Rain Evasion Ride

Arriving home from a nights work at 6am the outlook for my weekend training ride wasn’t good. Rain, rain and some more rain for Southeast Queensland. Riding 20 hours and camping in the rain held exactly ZERO appeal, especially in my sleep deprived state.

After a day of moping around I eventually made a late decision to drive down to Grafton in New South Wales (aka The Police State) and ride the Old Glenn Innes road. It wouldn’t be the "course specific” ride that the training plan called for but it would be plenty long enough AND most importantly, mostly dry (I hoped!).

I was up at 3:30am for the 3+ hour drive to Grafton. It wasn’t easy dragging myself out of bed that early after working a “red eye” the night before but it had to be done. Anyway, it was good training for the race plan, getting up dead tired! The drive down was pretty uneventful with a few rain showers but with a clearing horizon the closer I got to Grafton.

I parked the car in the loading area out the back of the local Coles and quickly prepped the bike. I was pleased to get away at my planned 8am and warmed up on the 7km of busy road out to the Old Glenn Innes turn off.

I hadn't done much research on the road as it was such a late decision to ride down here. I had just built a route with Ride With GPS and uploaded it to the gps. I knew the road was the main highway until 1962, there was a tunnel build circa 1867, some big hills and some ghost towns but that was it. Best case scenario, I would make it all the way to Glenn Innes, 177km (and a big climb) away. Worst case I would camp where I dropped. Being honest with myself, Option 2 was the most likely outcome.

The first 30km or so were sealed road and pretty uninteresting, with lots of little climbs and descents. Once I hit the dirt, what little traffic had been on the road ceased altogether. Perfect. The road didn't become any more interesting and I felt like I was just grovelling along quite slowly. I probably was as I had only obtained 8 hours sleep in the previous 2.5 days and this Beast isn't the sprightliest bike packing rig. Working against me was the ever-so-slight but ever present gentle climb. Of course, you couldn't see this with the naked eye and even the gps struggled to show it on the elevation profile. Never the less, it was there!

The track began to parallel the Boyd River for quite some time and this was a very pleasant pedal, mainly because it was level-ish and the speed was high. I was passed by lots of adventure bikes coming the other way and I thought "that is the way to see this country". Interestingly, most of the bikes were DRZ400s, KLR650s or XR400s with just a small number of high end KTM or BMWs. Clearly, you don't need to spend a fortune to have fun off road.

After much deliberation and consternation I had pulled the trigger on a GoPro replacement. With much assistance from DCRainmaker's excellent review I turned my Single Speed mountain bike into a GoPro Hero 6 Black. This was now a camera shakedown ride as well as a training ride.

I eventually came to the old settlement of Dalmorton. I have seen figures of past population range from 300 to 3000. Who really knows now and does it really matter? Back in the day it would have been small and remote, but vital. The Parks service is slowly restoring the remaining old buildings and it is definitely worth stopping for a look around as it is in a very pretty valley.

I sat and ate my home made chicken roll here at a picnic bench. Being midday and having been up for nearly 9 hours I decided to shut my eyes for 30 minutes. The green grass looked so soft and inviting. Of course, with this being Australia I knew something would bite me while I slept. Sure enough, after 20 minutes I was rudely awakened by a green ant nipping at my chest. How do these little buggers sting so much?!! Oh well, time to get going again I guess?

Getting away from the blasted green ants!

Initially I felt doughy but soon I was feeling great again. I must remember to use the nap strategy when I feel hopelessly tired as it definitely refreshed me. The climbs didn't seem so bad any more, even though they were getting longer and steeper.

Much steeper than it looks!

The hand hewn tunnel hove into view and while not very long, it is clearly very necessary as the rock outcrop juts right out to drop into the river. I can just imagine the original road surveyors thinking to themselves....."bugger". Some serious grunt work would have been required to build this beauty!

I passed a cenotaph in the middle of nowhere (Newton Boyd was the locality) honouring the 30 local lads who had gone off to fight in WWI. It is so touching whenever I come across these things in my travels. Here, these names were someone's son, brother or husband, not just names on a monument. They left these idyllic little valleys, their families and loved ones for the horror of WWI, almost all on this cenotaph never to return.........

Lest We Forget

The road climbed away from the river and I was getting a bit concerned about my water supply. Mainly concerned that the water filter (Sawyer Mini) I was carrying (and had been for 2 months now) was completely untested by me.
I was hoping it was idiot proof.....
Turns out it was!
Much to my relief, the hardest part of filtering water was hanging down off the bridge to fill the filter bag at the Henry River crossing.

With a full 5.5 litre complement of water I slowly climbed away from the river crossing. This water is heavy! But I would need it as I wasn't sure what would be available as I climbed higher up into the hills.

The road was quite nicely surfaced, being a crushed granite surface with plenty of corrugates on the highly cambered corners where the water had run to the inside. This meant I had to go the long way around bends, on the outside of the turn, to keep some forward momentum up. Luckily, there was zero traffic.

As I approached the 9 hour mark I decided that I would not be making the top of the climb, let alone the extra 30km into Glenn Innes as this was to be a 10 hour training day. I also still had to ride back to Grafton tomorrow, get in the car and then drive 3 hours home then got to work for 14 hours the next day. Curse working for a living!!

Diehard

I reached a spot that my phone mapping app, Galileo, called "Diehard". I figured this was a good place to call the turnaround as the road dipped down about 300ft to cross the Mann River before hiking back up for the main range climb.



I had passed a really nice camping spot along the river about 10km back and that would make my 10 hours. I knew that it was downhill but didn't think it would take only 20 minutes to reach it. There really had been some climbing here!


Finding a nice spot with a few well positioned trees I quickly set up camp, boiled some water and had dinner. I managed to just get done before dark and pretty much as soon as it was dark turned in for the night, setting an alarm for 6am.

It was a warm night and I didn't sleep that well so it took a little effort to climb out of bed this morning but once up I quickly downed a cup of tea and a few bars for breakfast (mmmmm..mmmm, yum....bars.....) and packed up. Once rolling I noticed the legs weren't sore at all, meaning I hadn't tried hard enough yesterday!

Morning glory

I was soon down to the Henry river crossing where I had filtered water yesterday and I topped up with about a litre and a half now. I didn't do a "maxi tanker" load as I knew there were more crossings ahead and I had confidence in my filter AND how the water tasted now!

Testing the GoPro voice command

Getting it done.

Today was just all about getting back to the car and getting home. My butt was a bit sore so I stood and pedalled a lot today to give it some relief. I stood and mashed the pedals on most of the climbs and was pleasantly surprised to feel that my legs didn't hurt at all. They weren't begging me to stop so all of the training must be paying off. In fact, I could quite regularly put the bike in top gear and while standing, mash the pedals for a while. Good-o!

I thought I had phone service.....but no......thank you Telstra!

I passed quite a few more motorcyclists today. What is it with DRZ400s? They smell like they are all burning oil every time one passes? I will have to ask an owner one day if they chew the oil a bit because it sure smells like it..

I didn't take many photos this morning as it was basically the same scenery as yesterday, just from a different angle. I did get this screen grab from a video as I went back through Dalmorton where a group of motorcyclists were looking around. See that guy down the road? Yeah, the one with his back to me? Well he just strolled across the road like there was nobody around, only looking over his right shoulder at the last second, the second that I was about to plow into him at 30km/h! I was videoing with one hand so couldn't do much to avoid him. Lucky for both of us he stopped in the middle of the road, just in time!!

G'day champ.......

The rest of the ride consisted of lots of little ups and downs. There proved to be 1500m(5000ft) of climbing in this downhill direction! I was glad to see the road turn back to sealed surface as this meant only about 30km to go. It also meant more traffic but nothing that wasn't manageable.

The last 7km into Grafton was into a strong headwind (isn't it always the way?) and I was pretty glad to get to my car (and glad to see it still there!) as I was getting a little sore by now.

A quick visit to the BP truck stop for a shower and a trucky works burger and I was feeling a million bucks again! The two days had seen me cover 242km(150mi) with 3500m(11500ft) of climbing on bugger all sleep.
I didn't feel too bad but I need to look at my right shoe insole as my right foot was quite sore. My right hand had some feeling issues as well but I will be changing grips once my new bar ends arrive from China so they should sort that problem. I was glad of the long saddle time as it was a great reminder of how little time I have spent on the seat during this training. Most rides are in the 2 hour range and simply do not replicate what it feels like to be on a bike all day long, day after day. This worries me a little as this is meant to be my last overnight training ride before the AZTR750. For the TD I did at least 15 x 12 hour days in the saddle so it never really bothered me during that race. I may need to get a few more 12 hour days on this bike - even if it is just on the rail trail or somewhere equally boring.

I arrived home at a very civil 5:30pm, not the 9-10pm that I had originally warned the family about, so I was in the good books. ;)




Cheers.