Hills: I has them
Dec. 19th, 2008 03:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
julietToday I have mostly spent going UP a mountain (590m: 500m gain in 8km), between St Helen's and Derby. (Weldborough Pass, specifically.) I did this very very slowly, and with the aid of the ipod as alternative distraction to the perennial favourites "Name That Roadkill" (difficulty increases with extent to which corpse has decomposed/been eaten[0]) and "Count The Tinnies" (Australian version of "Count The Lucozade Bottles". Obviously they don't have Lucozade here.)
The descent on the other side was cracking (once it stopped being on a road which someone had decided to tarmac by scattering gravel over some sticky stuff and leaving it at that, i.e. with bits of sodding gravel skittering everywhere), though. For some reason putting panniers on the front of the bike led me to forget about countersteering, so my descending had become rubbish; I've now remembered again (courtesy of an article in Cycling Australia) so all is once again well and I can zoom round hairpin bends with abandon. Which I did. Zoom! The only game suitable for playing on descents is "No Brakes B*tch", which originated after I read an interview with one of the GB mountain bike team in which she said that this is what she chants to herself on descents. I like her style.[1]
Cracking though the descent was, it was not in fact "downhill all the way to Derby" as claimed by both the postie at Weldborough, and my routesheet. I knew this, really, as the postie was in a car, and drivers are just as unreliable on gradient as they are on distance, that is, very; and the routesheet used GPS or something which is also unreliable on gradient. This is why Audax UK still AFAIK insists that to award AAA points the organiser has to do things the old-fashioned way, counting contour lines on an OS map. But I digress. Anyway: it was about 10k actually downhill (which was top fun), 8k "rolling" with a downwards trend, & 2k very downhill indeed into town.
Plan A was to go another 33k to Scottsdale today, but Plan A has been abandoned in favour of Plan B, which is to camp in the park here (for free! But with, I think, no showers - ah well) & go to Scottsdale first thing tomorrow morning. It's a bumpy 33k & I am feeling a bit off today.
Other things I have been up to:
* stroking a Tasmanian Devil! And a wombat, and a kangaroo.
* being somewhat disappointed by the restaurant Angasi at Binalong Bay - everything *drenched* in oil and a bit bland. Maybe they just don't do veggies well.
* being intermittently rained on.
* cycling 6.5k up a VERY STEEP and unsealed road to stay at Seaview Farm, on top of a mountain near St Mary's. It was absolutely lovely and worth the effort of getting up there. Nice kitchen! Nice lounge with fire! Absolutely spectacular view! It was with great difficulty that I took myself off to St Helen's the next morning.
* Going to a carol concert in Richmond! Which was also lovely. (And occurred several days ago, but never mind.)
* Um, cycling a lot.
I would like to place a small bet that it will rain tonight, because I don't have access to a camp kitchen & thus will have to experiment with cooking in the tent porch. I will do my best not to set light to anything that shouldn't be set light to.
[0] When going fast it is possibly to confuse large stringy pieces of bark with *really* decomposed corpses, but this is less likely when averaging 3mph or less.
[1] For the benefit of people who are reading this & might worry (e.g. my parents - hello!), I feel I should note that I am in fact a v careful descender & do brake when appropriate. I just like to minimise the occasions on which it becomes appropriate.
The descent on the other side was cracking (once it stopped being on a road which someone had decided to tarmac by scattering gravel over some sticky stuff and leaving it at that, i.e. with bits of sodding gravel skittering everywhere), though. For some reason putting panniers on the front of the bike led me to forget about countersteering, so my descending had become rubbish; I've now remembered again (courtesy of an article in Cycling Australia) so all is once again well and I can zoom round hairpin bends with abandon. Which I did. Zoom! The only game suitable for playing on descents is "No Brakes B*tch", which originated after I read an interview with one of the GB mountain bike team in which she said that this is what she chants to herself on descents. I like her style.[1]
Cracking though the descent was, it was not in fact "downhill all the way to Derby" as claimed by both the postie at Weldborough, and my routesheet. I knew this, really, as the postie was in a car, and drivers are just as unreliable on gradient as they are on distance, that is, very; and the routesheet used GPS or something which is also unreliable on gradient. This is why Audax UK still AFAIK insists that to award AAA points the organiser has to do things the old-fashioned way, counting contour lines on an OS map. But I digress. Anyway: it was about 10k actually downhill (which was top fun), 8k "rolling" with a downwards trend, & 2k very downhill indeed into town.
Plan A was to go another 33k to Scottsdale today, but Plan A has been abandoned in favour of Plan B, which is to camp in the park here (for free! But with, I think, no showers - ah well) & go to Scottsdale first thing tomorrow morning. It's a bumpy 33k & I am feeling a bit off today.
Other things I have been up to:
* stroking a Tasmanian Devil! And a wombat, and a kangaroo.
* being somewhat disappointed by the restaurant Angasi at Binalong Bay - everything *drenched* in oil and a bit bland. Maybe they just don't do veggies well.
* being intermittently rained on.
* cycling 6.5k up a VERY STEEP and unsealed road to stay at Seaview Farm, on top of a mountain near St Mary's. It was absolutely lovely and worth the effort of getting up there. Nice kitchen! Nice lounge with fire! Absolutely spectacular view! It was with great difficulty that I took myself off to St Helen's the next morning.
* Going to a carol concert in Richmond! Which was also lovely. (And occurred several days ago, but never mind.)
* Um, cycling a lot.
I would like to place a small bet that it will rain tonight, because I don't have access to a camp kitchen & thus will have to experiment with cooking in the tent porch. I will do my best not to set light to anything that shouldn't be set light to.
[0] When going fast it is possibly to confuse large stringy pieces of bark with *really* decomposed corpses, but this is less likely when averaging 3mph or less.
[1] For the benefit of people who are reading this & might worry (e.g. my parents - hello!), I feel I should note that I am in fact a v careful descender & do brake when appropriate. I just like to minimise the occasions on which it becomes appropriate.
