The ‘Red Earth’ Missions

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The arrival of Mick Gillies in our outback midst has added further fuel to my current obsession with dirt road touring. Mick is in the middle (both literally and phyiscally) of his Australian cycle tour. He has tackled some awesome country on his Long Haul Trucker (LHT) and the rig seems to have handled both the sand and corrigations with aplomb. L-Dub and I decided to see how the LHT would hold up on some of Centralia’s most rugged, red dirt (#ahem#) ‘roads’, dragging Mick out to the oft visited Mantaru last weekend.. The LHT drilled it no worries and we spent an evening by the fire discussing remote cycling routes.

The term ‘radventure’ has being playing through my mind constantly.. So many possible ‘red earth’ missions! Owen Springs, Boggy Hole, Kaltukatjara, the list goes on! Timmy Stredwick has modified my Steamroller to run panniers and Epic Eric is whipping me up set full set of bags for the 1×1. Radventure looms!

To keep the palette wet, Sammy and I rolled out to Tapiya on a (mini) ‘Red Earth’ Mission yesterday. Tapiya could be discribed as ‘hill’ I guess, but the description ‘big pile of rocks’ seems to fit better. There is a road of sorts to Tapiya, but you would need a seroius four wheel drive to traverse it. Deep sand and corrigations the whole way. Sammy and I tackled the first five or six kilometers of the track on our bikes before the constant stutter and regular dismount and push action got too much. We bailed for what Sam described as a ‘back route’… Continue reading “The ‘Red Earth’ Missions”

You’ll thank me all for nothing at all/Legends

Drunk Benny says I must write. Drunk Benny says I must start my post off with a photo of this guy. Hey, I don’t make the rules…. So here he is.

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Tony Brown apparently, according to Benny, is a Legend. Tony Brown, according to Wikipedia was the agriculture minister for the Isle of White(sic), or some shit. Anyhoo.

I was going to talk about my last outing in the short course of the winter series last weekend and all, but you can learn about that over here if you want to (and other cutting edge things such as new fashion trends). However, the more I thought about the idea more it just seemed lazy. So then I got thinking about legends (Thanks Drunk Benny!!). If  Benny gets Tony Brown  then I would like to introduce you all to someone whom, the more I think about it, qualifies as a legend. Someone whom, whilst very new to our fair sport (art) fairly glows incandescently with his love for the two wheeled, rigid, and single. The man has gumption and determination in spades.

Everyone, Say hi to my Dad. Keith.

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Some background: Now, brother K up top here decided to re enter the bicycling world after some 17 years off. Tipping the scales at well over a metric 100, 60 years old and with little to no experience riding off road. That was back in April. Dad rode with me twice down here at Whakarewarewa before deciding to enter all three of the long course Enduros for the ’09 season with a voucher he scored by winning the 20km SS cat at the Highlander (I highly recommend the long course. Well worth the trip over) on only his second time off road on an SS !!( A hoopty ass, ghetto home job, which he totalled on Billy T). Long story short it’s now July and he’s two races into the series. The fitness increase and weight loss has been sustained and impressive. Every time the man goes out on into the forest astride  his new ride,”Penny” (29er, SS, rigid) I’m sure he gets a year younger, several degrees calmer,confident and more humble. He’s bullheadedly gone out (again with little to no off road chops) and done both the long course enduros so far and is all hyped with a view to the third one, 50km of single track at Whakarewarewa in August. It’s an amazing (and reassuring) sight to see him come over the finish line and have him tell you, with a slightly glazed expression that he fell off (which he does a bit of) and landed on his Gels 5km in exploding the bottle that they were in thus forcing him to either lick his thighs or go without. It’s stunning, that this quiet, methodical and historically risk averse man will now calmly explain over dinner “I thought to myself when I came off, Ah, I’m on my head again. I knew that because my feet were above me, in the air”, smile and then keep eating. I guess why I’m around to thinking that my Dad is a legend is he’s just getting out there and doing it, sure, it nearly kills him and he hasn’t been DFL but he’s been close, but it doesn’t matter to him in the slightest. It’s a million miles away from my experience of late (worrying about not training enough, not this not that etc etc) and as loath as I am to say it, I could learn something from his “just get out there and do it” attitude. It’s still nerve wracking riding events with him, as I’m in front a bunch going “ah, will he pull that off?will this hurt him? Have I killed my Dad?”. But you know what? he’s made it through every time.

Thanks to his love of bikes Dad’s life has (more than likely) been lengthened and the quality vastly improved. It’s given us something of interest in common (no mean feat) and strenghtened our at times distant relationship. It’s a great thing.  To paraphrase Steve Smith, my Dad can ride a bike pretty well, but is slow. However I’d rather spend three hours in the woods with him, tooling around and learning about stuff (like how to enjoy riding a bike again) and talking, than I would “Getting rad” or knocking out hot laps by my self on some endless hampster wheel training ride. So, here’s to my Dad and his legendary (and at times quixotic) pursuit of the SS dream. Ride on, old boy! Ride on.

BnC Community Bicycle Workshop II

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We rolled into Mutitjulu early saturday morning with a ute tray full of BMXs.. but being a long weekend, most of the Community had headed to Alice Springs for the Agricultural Show. I didn’t think there would be a kid left in town and was more than a little sceptical about the attendance prospects of our second Bottles and Chains Community Bicycle Workshop. I need not have worried as within minutes of our arrival about twenty kids rocked up, ready to help re-assemble and repair any bicycles at hand. Continue reading “BnC Community Bicycle Workshop II”

LightLane – BYO bike lanes?

From wired.com:

Fed up with seeing friends getting clipped by cars, the designers at Altitude combined two things we love — bikes and lasers — to create an instant bike lane and make nighttime cycling a whole lot safer.
Their bike-mounted gadget, called LightLane, beams two bright red lines and the universal symbol for cyclist on the pavement, neatly delineating a bike lane to remind motorists to yield a little space. It should make everyone feel a little more comfort on the road.

Continue reading “LightLane – BYO bike lanes?”

‘BASSZILLA’ – A Stereo Bike.

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Inspiration for the Critical Mass’ers? Yep. A bee in the bonnet of Cog Cafe’s Damo prior to the ’10 Aussie Singlespeed Nats?? Yep also. Timmy got me onto this link. The blurb for the ‘Stereo Bike Film’ reads as follows:

“Last summer in a rented garage on the outskirts of Queens, NY something incredible was happening. A group of imaginative tinkerers from Trinidad were working late into the nights creating something nobody had ever seen before: enormous stereo systems jury rigged onto ordinary bmx bikes. Traveling together, each behind the handlebars of his or her own massive homemade creation, they treat the neighborhood to an outrageous impromptu music and dance party on wheels. Directed by Randall Stevens, Made In Queens is a film celebrating America’s first stereobike crew”.