adventure, or CANC fun. Really.
The thing is that it's hard to get off the seat for bumps and it's similarly hard to swing your weight around to navigate the bike in tricky terrain, so you miss chances to avoid the bumps. The sort of single-track touring that's possible on an upright is more difficult on a recumbent. In my opinion, anyway.

Binbike in progress

2006-08-08T16:56:00.000+10:00

Ok, after a long break (my collarbone) I'm back building. Many photos are up and life is a riot in general.

The bike is together and rideable, undergoing testing while I make a list of all the things I still have to do.

Rohloff reaction arm mount
fix the joint at the top of my down tube
cable holding loops (5mm long bits of ~22mm hammered into a low oval maybe)
pannier rails
rear light mount
seat tube and head tube bracing struts
trailer hitch weld a 10mm nut onto the dropout so it clears the rohloff and brake
front mudguard mounts
front brake rotor clearance from the fork. I've filed this down, but it needs more work. Possibly even grind it right back and braze a small plate in.

I've washed it a lot, scrubbed it a bit and it still has scale and cruft on it from brazing. Hopefully the worst of the flux is gone from inside the frame. lesson from that is that unless you can submerse the whole frame for a few hours it's probably not worth the hassle.
I let it dry a bit in the sun then added oil to the accessible tubes - many have holes in them either for bolting things to or just because (the main tube, for instance). The oil revealed a couple of leaks, so I am going to have another go at the top of the down tube since that's kind of important.
Then I rubbed oil all over it to discourage rust. Now it's dirty and stinky but not rusty, which is good - I was getting instant surface rust as the bike dried after its shower.
Then in to the Monkey to get the bearing race hammered onto the fork I could assemble it. Including making up a new Rohloff shifter (shifters are cheap, compared to the hub, but swapping them between bikes is a pain. So, one per bike and one hub total). And i discovered that the front fork with added disk mounts is not actually built for a disk wheel! Shocking!
What that meant was that once the wheel was in and the quick release done up the wheel wouldn't go round. So I filed away a mm or two of metal, and now there's a paper thin section on that fork. I'll tidy it up with the grinder when I'm back in the workshop, and decide whether I need to add a plate to bulk it up then. It's a beefy fork so probably not.

allegedly I build bikes

2005-12-04T15:20:00.000+11:00

Hi, and welcome.

I'm Moz, a guy who builds bikes that are not the usual sort of bicycle. Human powered vehicles with a twist sort of thing. Mostly load carrying or otherwise practical, but they don't always look like it... www.mozbike.com for more.

Right now I'm working on a small load-carrying bike that will hopefully be fairly practical around the city. One less ute was great for carrying big stuff, or heavy stuff, but for carrying up stairs or storing... not so hot. Right now I want something that will go into the lift so I can ride it to work. The prototype is a bit rough (we threw it together in less than a day) but it works and it's pretty rideable.