Day 16 – New Friends and Old

It was the sixteenth day, and I woke up feeling rubbish. Specifically, I woke up feeling rubbish poking into my back – my choice of sleeping location the previous night hadn’t been ideal, and I’d spent the night shifting around trying to find the most comfy spot, but fundamentally I was sleeping just down the bank from a busy road where decades worth of cretins had been chucking their rubbish. It wasn’t ideal, and it had also been freezing cold.

But – the morning was beautiful, and I knew things would get good as soon as I got on the bike. I was in country I knew fairly well – at the foot of Tawonga Gap, in Bright. Bright is home of the Tour of Bright, one of the best road races in the country, and is also an excellent destination for a cycling holiday, so I’d been in the area a lot and knew this climb well. The cold weather and poor night of sleep had me moving very slowly, but once I actually dragged myself out of my sleeping bag and started moving things quickly started looking up. The sun was shining, the sky was blue, the air was crisp, and the day was looking great. I was still cold, but I knew the climb would soon have me warmed up. I got on my bike.

It was a joy to climb, even though I was going a whole lot slower on a fully loaded bike than I had the last time I raced up it, on my 6.8kg speed machine. The only downside was something that I had actually started noticing the day before – my pedal was dragging. It had started out fairly mildly as something I could barely notice, but as I climbed I could feel it getting worse, to the point that I could feel it pushing my ankle around as I pedalled. If it had to happen though it was choosing the right place – as I mentioned, Bright is pretty much a cycling mecca and I was pretty sure I’d find an open bike shop, even on a Sunday afternoon.

Anyway, for the moment it was still working, so I was still climbing. Sure enough with the effort and the sun I was now nice and warm, and I was feeling good when I got to the top.

Tawonga Gap has a spectacular view and a nice viewing platform, so it seemed like it would be a good idea to stop and grab a nice photo or two of my bike, and myself, with the view. Because it’s a good place to ride to if you’re based in Bright, and it’s such a nice view, there were several people standing there admiring it, so I waited a few moments until no-one else was on the platform and then I quickly lined my bike up on it and took a fantastic photo. The view was stunning, the light was perfect, the weather was excellent, and basically the photo was fantastic. As I took the photo, a woman standing nearby with a nice bike saw what a good picture it was and asked if I wanted her to take one with me in it. I happily agreed, handed her my phone, and stepped up beside my bike.

Her name turned out to be Carole, and the photo she took was also fantastic. It had all the merits of the one I had taken, but this one had me in it, and given that I had spent the last two nights sleeping beside the road and had covered over 4,000km over the last couple of weeks, I have to say I was looking pretty good. I get quite a few requests for pics of myself while I’m riding (I think people want to see the pain) so I had a quick look and thought “Wow, what a great pic, that one can even go in the blog”.

After confirming that it was a great picture I got back on my bike and enjoyed the long descent down the other side of Tawonga Gap with Carole, who turned out to be excellent company. There were quite a few other riders out in the beautiful weather, but we were taking good lines and rolling down the hill with great smooth pace, leaving everyone we saw behind. To add to the greatness of the morning, as we hit the corner to turn towards Bright I saw a familiar face. I’ve got a good friend who lives in the area, and he’d taken a trip out just to say g’day, which really gave me a good day.

After a quick stop we kept rolling on, but as we came into Bright itself Carole punctured. One of the downsides of this style of racing is that you meet a lot of people and then suddenly you don’t see them anymore. You could stop and wait every time someone riding with you had an issue, but honestly, doing so could easily add days to your overall trip. Carole obviously understood this, so as she rolled to a stop she assured me she had the tools she needed and wished me well for the rest of the ride.

Heading in to town I pulled in at the first open bike shop I saw. Unfortunately just before I walked in the door a busload of about 20 people walked in, and when I was able to speak to someone they said it would be a day before they were able to look at my pedal. I considered my options, and decided the best one was to go looking for another shop, so I rolled down the road until I came to CyclePath. I went in and explained to them that I was half way through a race across the country and my pedal needed a service, and asked if they could help me out. This time they said yes, with one of them even postponing his lunch break to have a look at it straight away, while I went to get some food. Bright also has some very good food options, so I took a quick walk up the road to a bakery, got myself something to eat, and then headed back down to pick up my bike. The tyres were pumped, the chain was lubed, and the pedals were spinning beautifully. Life was good.

Rolling out of town things were warming up, and as I turned a corner I noticed an ice-cream van. It was over 30 degrees by this time, so a stop seemed eminently sensible. It was a great van with really good ice-cream, and there were a couple of guys of maybe 15 years old there, with bags strapped to their bikes. When I say bags strapped to bikes, I’m not talking about custom made bikepacking bags mounted on a custom titanium frame, like I was on, I’m talking about basically some shopping bags and backpacks strapped to pannier racks on bikes that looked to be on at least their third or fourth owners. They were instantly pretty interested in what I was riding, and it turned out that they had heard that you could go on long trips by bike, and decided to give it a go with what they had. It also turned out that they were having a great time, which was a nice demonstration of the fact that while having the fanciest of gear is very nice, it isn’t necessary at all to have a good time.

As we talked, the kid in the van joined the discussion too and it made for a very pleasant stop. I had just finished my ice-cream and was thinking about moving on when I realised that I hadn’t yet paid for it. Unfortunately at that moment the kid stepped out the side door to go into the nearby service station for some supplies that he needed. He stepped out, the door clicked closed behind him, he took about three steps, and then froze mid-stride and said a word he probably shouldn’t have been using at his age. He had left the keys inside.

We spent a few minutes discussing where the owner with the spare key was, what he would say when he heard that the kid had locked himself out (I figure it’s been long enough now that I’m ok to tell this story), and what the other options were.

A quick check of the side door confirmed it was well and truly locked, leaving the serving window as the only option. The window was much too high for him to get into on his own, but with a bit of teamwork it was clearly achievable. I gave him a boost and he crawled over the counter, sliding with a remarkable lack of grace onto the floor on the other side. Ungraceful, but inside. He had the brains to put the keys in his pocket as the first thing he did, and then insisted on only charging me for a single scoop of my two scoop ice-cream. I took it as payment for services rendered, and headed onwards.

The roads from Bright had been following the Ovens River down, but now they turned away and started climbing again. Over a little bump to Myrtleford then on to the longer “Back of Stanley” climb, which averages out at just 5% but is over 10km long, with a few steeper pinches to it. Happily as I reached the climb there was another fella just turning onto it. Noticing the bags on the bike he said g’day and asked where I was headed and where I’d been, and then we chatted for the rest of the trip up the hill. I was working hard while he was polite enough to say he’d planned an easy day that day anyway, but it was pretty obvious that was the slowest trip he’d ever taken up that climb!

Over the top of the climb it was an easy cruise down into Beechworth. First stop was the bakery, where I stocked up with all kinds of things that looked good, and then I headed around the corner to Beechworth Brewery. They are long time supporters of IndyPac, offering a free pizza to all the riders who come through, so I made sure to stop and enjoy one, as well as a refreshing beer.

I have to admit that when you’re doing something like IndyPac you tend to look different, and that tends to start conversations. There was a family sitting next to me, and it wasn’t long until the kids started asking questions. They didn’t stop for nearly an hour, but I was feeling nice and relaxed, and it wasn’t until their parents started telling the kids that I surely had to get going that I realised they were right, and that I should get back on the bike. Even so, after a good meal and a beer I was very much in cruising mode.

I hit the road towards Yackandanda and was very much enjoying the day, but as expected I pretty soon started feeling peckish again – that is basically a constant condition when you are riding hundreds of kilometers per day! It wasn’t a problem though, because I had stocked up at the bakery. I grabbed out the first of my purchases, and then realised my mistake.

Events like this aren’t easy on your body. Obviously your legs are going to hurt, muscles as well knees and ankles. Even with the best knicks and saddle you are going to get a sore butt to some extent, especially because your butt is going to change shape over the course of the ride. You’ll probably lose some fat, maybe gain some muscle or maybe lose some muscle too, but either way what was a perfect fit at the start won’t be perfect by the end, so you’ll get a bit of pain. Your hands get a bit beaten up from holding the handlebars over all kinds of rough terrain for days on end. All of these things are obvious. Less obvious though is what happens to your mouth. You go through various stages of dehydration, you eat constantly with a lot of high sugar foods, brushing of teeth happens at random times and your diet is often suboptimal. All of this means that after a couple of weeks, your mouth is going to be more sensitive. On this particular day, my mouth was very sensitive indeed. And for some reason, all of the food I had bought at the bakery was covered in chilli!

I ate about half of the first roll that I had, suffering with every chew, before my brain finally caught up with what was happening and I realised that I could just pull most of the chillies off. I pulled over and removed them all from that roll, then decided I’d best pull them off the rest as well, because I clearly wasn’t going to be ready for chilli any time soon. All up that was another 15 minute stop by the side of the road. What should have been a very short trip from Beechworth to Yackandanda (or Yack, as the locals call it) was taking a very long time.

Eventually, I reached Yack and by that time I was starting to feel the need to go a bit faster. The main road through Yack goes down-hill and I was fairly moving by the time I hit the town, so much so that I barely had time to look at the group of people cheering my name outside the pub. I gave them a wave and a smile though, barely sparing a glance for the bloke on his own on the other side of the road with his bike. About 200m later though, that bloke’s face registered in my mind, and I hit the brakes. It was the face of a great friend of mine, one of the nicest blokes I know, but he was a few hundred km from where I expected him to be.

He was on his bike by that time and rapidly catching up to me, so I rolled on and said g’day as he pulled in next to me. He was originally from Albury and had come to town to see his dad, and then taken a side trip to see me. As we rode he also mentioned that he had brought me some dinner. I was stoked! I was also feeling terribly guilty. It turned out that he had been waiting in Yack for a loooong time. He had planned early on to come and meet me somewhere near Beechworth, then decided he wouldn’t have time to get there before me. Then I took some of the longest stops I can imagine, having no idea that someone was waiting for me down the road. So that is a handy tip for dot-watchers: if you’re going to come out and meet people on the road, make sure you do it somewhere comfortable, because you might have a long wait!

Of course, my mate being a man of initiative didn’t waste his time while waiting – he told everyone in the pub about IndyPac and showed them the tracker, which explained the crowd of people out the front of it cheering for me as I went past. What a legend!

One of the awkward things about when people come out to ride with you is that sometimes they’re, well, not as fast as you. It feels a bit bad if someone has come out specially to see you and you drop them within 30 seconds, but at the same time, it is a race and you don’t want to slow down too much! Happily my mate is in pretty good shape, and was actually the fastest person who had come out to ride with me up to that point, so we spent a very pleasant hour cruising down the road.

For some of it we were also joined by Keith (I think it was Keith – sorry if it was you and I’ve got your name wrong!), which was very nice but also a bit funny. The rules about being self-supported vary a bit between races, and there are certainly races from which I would have been kicked out for riding for an hour with a friend, never mind having him bring me dinner! On the other hand, there are races where it wouldn’t even be identified as a possible issue. But when Keith started talking about the self-supported requirements both my mate and I decided independently to not mention that he had a meal he had cooked for me in his pannier!

Anyway, eventually Keith turned back and headed for home, while we kept on riding into Kiewa, to the point where we could see the pub was open so I could buy a meal if I needed to. Then we pulled over and ate the meal he had brought with him. He is actually a great cook and I’ve eaten many an astounding meal at his place, but that night he apologised for the blandness, saying he had just made it up from whatever an aging dutchman in Albury happened to have in his cupboard. To me and my over-stimulated and over-sensitive mouth though it tasted superb.

Anyway, eventually it was time for me to keep moving on and for him to ride back up to Yack (I hadn’t quite understood how far back his ride was going to be, and apparently it turned out to be a bit of an adventure, but I was really grateful that he made the effort). The question of where I would ride to wasn’t entirely simple though. I was lucky in that the weather was good at the time, but I was going to have to climb up past Cabramurra the following day. Cabramurra is the highest town in Australia, and at times it has a had a pub and accommodation and all the things that a hungry bikepacker needs, but it is also a company town, being entirely owned by Snowy Hydro, and for a couple of reasons it was now entirely closed to the public. That meant there would be no food or shelter available there, and I really wanted to get up and over in one go, so I had to put a bit of care into my timing. That meant my best option was to get over Mt Granya, and then stop somewhere on the shores of Lake Hume, so that’s what I did.

It made for a fairly early night, but I was fine with that. I found a nice quiet spot, clean with soft grass, then lay down in my bivy bag and closed my eyes with a big smile on my face – it had been a really great day.