Bottles And Chains

Lost Coast Trailer from Eric Parsons on Vimeo.
Ok, so I’m a tad into ‘adventure’ biking. Fk, well you know I love Surly’s and any ride (bike or destination) out of the ordinary is fully my bag. Imagine the Correy Brothers stole Dave Killicks kayak and were marooned on Macquarie Island with bikes. Yep. Thats what THIS is.
(p.s. – they’re riding singlespeed. fixed next trip)

Has Liam (2nd from the left) turned?

Central Australia is an awe inspiring region. Difficult to tackle on a bicycle but possible. The arrival of winter has opened up a window of opportunity for some serious back-country epics but water is a limiting factor. Any off road touring mission is restricted in distance by how much water you can carry. I’ve been scanning the internet for cargo solutions to increase my bikes water carrying capacity. The 16′ wheel of the Bob trailer is too small to handle the soft conditions, the two wheeled Y-Frame trailer is too wide for singletrack (and the 20′ wheels again are too small), but I think I’ve found a solution.. the Extrawheel. 

Anyway, I’ve kinda steered away from where I was headed with this post.. I’m not trying to endorse any products or write an advert, instead I wanted to link up some amazing sites I came across during my search.

The first inspiring site I came across was ‘Salt‘. Salt is a movie produced by Cinematographer, Murray Fredericks who annually rides across the salt pan of Lake Eyre on his Surly Pugsly to capture some of the most beautiful landscape images you’ll ever see. Do yourselves a favour and watch the movie trailer. Liam and Mischa, I think you two will especially appreciate the the work undertaken in capturing these frames. Unbelieveable.

The ‘Canning Stock Route Adventure’ also inspired. The trip undertaken by this Polish cyclist crosses landscapes similar to what I face out here. The images on this site are captured with all the skill of your Grandma with a point and shoot camera but they still rock my world.  This boy also drags an Extrawheel trailer along with him for the ride.

The final site is ‘bikepacking.net’. This site is dedicated to overnight and multiday offroad adventures (mainly in the US). I spent hours pouring over images of remote trails and high mountain singletrack. So fkn inspiring!

Now, who wants to load up the bike and come for a ride?

I’d been inspired Jim Fitzpatrick’s book ‘The Bicycle and the Bush’. Stories of overland cycle journeys in the 1890s had me pumped. Tweed cycling suits, swags and singlespeeds, the stock routes and camel pads of Central Australia, I was sold and winter had arrived. Time for some remote area, off-road cycle-touring yo!

Continue reading “Mantaru – Remote Area Cycle Touring!”

The loss of a bike is always a sad thing. Whether it be through theft, neglect, vandalism or a crash, it hurts to see a bike you once loved and rode suddenly removed from your life. Sure, it may still sit in the garage or the shed as a reminder of the good times shared but it’s never quite the same again. I’ve seen it happen to others, with cracked frames being quietly ridden home, or brought into the shop for that second opinion and sad confirmation. There’s been tales of frames bent by drunken strangers, wheels kicked in by yobbos, surprise hits from cars and headlong runs into trees.

I always hoped it would never happen to me. It’s about to.

But this is no split second trashing, no tearing away from unprepared hands. This is a parting I know is coming, that I know has to come, for my own safety and for the good of all involved.

Two years ago I walked into Cyclingo (prior to working there) and asked John if he knew of any track bikes or parts that might be available. His initial answer was ‘no’, but at the last minute he remembered an old frame he had lying about at home. The next day I took a look at it, and walked away with what was to be my first fixed gear bike. It was an absolute beauty. Initial plans to sand and paint whatever frame I got were scrapped, due to the beautiful silver-blue paint, hand pinstriped and lettered. Big, strong red lettering declared it a KEN SELF. Fine lugs, Campagnolo track ends and fork tips, and paper-thin Ishiwata tubing ranked it amongst some of the nicest vintage frames around. When it was finally built after months of trawling Ebay, local bike shops and well known internet sites it came into its own. The angles were awesome. It was fast and responsive, perfect for playing in traffic. You could stomp on the pedals and rocket out of the lights, leaving cars behind and opening a clear street ahead. It would duck and weave like a dancer, and wet nights always ended up in skids half a block long. It’s been my favourite bike to ride, and has taken me across the city (and to the pub) more times than I can count.

Alas, all such things must end. The road was the wrong place for it. It should have been left on the track, elbowing its way through a pack and taking out the sprint finish in style. It should have been built lighter and faster, with the best components around, and taken to glory. The mud, rain and dirty streets probably wasn’t the best place for it. A rider filled with beer was always going to be just a little careless. The recklessness of alleycats did not bode well.

But it soldiered on and punched hard every time. For every near miss and close call there was the resulting adrenaline rush and stupid grin. For every 65 inches rolled with each rotation of the pedals, it held its own and gave me everything it had. Until one fateful post-alleycat booze ride brought it to an end.

It was an abrupt stop, and everything seemed fine. There was hardly even any blood. Everyone walked away laughing. A flat tyre, a few bent spokes and a quick check of the fork. She’ll be right, no damage, didn’t even scratch the paint! Denial’s a prick. I didn’t want to look closer. I knew something was a little wrong, but a closer examination didn’t seem desirable. Everything was fine until it went into the work stand this evening. A glance at the front of the bike from an angle slightly different to usual and it all became apparent. There it was, the bulge in the down tube, the kink in the top tube. Stand back and double check, yep, still there. Run a finger along the tubing, confirm it all.The frame’s bent.

It was too good to last, and I knew it all along. Ever since getting that bike I’ve been telling myself that it was meant to be hung on a wall or taken to the board. It felt so perfect for the street, but it was always on a fine wire.

The worst part is knowing that I can still ride it. That I have been riding it. It hasn’t ruined the fun of the bike at all. But when the tubing’s so thin, it doesn’t take much of a tap for things to get worse, fast. The truth was, the salad days were over.

So it’s with regret that the Ken Self is to be finally laid aside. I wish it could have been done without cause. It would have been nice if it was a voluntary retirement. Hell, I’ve even got a new frame on the way. But it wasn’t meant to be. So the new bike’s on the fast track, and the faithful steed will ease its way into retirement with some commutes to work and slow strolls into town. From then it will take its place on the wall, to forever watch and remember.

Good bye bike, you’ve been the best I’ve had! I’ll pour a bidon on the footpath in memory.

Amusing, to the point and the sort of history that should should be taught in Primary School. Keep a look out for the pedal powered generators that keep the whole show going.

The good kids over at fixed.org.au are selling some new t-shirts. It’s all pre-order, and if they happen to make any money then it’ll go towards hosting the site. Help ’em out, they’re a good bunch. You’ll look well-stylish too.

Link: Fixed.org.au Shop

Six hours is a long time. Footy matches are played and won in six hours. Think of  a six hour enduro, how do you feel at the end? Is it a long time to be in the saddle?? It takes six hours to drive from Hobart to Queenstown and back. Six hours is one hour and twenty eight minutes short of your entire working day. Six hours can feel like forever.

Now imagine that you’ve crashed your bike and in the fall you are impailed on a 45cm long wooden stake. It enters your body between the top of your right leg and the bottom of your buttock, passing though your bowel and groin before exiting through your loins on the front left hand side of your body. This would hurt. Pain like nothing we could ever imagine.  Think in terms of those six hours now, could you take six hours with a stick through your most sensitive of parts? I couldn’t, but Matt Yates did.

Twenty two kilometers into the second days stage of the ‘Anaconda MTB Enduro’, Matt attempted to ride up a short, rocky pinch when he lost his balance, lifted the front wheel and fell backwards onto a Mulga Bush. Mulga is notorious amoungst four wheel drivers, it is a particularly hard wood with sharp pointed branches that can punture even the hardiest of offroad tires. Matt landed on one of these Mulga ‘spikes’ from a height of one meter, his full one hundred and five kilogram weight driving down on the bush. It lodged in his body exactly as I described above. I was standing less than two meters away and heard his skin ‘pop’ as the wood pierced his skin.  Matt screamed and I did too. Fuck. It was the worst thing I have ever seen out on my bike.

For a second Matt thought he had been knackered by his seat, but I could see the stake through his body and told him not to move. I was seriously scared. This was serious. I had to do something. I pulled out my first aid kit and sat next to him. Fuck!? What do I do? Another rider (Nina) stopped to see if we were ok. I told her no. Definately not ok. She took a quick look at Matt’s injury and soon was as white and sweaty as both Matt and I. The stake had ‘plugged’ the wound and none too much blood was kicking about. Nothing in the first aid kit was going to help, we needed professionals. I called the Race Organiser (Rapid Ascent), described the injury, where we were and asked that a helicopter come extract Matt NOW. 

Matt had crashed on a remote section of singletrack twenty kilometers from Alice Springs. The nearest four wheel drive access track was four kilometers (?) away. Now you would think that a guy with a stick stuck diagonally through him would warrant immediate attention, for fucks sake there are major arteries down there! But, nope, the Rapid Ascent guys sent us a Check Point Marshall first.. That took fifty minutes. The Marshall showed up, didn’t really look at Matt’s injury (he had to look three times before he would believe that the stick was through Matt and not just his knicks), before calling a First Aid Officer to the scene. I was getting pissed off, a First Aid Officer? Fuck no. We NEED a helicopter with Paramedics. I asked the Marshall to make the call, he wouldn’t do it stating that the First Aid Officer would handle it. A First Aid Officer arrived on the scene two hours after the accident first happened. She had a stretcher with her and a small bag of tricks, none of which were suitable for fixing a problem this big. I now asked her to call for a helicopter. She at least called the Ambo’s asking for assistance and the ‘possibility’ of helicopter extraction, but as she did not press home the severity of the situation the Ambo’s sent a terrestrial crew out in a four wheel drive. Fuck.

By this stage Matt was complaining that he couldn’t feel his left leg, his testicles and of sharp pain that he rated 8/10. I was starting to freak, I work as a Park Ranger and we train for these sort of circumstances, I knew that we should be putting him in a helicopter as time is of the essence and NOT fucking about trying to put a one hundred and five kilogram man on a stretcher and attempt to carry him four kilometers (?) over rough and tight singletrack. But no-one listened.

Ok, so we’re going to carry him out? I asked the Marshall to call for more people to be sent up and help with extraction as with only four people we could only carry Matt five to ten meters at a time before we had to set him down and rest. The Marshall said ‘No, the Ambo’s are coming and they’ll take care of it’. Ok, how ’bout we call the Ambo’s and make sure they have sent two big blokes and not two little women? Nope. The Marshall didn’t make the call.  I was beside myself with anger but I tried to remain calm externally so not as to freak Matt out.

The Ambo’s arrived on the scene at the four hour mark. One big guy and one tiny little chick. They pumped Matt full of morphine and then helped us carry Matt then remaining distance back to the vehicles. It was unbelievably hard. We had to go slow so that the stake didn’t saw at Matt’s insides and to ensure we didn’t drop him or bump the stake. It took another hour and a half to get Matt to the ambulance (which had a flat tire from a mulga spike recieved in the rough traverse in). Once there, the Ambo’s debated how the fuck they would drive Matt to hospital in the four wheel drive as the motion of the vehicle would cause the stake to move and possibly cause more damage. The male Ambo said he wished he had a helicopter… Unbelievably they drove Matt to hospital (a half hour drive) over some of the worst four wheel drive tracks you have ever seen. The pain he went through must have been HUGE!

Matt went straight into surgery. The doctors operated for five hours to remove the stake. It had missed his major artery by two millimeters, had it of been hit, Matt would have been dead in minutes. They pain in Matt’s left leg was caused by blood flow being blocked by the stake. Matt was within minutes of losing his leg.

I am totally gobsmaked at how this event was handled by Rapid Ascent, given I told race organisers about the serverity of the indicent at 10:20am, that we didn’t have Ambulance Officers on the scene until 2:30pm (it may have been later).

I can’t make it any clearer, Matt’s life was at stake. He could have died.