Kane: Last night we made camp on the top of a hill 32km shy of Ulladulla. It was a nice feeling to wake up knowing we didnt have far to ride until we came across a major town. I knew there was a McDonalds there and I was already excited about that. For breakfast, Stephen decided to go with a muesli bars, short bread cookies then top it off with some teeth. Yes, the lollie kind. I decided to skip brekky because I didnt want junk food and couldnt be bothered cooking up oats. After packing up the tent and loading the bikes, Stephen had a quick look at his tyres and thought ah, no punctures. Checking the rear tyre, pressure was good. Now the front. Damn it, I have a puncture! And I see him storm off around the corner, pushing the bike to find a place to lean it. I pushed my bike up to where Stephen had begun pulling his tyre off and repairing the tube. Upon pulling his tube out, we saw that he had already repaired this one before with a patch, so he decided to replace it with a brand new tube. After fitting it in, he began pumping it up with his pump. Fiddling with it, unclipping it moving it... it wasnt working properly! You could see his frustration was building until finally he snapped. He ripped the pump off the valve, snapped it in half, and threw it into the tree line. Something happened to my pump, can I use yours? Of course I handed it over without a second thought and it worked perfectly. Both very low on water we pushed on to find a place with a tap, and soon enough came across a fuel station, only to find out they had limited water. We continued riding and about 10km later we found a BP. After grabbing a bite to eat and a drink, Stephen went into the toilets to fill up his water bottles, quickly returning he informed me The water is brown! Unsure what to think, I went in and sure enough, even after leaving the tap on for a good 20 seconds, brown water continued to come out. So we left and the next fuel station had clean water. Thank God! We came across roadworks with a one way road, and freshly layed asphalt. 40km/h speed limit. So we steered onto the road and kept up with the moving traffic going at a pace of 36km/h but we didnt last. The car in front had slowed down and we lost our momentum. Damn! Then came the headwind. Damn! Then at the very end came the hill, but luckily the road works ended. We entered Ulladulla, stopped in McDonalds, grabbed some lunch, put our electronic devices on charge and had a nice long break... Because we can. It was great. We left McDonalds and the headwind we fought was unbelievable now. Up the hills it wasnt so bad as the wind was cooling, but it was the down hills where we suffered most. We would only go half of our normal speed, making progress unbearably slow. One of the descents we encountered was insane. We were traveling down at roughly 45km/h and the road was surrounded by trees. Suddenly it opened up and we both became slaves to the crosswinds. suddenly I felt as if the rear of my bike was lifting, and then the wind would push me a meter across the road. It felt almost as if I was leaning on a 45 degree angle into the wind to compensate for the push. We arrived at an enclosed area by the main road and deemed it worthy to set up camp. All is well in the wind. Another update to come tomorrow.
Posted on: Tue, 28 Oct 2014 08:51:10 +0000
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