Looking For A Roof Top.....

It is Saturday today so guess what I did? Yup. Went and dug dirt again. Was it wet? Yes, wetter than it has been in the past 5 weeks and THAT is saying something.

We had another good turn out of trail diggers in the face of much more rain. I was truly surprised that the dozen or so guys (still no persons of the fairer sex) turned up despite the inability to see where the ground ended and the sky begun this morning!

Significantly, we hit the 300 hour mark with volunteer hours this morning! This is only week 5 of the build so the volunteer hours are simply awesome so far. I personally think it really shows in the quality of the trail so far. Sure, there are a few parts that need "tweeking", but these are far less than any trail we have built so far.

Here is a section of benching that we time-lapsed today. I am sure my Go Pro battery is lasting less and less. It only lasted about 45 minutes here, but you get the idea. Does my bum look big in this.....?




I must thank many of Brisbane's mountain bikers for answering the call for trail building and showing up despite the atrocious conditions. The sausage sandwiches afterwards must be bloody good to keep you guys turning up each week!

Thanks to Andrew for my sweet SEQTA T-shirts. I can't wait to gain 10kg(22lb) so I can do them justice!(just kidding mate!)

The downside to all of this 'effing rain is that we can't do anything. No mountain biking, no road biking and definitely no R1, with a bald rear tyre, riding! It has basically gone from drought conditions up until the 25th of January to non-stop rain for the last 5 weeks! FFS!

It is now 10pm local time and the rainfall chart since 9am tells a story....of today. The last 5 weeks have been very, very similar so you can just imagine how much rain we have had! We are about where the "N" is in Logan, just to the north of the centre. (Hint: 25mm = 1 inch) Also, as a point of interest for my foreign readers, Cape Byron at the bottom is the most easterly point on the Australian mainland.

So...............what to do.................?

Grab an AK-47 and find a rooftop..............?

Luckily for all of us Australian gun laws are pretty tight! I need to go for a ride!!!!

Cheers.

When will the riding start again?

I am guessing that this question is on the lips of most mountainbikers on the east coast of Australia at the moment. The amount of rain and almost unprecedented flooding is great news for the health of our river systems, but bad news for the plucky MTBer. Trail damage, component damage and fungal growths from being constantly wet have all conspired to keep a lot of us sitting on our backsides for far too long now! There is going to be an explosion of trail shredding once the rain decides to stay away.

Work has also been playing a hand in sidelining me lately. The bi-annual simulator session had been looming in my near future and finally materialised.

Much refresher study and contemplation has paid off. I am through for another six months. This time around day one consisted of a flight from Jakarta, Indonesia to Perth, Western Australia. A Volcanic ash encounter about one hundred nautical miles south of Soekarno-Hatta International airport caused multiple malfunctions on the aircraft. There was an actual happening in the 1980s that raises the hair on the back of your neck when reading the report. The upshot for us was an immediate turn back to Jakarta with one engine failed due to pyroclastic adhesion inside the engine and the unknown life expectancy of our still running engine. The engine very kindly held on until we made it back to Jakarta safely.
Day two is the fairly standard base check with an engine failure on takeoff in 125 metre visibility, a single engine hand flown approach. No runway sighting, so go around and try a different approach with a single engine landing and an emergency culminating in a passenger evacuation. Easy peasy!

I need a good ride, so please, no more rain for a week or so.