Shameless self promotion?

Despite being a complete contradiction for someone who publishes the minute of his cycling life on the internet, I’m actually a pretty low fuss, under the radar sort of guy. So I’m struggling with the task of drawing attention to my ride and the degree of self promotion that comes with it. I’m having to pimp myself out to all sorts of news outlets and the Chemmart marketing department are starting to pull some strings to get a little more exposure as well. I’m finding it rather daunting although my extremely wise buisness partner has trained me well and taught me the fine art of sucking it up and doing it for the greater good.

I have an article coming up in the local paper and featured in the pharmacy daily on Tuesday and there are a couple of other avenues that I am pursuing and hoping it leads to some more donations. After all, its all for a good cause (I am starting to sound more and more like the fat cyclist every day :))

In other news, I started packing all my shite onto the bike to make sure it is all going to fit where I need it.  This was the first time I have loaded up the new super seat bag with all the stuff that I intend to take and I have found that the new bag is FREAKING ENORMOUS! I was literally hunting around for other things to pack because there was so much space left!.

B-rad overcame his allergy to gears to give me a hand installing the short cage ultegra rear mech in place of the long cage XTR and the bike now shifts flawlessly. Many thanks go to B-rad for his help, along with the full length poncho/ultralight tarp that he loaned me which I will use to cover my bivvy if the weather turns exceptionally shite.

Mick at Gateshead also loaned me a solar iphone charger which should see me listening to music most days to pass the time! They are starting to accrue a mighty array of bike-packing paraphernalia in that store and I even succumbed to weight weenie lust for an ultralight towel (thats weight weenie speak for a piece of cloth about the size of a face washer).

Finally, I bought some ultralight tent pegs to complement B-rads ponchotarp.

I’ll box up the bike on friday/saturday. Stay in Syd on sat night and hop my flight on sunday morning….. I guess I had better organize accommodation in perth for Sunday night. So much to do still, pedaling is going to be the easy part .

Just a bit jealous

A friend is heading off on a big arse ride tomorrow. Riding from Cairns to Canberra. No fanfare, no obligations, just a pedal down the coast with a bob trailer and a wide open plan – living the dream! Thats a long way. Best of luck Vic and I’ll see you at the HuRT!

Track Changes

Just to add a little interest to a fairly stagnant race format, Dallas and I made some changes to the track for the XC club round.  It seems things worked out OK with no-one getting lost and the lap times shortening a little to make our track a little more forgiving.

 

I’ve started packing gear for Trans-oz since it is scattered to the 4 ends of the house and may take me a week to find most of it. I’m looking forward to 2 weeks of isolation and the simple mantra of eat, sleep, ride.

 

 

Off topic

Waaaaaay back before I started riding bikes obsessively, I rode surfboards obsessively. Looking at the swell forecast, there is going to be one hell of a contest at Teahupo this year. Big, Scary big! Big Teahupoo is probably the mountain bike equivalent of making a 30 foot drop out of a helicopter on a full rigid bike into a pure sandstone downhill track in the middle of an avalanche and an earthquake. Its freaking insane and if you get it wrong, its is really really going to hurt.

Anyway, at the risk of plugging a multinational sports company, make sure you tune in to the live webcast on Thurs/Fri Tahitian time because it is going to be something that even people who have no interest in surfing what-so-ever will find captivating. Absolute gladiator stuff!

Monologuing

I broke out the camera tonight and finally uploaded some of the movies I had shot while to Port Macquarie. I was really just experimenting with camera angles and wind noise for my Trans-Oz ride however the story of my nights bivvy made me smile enough that I thought I would upload it and share with the world.

The wind noise is terrible for the first 10 seconds and then I must have changed the way I was holding the camera as it suddenly becomes really clear. I’ll have to figure out what I did and make sure I do it while ever I shoot on the move in Trans-Oz. Anyway, if you have a spare 3 minutes that you never want back, watch this

Other people living the dream

I don’t have a great deal to write about today so instead I’ll just send you on your way to read about someone who does things bigger, better, faster, higher, longer and stronger than I do. She also takes better photos of better mountains of better single track so add her to your RSS if you haven’t already.

Eszter SMASHED the CTR this year, go read about it here:

http://gooneyriders.typepad.com/gooney_riders/2011/08/ctr-stories-and-pictures-from-between-the-spot-points.html

I need new Knees

I haven’t been vocal about it until this point, but I’m having a few problems with knee pain that are going to make Trans-Oz a real nightmare. The pain is only mild at this point and I am hopeful that with 3 weeks of solid rest prior to leaving, I can recover sufficiently to allow me to make it the whole way but there are some nagging doubts in the back of my mind that don’t do great things for confidence.

This morning I paid a visit to Marek at Two Wheel Industries to have my setup double checked. Unfortunately, the bike setup was pretty close to spot on so there aren’t a great deal of changes that will yield instant relief to my knees. My Q factor (I can’t believe I just uttered that phrase) was apparently too wide and some changes to cleat position may help things a little, however rest, anti-inflammatories and a teaspoon of cement are the only things that I have up my sleeve at the moment.

Since I can’t go ride huge K’s, I’m going to have to find something else to do so the HuRT facebook page (soon to be released) might get a few needed updates to reflect the imminent release of the grand depart date. Its going to be rad!

 

 

Pimp my ride – staying visible on the commute

A little while ago I ordered some parts with the aim of making myself a little more visible on the night time commute from work. I already have a hump backpack cover (there are a few of us rocking these covers on the way to the Terrace in the morning) and the obligatory blinky lights. Yet I always felt like I was pretty susceptible to being missed from traffic entering from intersections. Just driving a car at night time and seeing other riders fending off traffic with nothing more than a 1 watt LED tail light makes you realize how little you stand out.

Now I have a super pimp light system which looks terrible by daylight but can’t be missed by night time. It has around 6 hours run time, is completely water proof and cost about $15.00 in parts. Since it was my trial rig, I blew a few LED’s while trying to run them off a stupendously over volted battery just to see what would happen so there are a few spots which are dim.

It is so bright you can easily see the road illuminated 2 lanes away and your legs take on an eerie blue as you pedal away into the darkness. Conveniently, it also prevents junkies from trying to use my lights for unsafe injecting practices.

Unfortunately, I only have a crappy iphone picture at the moment, but I have a few more parts on order to build another so I will take a proper photo when i get around to making another.

Where’s my jetpack?

To badly paraphrase Leo McGarry of the West Wing, many an old timer has questioned the failure to materialize of promises from their youth. Those growing up in the 50’s were led to believe that everyone would be commuting to work with jetpacks at the turn of the century and yet here we are still diving cars and riding bikes.

In the same vein, why has GPS trail mapping failed to bring us the panacea of single track that it should so rightly be providing. We have a device that allows us to record and share trails making discovery and adventure that much simpler and yet it seems to be the domain of a few crazy bike-packing aficionados. Most of the trail mapping I see are ‘look at me’ bragging about how much vertical they’ve climbed and i’ve been guilty of it myself.

Hell, most GPS units (I’m looking at you Garmin) don’t even allow you to follow a route, they are just recording devices. It seems like we are on the cusp of something great and no-one even knows it.

So, if anyone has any rad single track that I MUST ride before I die, let me know and I’ll go suss it out!

Frank is back

I picked up ‘Frank’ from Gateshead cycles today. We attempted to graft a 53/39 road crank set onto it however there were some clearance issues involving the chain stay which couldn’t be resolved and the old MTB cranks had to remain. Instead, AK found a 48/36 chainring combo which we fitted and now I have a gear that will allow me to ‘deploy the spinnaker’ should I be met with the mother of all tail winds.

After that, I cobbled together a bike out of the bits of shite laying all over my house and went for a spin with the GPS to map some more HuRT. I got from Adamstown station through to Edgeworth however I haven’t got a firm plan about where the trail will go once we hit the trails next to the link road. I have a few ideas so I will have a poke around in the near future and see what I can find.

It was amusing riding a 26 inch dually again. I had the most amazing catlike over the bars moment. I was almost stationary, put the wheel into a small rut and gracefully pirouetted over the bars landing softly on my face in the gravel. A little missing skin, a little chuckle to myself and a gentle reminder that we aren’t in Kansas any more Toto.