Bear and Courts Tour De Cabbage Adventure

I felt as if I would either sink or swim, I was either going to really love this type of riding, or I was going to yearn for the comfort of my own bed, being clean and warm and having proper food. Obviously heading out for one night is different to going out for 30 days but I felt I could get a bit of a sense for what it’s all about. We ordered a lightweight cooker and headed into the camping shop after work on Friday night to pick it up, all set for our trip. It hadn’t arrive, dam. What to do now, we decided to ponder our options at the coffee shop then an invite for a drink at the pub with the boss sounded appealing. When chatting to the others about what we were thinking of doing, heading out for a bikepacking weekend,  we were told to be careful of snakes, wild dogs, wild farmers with guns whose land we would have to cross, ticks, angry cows and deers. Excellent. A beer, a bowl of chips and some pizza slices later we decided to go jump on the bikes and go. I told my boss if I wasn’t at work on Monday to send out a search party. Al (Bear Grylls) convinced me he knew the tracks and we would be safe. Lights on, energy bars packed, map in hand we headed off.

First part of the trip involved riding 10metres, walking 10metres through cow patties in a muddy cow paddock. I had attached a drink cage under the down tube of my frame and wasn’t overly impressed to see my drink bottle was now covered in cow crap. Let’s hope we find a tap soon. We rode for 2 ½ hours and only diverted off the track once. I have a ridiculously bad sense of direction (I sometimes get lost in Marlo, which is a pretty small town, only 300 people live here) but thankfully Gryllsy can navigate with his eyes closed. We found what we thought would be a nice place to camp and I set out the bivvy and sleeping bags whilst Al set about making a fire. Jumped into bed, and this is where we learnt a few things:

-          Don’t get into your sleeping bag when you’re sweaty from riding. It makes you clammy and uncomfortable and cold

-          Take an inflatable pillow with you. Stuffing a jacket into a sleeping bag cover does not provide any neck support.

-          Don’t get out to pee at 4 in the morning then step in it

-          Don’t decide to camp on a slope

Laying there I felt as if I hadn’t gotten any sleep, but presumed I had or I would have been incredibly bored laying there for 5 hours. When I woke up at 6am freezing my butt off, I felt somewhat of a connection with Rose from the Titanic, feeling similar to when her and Jack are floating in the ocean on a plank of wood. So the first thing I huskily said to Al was “Jack.....Jack......Blow the whistle Jack.....” which then became our catch phrase for the rest of the ride.

 We jumped up and quickly lit a fire to dry to thaw out. Our drinks had turned to ice and a frost had hit. We had some apple energy bars so we put them on a stick and toasted it for breakky. Rode for another hour, with the sun coming up and spectacular views over the valleys I couldn’t imagine any other place I’d rather be. Rolled into Cabbage Tree (yep that’s the name of the town...) to the one and only cafe and ordered some food. Unfortunately all they had were sausage rolls. Having not eaten a sausage roll for years and being a fairly health conscious person it took some self talk and persuading that I need energy to continue riding. It was very delicious and I followed it down with a nice big coffee. Then spent 25 minutes on the loo, there are downsides to eating a healthy diet all the time, you’re not used to it when you have to eat unhealthy foods. Bellies full we headed out on the back tracks towards Bemm River. It was a perfect 25 degrees and we were loving every minute of it. Somewhere along the way I dropped and lost a drink bottle and spent 10 minutes backtracking to find it, with no luck. Starting to get hungry and parched again, I was dreaming of a nice salad sandwich I was hoping to get at Bemm, 3 hours down the track. The trails were pretty rad, fireroads but quite rutted which meant you had to concentrate and use skills making the ride more interesting. We rolled into Bemm and headed to the pub, receiving a less than warm welcome and not seeing anything except greasys on the menu, we headed to the general store for a feed. I wonder what the minimum amount of supplies a shop needs in order to call themselves a general store.... Ice creams, chocolate bars and a jar of vegemite were the only edible items in the shop. A mango ice cream and a cherry ripe later, we were heading out on Old Coast Road to make it back home. Riding along the coast was beautiful, until we hit Pearl Point Track. A 6km sand track, which took us over 2 hours to get through. Ride 10metres, push bike for 10metres repeat over 6kms. It was good fun trying to fly through the sand without coming a gutza the first 3 times, then it got a bit old.

Baking in the sun pushing the bikes though deep sand we ran out of food and water, luckily we were only 18km from home. Cruised in on the bitumen and headed straight to the Marlo store. Relatively incoherent the store owner gave us some delicious big milkshakes to get the sugar levels back up!

So....did I sink or swim?? Looks like training for Tour Divide has officially began!!

ANOTHER ONE OF THOSE “WHAT AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE” MOMENTS

About 18 months ago, I came home with a world map and a book titled “Cycling Around the World” and declared I was planning a bike trip around the world. I mapped out my route, write out an equipment list and even planned out a departure date. Now I must admit, I regularly have these “What am I doing with my life?” mid life crisis’ and come up with lots of things we could and should be doing instead of saving for a house, sipping lattes and going to work 8-5 every day. I love travelling, but I always miss riding my bike too much to go away for long periods of time. I figure I can combine my love for both by bike packing.

 I have a million quotes I regularly spout off to Al, about “We’ve got a long time looking at a lid....you only live once..... life is too short...... etc etc” Unfortunately for the short term me, Al was focused on saving some money to one day buy a house, but none the less this is lucky for the long term me.

Fast forward 12 months, and we have been saving hard, have moved overseas, interstate and across the state, grinding away 8-5 every day, doing lots of races and meeting loads of cool people. Then I brought home a DVD titled “Ride the Divide.” For those of you who haven’t seen it, see it. It’s a doco on a 2700 mile (4000ish KM’s) race from Banff, Canada to Mexico. It is a self supported race and the cut-off date for females is 30 days, and 27 for males.  The same way Gordo in 24 Solo inspired me to sign up to Kona 24 hour 2 months after seeing the DVD, Matthew Lee and Mary Metcalfe Collier make me want to do this race. The idea was planted.

So now I have 2 ideas, one involved travelling around sort of like cycle touring and the other involves ultra endurance racing self supported style events. Now these ‘underground’ events are starting to get big. It involves a group of like minded people turning up to a point at a certain time, riding the same trails and then comparing times ad experiences at the end. There is no entry fee, no prize money and you are only allowed to use services accessible to every other competitor, so no support crew. This is way harder,  way fairer and heaps cheaper than racing. Whilst I love racing, the cost of entry fees, the wankers turning up in all the gear no idea, and the team racers in endurance events screaming TRACK when you’re flying down a technical single downhill section 22 hours into a solo race is making the Ride the Divide events somewhat more appealing. This type of racing involves being really tough, no one to wipe the snot off your face, feed you or provide you with motivating words or massages. You have to navigate, you have to make sure your getting enough energy and water in, setup camp, keep warm, fix your own repairs, keep pedalling through all elements of the weather and what’s best is having 3 of the same bikes on hand won’t help you a bit. It starts to make 24 solo’s look somewhat tame. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love racing and I am super pumped for the Scott 24 in about 3 weeks, and the loads of races after that, but I reckon I can combine training for endurance races with bike packing and going to see the world this way. I am now finding myself looking at bike packing websites and seeking this underground movement on bikepacking.net, looking at the Colorado trail race and reading blogs by these crazy people that race stupidly long distances all the time. We have recently watched Race Across America, and Off the Rails, 2 DVDs about riding massive distances, pushing mind and body to the limit. They truly are inspiring and made me feel quite pathetic living my somewhat mundane life.

So why don’t you just go and do it instead of banging on about it I hear you say. Well, for those of you that know me I am full of great ideas but regularly change my mind. One minute I’m moving to Alaska, the next Alice Springs, and the next Orbost. One minute I am loving being a teacher, the next I’m on seek.com looking to be a mtb instructor, work in a bike shop or study journalism. Al let me sit on this idea for 18month, thinking I would love the theory of bike packing but being stuck out in the cold and rain, with no food I would be a grumpy bitch pining to go home. He had seen me crack the sads out on training rides when we got lost, copped an unnecessary spray because I was hungry (I become a completely different person when I am hungry and Al has learnt to carry spare food so when signs of hunger hit he can try to prevent this from happening) We always laugh at the Snickers Ad “Your not you when your hungry” cos that applies to me so much. However I was convinced that if I was getting to ride my bike, I would be happy and that I had mellowed a lot more in recent times, largely due to having so much time off the bike with injuries I feel I am just glad to be back riding and not sweating the little things that can go wrong when you’re out on the bike. I have realised I can train for enduro’s by riding with my mates, by heading out on a bikepacking trip, and not having to follow a strict training regime that state I must do 4 x 4minutes strength efforts on the ergo. Yes I will do these, but it’s not the end of the world if I miss a session to go out for a night ride with my mates. I have tried this theory since being back on the bike, and I have actually achieved some pretty good results, am less injured and having heaps more fun, I reckon it’s the key to staying the sport a longer time.  

We started talking more and more about Ride the Divide, Colorado Trail Race and other exciting adventurous rides, and last weekend finally bit the bullet and bought some good quality bivvy’s, sleeping bags, thermarests and a portable lightweight cooker and decided the only way to see if we liked it was to head out into the bush for the weekend. Read the next blog to find out what happened!!!