Category: Bike Trip 2008

I’m sitting in Mt Barker at the moment. We were up about 6am and I decided to leave earlyish. I was on the road by 7:15 and it was about 7 degrees (but mostly dry).

In about 30 mins of riding, I had seen many foxes, rabbits (both dead and alive), heaps of birds (eating the aforementioned dead bunnies) and no roos. There were sign everywhere telling me to watch out for the roos but I saw none (well, at least none still interested in breathing).

The temp dropped to 3 degrees. That really sucks as I hadn’t started the jacket heater yet. I stopped to get some fuel after about 90 mins riding (and get some instant coffee, raisin toast) and lit the pocket warmer. I had previously discussed said lighting with the owner of the petrol station/diner where I was and explained that there will be some flames while it heated up. When the flames happened, He looked concerned but, probably do to the previous discussion, didn’t try to put it out.

From then on, it warmed up a little, mostly going from about 6 degrees to actually hitting 12 at one point.

I arrived in Mt Barker and as the room wasn’t ready yet, went to the local shopping centre and looked around. Hoping for some decent coffee to wash the taste of instant ferom my delicate mouth, I discovered not much to help. There was however a computer game shop (I could get some NDS charges for the girls) and a phone shop (so i could get a USB charger for my archos). Then a K-Mart for some more time wasting and finally back to the caravan park where telstra service is ok enough to do some writing.

later….

We just got back from Adelaide where we visited the Haigh chocolate factory and went to see Kung Fu Panda. Both were quite fun.

Tomorrow we will head to port Augusta. Hopefully it will be warmer.

There’s one more thing that needs to be said. I believe everyone let me down greatly by not telling me it was going to be cold doing the south a week after the winter solstice.

Also, people have been dying to ask but no-one has yet the courage to bring it up. I know you are all dying to know what a well dressed bike traveller wears so, to save you the embarrassment of asking, here’s the soop.

1. BMW long thermal pants (these go over the underwear which is changed at least once per week)
2. Draggin Cargo pants
3. Long socks (knee length) that go over the thermals, under the cargos.
4. BMW boots, mid calf high.
5. Marino wool thermal long sleeve top (Kathmandu)
6. sometimes a tee shirt over it
7. Wooly neck warmer thingy
8. outdoor research wind proof jacket over the thermals
9. BMW jacket (although last years colour) goes over the lot to prevent ingress of road when I hit it at some speed.
10. BMW gloves
11. Nolan N102 Helmet with Autocom headset

So, you can see theres a bit to getting dressed in the mornings. And yes, I know the jacket (9) is in the girlie section of the BMW apparrel book and modelled by a girl. What are you trying to say?

Well, Friday, the day after flagstaff hill visit is the first day of heading north. Leaving around 9am, I travelled about 10k in the wrong direction waiting for the satnav to tell me when to turn (the sun was in the wrong part of the sky so I know somethng was not right). I then zoomed out and discovered that when I was pre-setting all the way points in the sat nav, i had missed the Kingston SE stop and it was pointing back at Alglesea. 10 mins later, I was back on course, the sun knew its place and all was right again.

Not much to tell really about this part of the trip. It was only about 350k to the next stop. I passed a wind farm (back in 2001 is was the largest in australia) but the photos are pretty crappy.

Then it was on to Mt Gambier and its blue (actually grey) lake. It was nice to sit in a macdonalds, get some rason toast and drink a decent coffee. After getting warm again, I went back to the bike and headed to kingston.

I arrived about 1hr ahead of the others and decided to see some parts of the town and of course the big lobster.

I rode into town (about 90 seconds riding) and saw the big lobster (about 3 mins) then went to the Big Lobster (ok, they want me to call it Larry the Big Lobster) tourist section. It was an empty room with a single touch screen information system which was off and parked against the wall with a sign on it saying it wasn’t working.

So, I was no about 5 mins into the hour I had to wait and needed something to do. I walked up the street to the, aparently, famous garden sun dial. The sun had by now however decided to hide behind clouds so the sundial was not quite working. I couldn’t even see a vague shadow. I then walked to the service station (with another tourist information section. Theres only so long you can look at chocolates, crappy magazines and fishing tackle.

So, 30 mins down and I finally had to go to the last resort. “Kev’s tractor Museum” was the name of it but please don’t get the wrong idea. Its not a museum.

When I was growing up, my grandfather had a factory and lots of stuff spread everywhere. My grandmother had things like pedal sowing machines in the shed etc. Aparently, this ‘museum’ was just people like that, just not throwing things out for a long time.

Where were all sorts of things that I consider junk that shouldn’t be anywhere, espescially a museum. I do however have to give it something, it does have a higher tractor co-efficient than most places i’ve been to.

So, still having 20 mins to kill, I went back to the park (via a long 5 mins drive to make sure nothing was missed) and met the others entering the park.

Today was not really a ‘biking’ day. A total of 3km on the bike (to and from Flagstaff Hill).

The destination, was a seaside period (about 1870’s i think) village with lots of shops, sailmakers etc. It was interesting and worth visiting. Tomorrow, I have to go about 340km to Kingston SE (you need the SE aparently of google gets a little upset). Its lots of coast riding but with the southerly wind, it might suck. We will see.

Anyway, not much to report. Just some photos taken today of me at the caravan park (just taking off on my riding day) and another at the park (after climbing a cannon)

Just for the record (so I don’t forget) the bike started this trip with the odometer reading 3091k. Its still performing brilliantly.

I just plugged in the internet box with the high gain aerial so we have a decent connection at the moment. Libby will be happy because she will be able to upload lots of photos.

Anyway, heres the photos i mentioned.

Yesterday….

Left the caravan at about 8:30 heading for Anglesea. On getting to Geelong (on the way) after about an hour on the road, it started to rain. I was going past a Westfield parking lot and decided it would be dry. I didn’t like getting a tcket from the machines because I didn’t want to pay for a spot in a 90% empty 50% completed parking station but thats life I guess. I walked past an officeworks, then went back for a look. $60 later I had some new noise cancelling headphones to replace the ones that eloped with my sunglasses. I have no proof that happened but they both went missing together.

I called the others and found they were heading to Torquay so I jumped back on the bike, passed neatly between the boom gate and the wall (while wearing an evil grin) and headed out (in the rain again to the next stop).

In Torquay, we all met up and went to the surf museum. It was small but interesting enough to make it worth visiting. After that, we went to Bells beach. Last week, there was a huge swell and was supposed to be very impressive. This week, it was ‘normal’ which still looked pretty impressive to me. It was cold and windy (theres a huge low pressure thingy in the southern ocean).

It was then on to Anglesea for the night with no internet access.

This morning I left (with Libby on the back of the bike) at about 8:30. We started the Great Ocean Road. The road, for those who haven’t done it, consists of…

a) some windy bits near the ocean
b) some bits no where near the ocean
c) some bits through farms and mountains
d) some straight bits near the ocean
e) the bits you expect (where the good views are that are on the postcards)

The first bits, could have been really nice. Bike people call them twisties. Due to the recent rain, very low sun and lots of cloud, the roads were slippry and we had to go quite slowly. On getting to Lorne, It started raining again. When I was looking into this trip I was told it rained about 2/3rds of the time. I didn’t realise it was 20 mins out of every 30 mins though. Libby decided (mainly due to the rain and wind) that she was going to go back into the car. She had decided to ride all along the Great Ocean Road with me but you know girls, they change their minds a lot.

Anyway, when we met the car, she re-decided (changed her mind again!) to stay with the bike so we took off to progress along the road. About 3km into this leg, she changed her mind again and I stopped, met up with the car and I was on my own again. We all headed (well I went on and the others were somewhere behind me) towards Otway Fly. Its a rainforest tree top walk (you know, one of those gantry thingys). It was very nice (it stopped raining for most of it) but the walk from the bottom back up to the top was a little hard. I’m glad that I’m slightly less fat than before.

After the walk (read hike) I took off again heading for the 12 apostles (one of the goals for this trip). About 20 mins into this leg (back down the mountain) it strted raining more heavily so I put on the wet weather pants (bright yellow). It then slowly got worse.

You see, the wind was still there (gusting to 100kph according to the weather reports), the wind was coming from the southern ocean (and was freezing. ok about 6 degrees but still cold enough for me) and it was still raining. The riding started to really suck. Riders know that when its rainy/windy every time you turn your head to check for traffc, you have a chance of water going down your back so you try to minimise this sort of movement. Safety however demands that you still look around so you inevitably get a damp jacket and then proceed to damp underwear.

On arriving at the 12 apostles it was, as mentioned, cold, windy and rainy. I had visions of taking some cool HDR images during this trip but on parking in the car park, decided to not even get the proper camera out. IT was so windy and rainy, I decided to walk the 300m to the lookout with my helmet still on. Now, you should picture what sort of idiot I looked like doing this. Everyone was struggling with umbrellas and raincoats in the wind (the rain was going sideways) while trying to keep scarves,beanies in place (it was cold). Heres me, walking along quite sealed to the elements (I didn’t have to look for cars to no more dribbles here!) and I met someone coming the other way in bike gear, wearing a helmet, like me at least 200m from the nearest vehicle. See, its not just me thats silly.

Anyway, we chatted about bikes etc and I proceeded to get some photos (and some video) that should be below. The first one is a video. click on it to view on flickr.

Anyway, the photos are crap (water on the lens) and It was too cold/windy/rainy to get more. At least I have seen them now.

After getting back on the bike (still in poring rain)  and leaving the car park, the rain eased. I saw the others with the van just turning in while I was leaving. I have found out that they had a gap in the rain and had a chance of getting some better shots. Bugger.

The last 100km or so was crappy. I just wanted to get here (Warnambool) to be warm and dry and out of the wind. I was travelling a little quick during the last parts to get here so I’m glad I managed to avoid any official interest.

Tomorrow, we are going to another kind of theme park. Its a period seaside village that should teach us all about shipping and ship wrecks. At night, theres another sound/light show (like we saw at soverign hill) all about shipwrecks.

If the weather is good and I feel like a ride, I may go back to get some photos.

I think it should be renamed the ‘pretty good ocean road’.

Heres another photo of my in a Lorne cafe drinking a coffee. (taken by Libby)

I haven’t shaved in a week and am starting to get fluffy. I have never let face fur go over 2 weeks before but will leave it 5 weeks this time. Lets see how pitiful it is at the end of the trip.

Yesterday morning, I decided a day without riding wasn’t good enough so I went to do some shopping (in Melbourne) Its about 1:50 each way so was quite a nice ride. In melbourne, I got a down jacket as all reports were telling me it was going to be cold and it packs up very small.

During the day, we went to Kryal Castle and the girls liked it. It is a little lame but still worth visiting. It was really cold and windy and was somewhat unpleasant. Then it started raining and was starting to annoy me. The forecast was for it go get colder so I was quite glad of the jacket.

This morning, again scared of a day without riding, I jumped on to get some supplies at the local supermarket. Only about 3k later I Was home again (it was cold and raining) so its not too bad.

Then we all went to Soverign Hill. Its a 1850’s themed gold mining town and is actually done quite well. I have found that most of these parks seem to always joke about what they are and what they do and all the commentry has little ‘tongue in cheek’ comments. Soverign hill doesn’t do that and I think its far more enjorable for it.

The staff are all willing to talk (althougn sometimes only to each other) but the day was enjoyable.

Anyway, tomorrow is another easy day (only 120k riding or so) but I might take a detour via Bells beach and Geelong.

Then, on Wednesday, its time for the great ocean road. Lets hope its not cold and raining.