Author: Ben

I curse alot when I cycle. ‘Fuck! A big hill’, ‘Fuuck this hill!’ and ‘Fuuuck!’ are exclaimations that regularly pass my lips when turning pedals over. Hillary or Tenzing I’m not. Hills and my foul mouth are two of my short comings as a cyclist (no-one enjoys riding with a whinger). The third field I come up short in is gauging distance.. and in a perverse way I really enjoy this particular fault. You see, I like maps, the old fashioned paper kind. The maps I generally own are out of date, show routes long overgrown and are missing roads recently cut. To my mind, perfect. Forgotten farming roads ooze adventure, dead ends and unmarked routes are exciting.. but measuring distances on these scruffy bits of paper poses a problem for me. It’s the ‘squiggly’ lines, I just can’t get a grasp on them. On more than one occasion I’ve glanced at a map then declared the destination to be, say, 70 kilometres away when it is actually some 100 kilometres distant. Liam White has personally suffered from my third failing when I took him riding in the Northern Territory. “Benny how long is this ride going to be?” he asked. I replied, “20 kilometres mate”. Turned out it was 60. Oops.

I had been imagining a dirt road ride from Dunalley to Rheban returning via the coast for some time. Last night I decided Tuesday (today) would be the day I finally tackled the trip. I dug through my extensive map collection only to find the necessary ‘Prosser’ map missing. No problem, I’ll use the ‘Tasmania’ map instead. No contour lines, inappropriate scale and most of the roads I needed weren’t marked. I estimated the intended route to be about 50 kilometres in distance with an absence of ugly hills. Perfect. I finished packing and went to bed.

Woke late and didn’t mount to bike until mid morning. Not ideal, but I had an easy day ahead of me. Wrong. The ground truth was so, SO different. The hills started slowly at first, then BAM! The Himilayas. Yep, the fucken Himilayas right here in south-east Tasmania. I started to swear. I swore alot. I had epiphanies like ‘What do I value in a cycling shoe? One that is comfortable to walk long distances in’, and ‘I hate hills’. As I’ve already mentioned, no-body likes a whinger so I’ll stop there and finish by saying the views were good. Really good. Oh, and it was ALOT further than 50 kilometres, 80 kilometres would have been closer to the mark.

In a discussion with Liam White last weekend I promised to, ‘pull my finger out, ride more, surf more, camp more and take pictures’. Given that I woke to snow on the hill behind my parents house I think I’m excused from failing the ‘camp more’ task, ….but I did manage to cram alot more of the above into the weekend. Kicked off with a three hour night ride from Seven Mile Beach to Margate, backed it up with some serious mud on the Kaoota tramway, and solid session of surf in the poo soup that is ‘Fishoes’. The ever eloquent Dave Killick wrote the tramway ride up on his blog ‘About the Bike’.

The Gravel Metric — More Gravel from Seth Deming on Vimeo.

Been lusting after a Salsa Fargo since late 2009.. Finally have one in hand. Intentions for this bike? Touring. Lots of touring. Dirt road touring. Remote area touring. First cap off the rank? A sub24 dirt run, Dover return via the Southern Forests May 14/15 (shoot me an email if you want to come along). Initial thoughts on the bike? Big. Burly. Point and shoot. May have over cooked the wheelset a touch, but hell, I like it. Pics are from a sunset jaunt out to Apex Point, White Beach. Great spot on the hill overlooking the fish farm and across to Roaring Beach, with Mount Wellington in the far distance.

Remote area bikepacking trip with Mick Gillies into the Petermann Land Trust (Northern Territory) winter 2010.

Mischa at the rally to support the Sandy Bay cycleway ….but no evidence of an accompanying bike or him having ridden a bike there. The quest for the illusive riding shot continues.

Sometimes I’m easily distracted.. “Where DOES that dirt road go?” Curiosity laid to bed plans to complete the ‘Channel Century’ today. Midway ’round, I turned my roadie uphill to follow some previously unknown (to me) gravel double track into Snug Tiers Reserve.  A bit of scratching about and I found a track that linked into the Kaoota to Margate Tramway and back home. The trails were a bit of an ask for my 28c shod road bike and I spent most of the ride wishing I had a little more rubber beneath me.. ..so when I got back to the Ranch I whipped my 29er out and headed out for round two. Turns out, double is trouble.  Halfway down my second passage of the Nierinna Creek Track I spilt my rear tire and was sprayed head to toe with tubeless slime. No worries, I’ll whack a tube in a nurse her home. Whipped the tire off only to find that inside she was like a pin cushion from our time in the desert (which is THE thorn capital of the world). Twenty minutes of picking pricks out and I’m back on my way, winding through some very nice singletrack, across a paddock or two and home in time for a beer (or two) with the Old Man. Not bad for a sunday outing.