Wide Open – Shakedown Ride

28 April – 2 May 2026

Wiradjuri, Bangerang, Dhudhuroa, Yorta Yorta Country

28 April 2026

It’s been sunny for weeks. The temperatures have been perfect. It’s been that stable autumn weather of warm windless days and cool nights that used to be characteristic of March but has now shifted to April. And it’s lasted for an extraordinarily long period due to a blocking high pressure system that has not budged in more than 10 days. So we are off to take advantage of that. Better late than never, but I had commitments until noon today.

I finish my last meetings at noon. I send a last email. I pack up my computer bag. I strap it to the bike and ride to the office. I take the lift to the fourth floor. I hand over the work gear and exchange cordial goodbyes with the staff present. It’s amazingly easy to leave some jobs!

And then I’m off. I’m just heading down to camp in the forest somewhere outside Chiltern tonight. With the late start and short days, that will get us out of town and set up before sunset.

I weave through traffic in town, dodging dodgy drivers as well as pedestrians who step out from behind cars without looking. I make my way over to the bike path along the causeway and escort myself into Victoria. It’s warm and sunny. It’s a perfect day for anything outdoors.

I cruise the bike path and then city streets over to Plunketts Road which is the frontage road to the freeway. How many dozens of times have I ridden this? It’s the only way out of town to the west, really.

I slog along. My lower quad muscles already hurt. That’s odd. My legs have never hurt there before. I’ve got no power even though I’m well-fed and watered. Whatever. It doesn’t bode well, but like any cyclist, I just keep pushing on through.

There’s smoke plumes in the distance from farmers burning off stubble in fields. There are wispy waves of smoke sitting high in the almost still air. Everything about the day says “autumn”.

I get down to the Barnawatha freeway exit and take the access road that curves along the freeway and then into the national park. The road is the white sandy shit that corrugates easily. And it’s the corrugation time of year.

After the rains in winter, councils will regrade the roads in spring. Then the roads have all of the dry and dusty summer to deteriorate. And this road has done so. It is demoralizing, and there isn’t even a smooth strip down the side to ride. It is corrugated alllll the way across. Ugh. That is slow, slow, slow.

I pass a new fancy pants equestrian centre with lighted, fenced activity yards. Ah, that’s why the road is so corrugated. A million 4WDs and horse floats have churned up that sandy white gravel. Once past that place, the road is better, just pot-holed which is really not too much of an issue on a bike.

The road gets tiny and ‘dry weather only’ and I follow a bunch of horse hoof prints into the forest. I stop for my first break here, 30 kilometres into the ride. My body is not totally on board with this riding idea. I expected to feel some pain and protest, but this is more than I was expecting! I feel done and I haven’t even gone far.

I have a little fruit leather strip and some water. Let’s see how that stays down. This shakedown ride is primarily to test two things:

1) how nauseated and pukey do I feel when I ride – is the long ride going to be do-able? I tried this ride back in December and aborted it within hours. I’ve made a heap of progress since then, however; and

2) I’m going to need to carry a lot more water on the upcoming ride and I want to test out a couple of potential, new attachment points on the bike – what seems good in the living room does not always stand up to the real world of corrugations and bumps.

I continue on. My knees hurt and my lower quads are so unhappy. Is my seat too low? Normally my left ankle tendons hurt or my right knee hurts when my seat height is off. I’m convinced my left leg is slightly shorter than my right. To get my seat height so that my right knee doesn’t hurt, my left ankle has to hurt and vice versa. Over the years I’ve found that it’s best to get the seat height correct for my right leg and let the left ankle just build the muscle or whatever over time to compensate. But both knees hurting? Never had that before.

I dip and bob and dodge the potholes on the tiny track through the forest. And then I see 4 horseriders ahead. So I ride toward them for a little bit and then pull off to the side where the track is a bit wider.

“Oh, thank you!”, one of them calls out.

I know from experience that you are meant to talk to the riders as soon as they are close enough, so the horses don’t freak out and can figure out what you are. So I say, loudly, “how are you all going?”

The lead lady says, “thanks so much for stopping. I’ve got one nervous rider and she was really worried. But I told her, look, he’s flying toward us so fast (referring to me riding quite slowly), it’s not going to be a problem. But thanks for stopping.”

The nervous rider is obvious. Her horse keeps moving as the others stop and the lady just says, ‘sorry, he’s not stopping and seems to want to keep going’. She’s perched on that horse like she’s ready to jump for her life at any second.

They are all retiree-age ladies and want to know where I’m going. They wish me well. I wonder if they ever figured out that I was a ‘she’ and not a ‘he’. Oh, I get that all that time since I wear baggy men’s fluoro shirts and either-sex pants/shorts.

I push on, but once I get to Pooley’s Track, I figure that’s far enough. I’m done. So I ride up the track about 500 metres. I’m pleased the fruit leather has stayed down though.

I wander off the track through the open forest and find a somewhat flat spot amongst the sticks and leaves. There are mozzies about. The tent goes up. The panniers come off. Water is drunk.

I inspect the seat height. Yeah, it’s lower than I like. I raise it about half a centimetre. Let’s see how that goes. My neck and back are really sore, too. The neck is always seems to be a thing for the first few days . Apparently, office worker-computer neck is not cyclist neck. The back is a worry though since it hurts where I herniated the disc last year.

I lay in the tent. Ooh, we’ve got some work to do. I’m not carrying nearly the weight I’m going to need to take on the trip and I was kaput at 35 kms today with only gentle hills. I don’t recall feeling this ouchy on a first day before.

29 April 2026

I slept okay. I didn’t really eat any dinner though. I’d brought along salmon and corn thins but was not game enough to try eating something as fatty as salmon. But my guts are good this morning and working as they should. Good. I’ve never in my life been a great digester due to that low stomach acid, but digestion is certainly not something I can depend on or that I have been able to take for granted since sometime last decade.

I have no idea what time it is. My phone is off and I’m not wearing a watch. It’s early, but let’s go. I ride on into Chiltern and head to the public toilets to fill up a water bottle and deposit my waste.

As I’m standing there next to the bike eating a homemade protein bar for breakfast, a guy pulls up with a mini-bus pulling a closed trailer with rakes, shovels and jerry cans on the side. He comes over and says good morning.

He realises I’m with the bike and says, “Oh, sorry, I thought you might be one of my guys. I pick up folks to do community service in the parks and on the roadways and such.”

Congratulations, Em. Not only did he think you were a guy, he thought you looked nefarious enough to have committed a crime and been sentenced to community service.

He checks out the bike and says I have a really nice set-up. He comments that his brother does a lot of hiking in the high country and has said that even when you think you’re alone up there, you’re never alone. He asks if I carry a PLB. I say yes, when I’m remote, but not on this short trip. He wishes me well before he heads off – I’m pretty certain he figured out I was a woman.

I head off for Rutherglen down roads I’ve ridden a gazillion times. When I lived at Corowa in 2015-16 and 2017-19, I clocked up a lot of kays in the area. So today is all about not puking and getting my muscles used to this riding thing again. My bloodwork suggests my body is absorbing nutrients after refusing to do so for awhile, so I’m hopeful my body really is on board with being on a bike all day again.

The change in seat height has made a huge difference. Oh, what a half a centimetre do! My neck and back won’t hurt again, those lower quad muscles and my knees don’t hurt any worse and I have power to the pedals today. Phew. Glad that was an easily solved issue!

The protein bars stay down. The water stays down. I’m not nauseous. Take out stock in ginger supplements. I swear that is what has helped me more than anything. Anytime I eat I take a heap of it, and then I pop a ginger pill if I feel pukey and that generally settles things down. Ginger is my friend, my new best friend. We became friends in 2017 – though it would take nine years to fully figure out why I need that anti-nausea prokinetic as a bestie! I’ve become super-reliant on it in this gut relapse.

I stop in Rutherglen to pee, drink water and give my butt a break. Yeah, we’ve got some breaking in to do with the saddle as well. This one is comfortable, I just need to harden up the soft tissue bits again. (I use lots of sudocream on the trip so never rub anything raw- and all has come good by the final day).

I cruise on over to Corowa on the rail trail. It’s been resurfaced recently and they didn’t put that annoying fine chip layer on top. So it rides smooth and fast. I also have a tail wind – a southeasterly I wasn’t expecting. I zoom past a couple on real bikes who are probably just a bit older than me. The lady is on a cruiser and the guy is on a mountain bike. He’s trying to ride without hands without much success.

I roll through Wahgunyah and across the bridge back into NSW. The poor council-owned caravan park looks to still be struggling. In 2019 or so they kicked out all the people with annuals (permanent sites where people leave their caravans and annexes and can visit for a certain number of days per year for a yearly fee), chopped down all the big old gum trees that dropped branches on caravans periodically, and looked for new lessees. I think the idea was to turn into a resorty-tourist park instead of a ‘bogan Melbourne annual site holiday-makers’ park… but that has not happened. They are still looking for a lessee last I knew. The place certainly looks open and barren with so many trees gone!

I roll up to the IGA. The cafe that is part of the supermarket used to have lots of premade wraps, salad bowls, fruit cups and hot meals on offer. But I don’t see much of that and the only hot foods pre-made are fried things. So my idea of a salad bowl for lunch and a salad bowl to take with me for dinner with some turkey from the deli is out. I do get two chocolate bars and some crackers for snacks down the road.

As I pack up the bike, I have a nice conversation with a guy on an e-bike. He used to tour and has done the length of New Zealand and Cooma to Corowa amongst other rides. But he got an e-bike upon retirement and it really is so much easier. I say I’ll probably get there some day but figure I’ve got at least 15 more years under my own steam.

Another friendly overweight guy cheerily says hello and have a great day. But most everyone else coming in and out of that store reminds me of why I really disliked living in this town. It was no surprise to me when the Neo-Nazis chose the town as a suitable place for a demonstration last year or when the Council decided this year to remove the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags from being flown at Council buildings and in the Chambers. They also will not do Welcome to Country ceremonies. Sad, but not surprising for this town.

I head down to the bakery. It used to be the place to be. It is not anymore. Everyone is down at a place called Barrel N Brew (new to me) or Doc Yarrams on the corner. The bakery has always had decent stuff (not bad, not excellent) for excellent prices. I get two chicken and salad rolls for $11.60 which is cheaper than one such roll at most places these days.

I deconstruct the chicken and salad roll – pulling off the meat and veggies and then assembling them open-face on corn thins. I drink as much water as I dare and take all of my supplements.

I then roll over to the adjacent playground that was new in 2019. The old playground was a simple 1990s plastic structure with a nearby swing that got taken out in the 2016 floods. The new playground was designed and built while I was still working for Council and they were very excited about it.

At the time, ‘bespoke’ was the annoying business buzzword, and this playground had lots of bespoke features. I just thought all the shrubbery looked like great snake habitat only enhanced by the water play area. The water feature appears not to work anymore and there are a few other things that have broken that look like potential insurance pay-out issues. But it’s still a nice and big upgrade from before.

The plan from here is to head out of town on the bike path that goes all the way to Mulwala. This was under design when I left Council in 2019. It took forever to get this one built. There were lots of access issues to sort out with various land ownership. It is 43 kilometres long, has a 200 metre boardwalk and cost $3.6 million (almost all of which was grant money).

So I head west with that nice tail wind. The bike path closely follows Spring Drive. That road was okay to ride last decade but is a bit busier now. So it is nice to not have to mix it up with traffic since there is no road shoulder. The path is smooth but wavy and they have not been doing heaps of maintenance, it would appear. There are large cracks and some big bushy plants growing up through the path in places. It is still good now, but if they don’t do some work on those issues, it will become single-track due to veg growth over time (I saw this happen on the rail trail between Stratford and Heyfield in VIC – it was pretty good in 2017 but almost unrideable in 2023).

I ride for just about 11 kays out of town. There are various places to camp along the river for about the first half of the distance between towns. The two bigger campsites now charge $6, even though there are no facilities or any change from when they were free. Technically, the sites are still free, it’s just a booking fee. It was brought in during COVID but then never removed. I think $2.50 is okay for an admin fee. $6 would be okay as a single admin fee for multiple nights. But a $6 booking fee for a single night is a rip-off if there is no bush dunny.

So I’m not going to camp at those spots. That leaves a few others that you need to be a local to know about. When I roll into the first one, and no one is there, I decide that will do us for the day. It’s not even 1pm, and my body is fine to go further, but this is a single site sort of spot, so I will not have to listen to generators or deal with others’ campfire smoke, so this will do us nicely.

This is an anabranch of anabranch of the Murray River here. But that is fine with us. There are no mozzies about. I do check surveillance reports since there are so many mozzie viruses along the rivers here (Barmah Forest, Murray River Encephalitis, Ross River, Japanese Encephalitis). At the moment, the only active cases in the area are for Ross River which is the most preferable of them to get (though I fear my body could not handle any of them now). I did get the free Japanese Encephalitis vaccine last year when they let anyone living in the river towns get it (it’s quite expensive if you had to pay for it).

I spend the afternoon thinking about whether I’ve made the right decisions in the past few months. There were a couple of job offers that would commence in May on 12 and 18 month contracts. I could have rolled right into new jobs and put more money away. There were some other decisions as well.

But, in the end, I’ve put myself first in all of those decisions. I’m flattered my work ethic and project results mean people want me to come work for them, but I need to go ride! It has not hit me yet that I’m totally free, and I’m not sure I’ve made right or wrong decisions. Or maybe life is just a series of sliding door moments and there are no right and wrong decisions anyway. I don’t come to any conclusions this afternoon or evening. The only thing I really do know is that raising the seat was the right decision yesterday!

30 April 2026

No puking. No nausea. Food moving through at a good speed. The guts are agreeing to the ride if I stick strictly to my supplement regime. Gastroparesis slows everything way, way down and the key is to keep things from moving upward and to keep everything moving downward and out. So nothing has come up and everything is making its way out. Systems check: all good.

We head on to Mulwala along the bike path, surprised by the strength of the tail wind so early. That’s all good now, but we will need to head back east later today…. I guess we are just a little late taking advantage of that blocking high. We had no wind for at least 10 days earlier in the month. But it’s shifted enough for easterlies to develop ahead of a cold change forecast for Sunday.

I pedal straight on through Mulwala. There’s not much to the place. It’s a lot of expensive holiday homes, caravan parks of various resort-ness, motels, clubs and small supporting businesses. It’s got one main street. It also has a big explosives factory on the edge of town that provides the Australian military with munitions.

I ride over to the twin town of Yarrawonga via the weir wall. You could drive across the weir at one time. Now, only the pedestrian bit is open.

The car bridge over the lake is wonky. It is very, very narrow and has a weird curve in it (with lots of rumors how that came to be). It is totally not safe or pleasant to ride across using the traffic lanes on a bike. It’s scarily narrow even in a car. The footpath on that one is narrow, too.

The water is held here for irrigation purposes. They can divert 17 percent of the entire river’s average annual flow at this lake through the two main canals. Two major dams (Lake Hume by Albury, and Lake Dartmouth which dams the Mitta Mitta) sit upstream. Many lock and weir structures sit downstream, offtaking water to other irrigation districts. Water here includes that diverted over the Great Dividing Range from the Snowy River.

So, basically, the river downstream from here is just a gutter and the environment has been devastated. They changed the Water Act and developed the Murray Darling Basin Plan around 2012. The science said the river needed around 9,000 GL flow to be recovered to be healthy (high confidence estimate). A low confidence estimate was 6,000 GL.

But science does not dictate policy in Oz. The politicians totally disregarded the high estimate and said 6,000 GL tops. It eventually got bargained down to 2750GL needed to be recovered to keep the river healthy – less than a third of what science estimated. And this did not include impacts of climate change.

This year, because the Murray Darling Basin Plan from 2012 has been a failure, there has been a Basin Plan Review. Public comment is just now closing. The Review has found the lower Murray-Darling is in very poor to almost ecosystem collapse condition.

However, the Review bases its findings on those ‘sustainable diversion limits’ set in the original Plan of 2750GL – so the Review is based on flawed data. It is likely that new modelling would show the river needs even more than 9,000GL to be healthy, due to climate change, but isn’t even getting 2750 GLs back.

But, you know, the pollies and the farmers won’t have any of that, and the river just continues to degrade. Of course, history tends to show that civilisations collapse if they don’t look after the water source and allow private operators to profit off a public good. But never mind – we don’t care about that, it’s all about the economy, right? The farmers like to say they are supporting the Australian public with food but fail to mention that an average of 60-70 percent of the produce (over 90 percent of cotton and rice) is exported overseas.

I stop to get a gluten free wrap at Subway in Yarrawonga and take it down to the lake for an early lunch. I tuck a second wrap away for dinner. It’s a tourist town, so the bakery prices are extravagant.

The wind is very whippy along the lake and you have to stake things down lest they fly away. A guy comes to fly a drone, but the wind whips away that idea, too. There’s not a lot of people about. With diesel prices so high, the caravanners are not out and about in such force as normal.

It is important to note that there is potable water to be had at the public toilets at the reserve, and one of the picnic tables has a charging point for your phone.

I head out of town on Old Wilby Road. I follow a cyclist in high vis. He’s about 500 metres in front of me. I don’t gain or lose him, so he must not be on an e-bike and he must be old. And that is the case. He turns around to ride back into the wind when the pavement ends. He waves hello and says g’day.

Old Wilby Road has a nice tyre track to follow that is firm and out of the corrugations. I’ve got a quartering tailwind and I enjoy it while it lasts. I’ll be headwinding it all the way back to Albury over the next couple days after we turn off this one.

I turn east and catch a face-full of wind as we head over to see Dowdle Swamp. It’s big enough to be shown on an RACV map. My pace slows significantly, but the annoying trio of flies that have been pestering me also get swept away. Yes, life is full of swings and roundabouts.

We take the northern road around it – though it appears there is a track all the way around. Lots of red gum saplings stand in a tight cluster of growth around the outside from when the water allowed germination. I stop and work my way through them in a couple of places and have a bit of a wander. When full, this would be fun to kayak around and through. Satellite images show there are no open bits in the centre – it’s treed throughout.

We move on, but it would be an interesting place to explore further when there might be wildflowers in spring.

On into the wind. I don’t have a plan, just a vague idea of getting myself over to Blatch’s Road on a series of roads going south and east. That wind is a real bugger at this point though. Light winds, my arse. It’s at least 10kph gusting to 20.

On into that frustrating wind. Frustrating because I was not expecting it based on the forecast. Light winds to me is 0-7 kph, not 10-15 gusting to 20. I go south a bit, then east a bit. The whole idea is to not hit the highway too early. It can be busy and has no shoulder. But I also don’t want to hit it too late and then have to ride back into that wind on the busy road without a shoulder.

So finally, when I’m a wee bit hungry and a wee bit thirsty, and I’m at a crossroad that actually has a sign with a road name, I stop and roll the bike over to the open gate of a freshly plowed field, lean the bike there and pop a ginger pill. I pull out the phone, turn it on, and while I’m waiting for it to boot, I eat a strip of fruit leather and a bit of the chocolate bar. I drink about 200 mls of the 3 litres I’ve brought for this arvo, eve and tomorrow morning.

I ascertain my position and how I need to get over to Blatch’s Road which will dump me out on the highway just a hundred metres from my turn onto the Peechelba Road.

And then on we go, cursing the wind and getting a bit tired. I’ll end up doing 75 kms today which is decent since I’ve not been doing any distance in the past nine months due to the puking and being busy with work (Ride with GPS says 70 kms but doesn’t include riding around Yarrawonga). We still will have a lot more fitness gain to do with a lot more weight on the bike in those first couple weeks on tour!

I come flying down the hill just north of the feedlot, grateful the wind is blowing all of that concentrated cow-ness away from my nose. We have good sightlines down the highway, so I don’t have to brake and can use that momentum to shoot me down the sealed road. The driver in an on-coming car smiles broadly and waves as he goes by. I pass a large, dead roo on my side of the road and then I’m off the highway and heading into the floodplain of the Ovens River.

We head down Billabong Creek Track since we’ve never camped down this one before. We ride in about a kilometre and find a nice spot on the river’s edge, set up the tent, drink some water and feel really good about how well my guts went today. The secret is to have ginger with everything, I think, even small snacks. No reflux or nausea today.

My knees still hurt a bit, but that is just residual pain from Day 1. My butt hurts, but nothing is raw. My cardio fitness has been good. I have done a lot of walking over the past year – in fact, on 9 April, I ticked over 365 days in a row of walking 8 kms or more each day. My walk home from work also included one big hill. I even managed 8kms of walking on the day I spent in the ER, even though that was not advisable.

1 May 2026

I sleep well. That’s a good sign. My guts behave themselves this morning, too. Everything is still moving as it needs to. Systems check: all good.

It’s a frustrating day as we grunt it out into the wind for hours. It’s a headwind for all but about 5 kilometres today. We work our way east, and then north for a bit, then east for a long bit. There’s a lot of that shitty, white, sandy gravel.

After hours crawling along at 13kph on that crappy gravel, with a stop for salmon on corn thins (which wonderfully causes no issues), we finally pop out on the Chiltern Valley Road. It has seal down the middle but enough traffic I’m off onto the gravel every couple minutes to give way to oncoming traffic. The wind is a crosswind here.

We roll into Chiltern ready for a bit of a revival. I ran out of water about an hour ago and I’m hungry.

I stop at the bakery. Wow, it’s gone downhill. They used to have heaps of options for decent prices. They’ve got less than half of the options they once had – a whole case has been removed. None of the sweets or buns look all that fresh.

I get a salad and beef roll and a salad and chicken roll. They have no tomato, but they do have red capsicum. They end up being fine deconstructed and reconstructed on corn thins – I have one here and one for dinner later in the tent. However, I hear a man outside telling another man they made a bad choice as it was the worst pie he’d had in ages. But you know, my experience in Oz with meat pies has been: you’ve gotta eat a whole lot of just okay ones before you come across a really good one.

I ride on up into the forest and then traipse several hundred metres through the bush from the track to set up the tent down in a gentle, little gully. I’m out of sight of the track. I spend the rest of the afternoon blissfully thinking about nothing much at all. My brain says ‘thank you, thank you so, so much’. We’ve done a lot of thinking in the past 12 months!

2 May 2026

The wind did not die down at dusk. The forecast said east to northeasterly winds 10-15kph in the morning, increasing to 20-35kph by mid-day. Yeah, nah (it’s an Aussie expression, google it). I’m not doing 40 kays home with a 20-35kph headwind tomorrow. And I can’t bail out and take the train as it’s replacement coaches all week.

So I do what any reasonable person would do. I go to sleep at 8pm. I set my alarm for 3.30am. Yes, we are going to go for a full moon ride. We are going to fight against the lighter headwind instead of the stronger headwind. I’m a smart gal, yeah?

I don’t sleep all that well, but I’m up at 3.30am and packing by the light of the moon. One of my favourite memories of uni days is all the full moon rides with the pack of mountain bike guys – dashing down the dirt trails and cutting through on bike paths to head up to Old Town to hit that amazing sidewalk jump outside of Goodwill. All by the light of a full moon. Good times.

I pack straps and handlebar bag into a pannier and then close one of the pannier lids over the sleeping pad. I gather up the tent bag and one pannier in one hand and the helmet and other pannier in the other. We traipse back through the forest toward the road, noting the various shapes of the trees, so we can find our way back to the bike for trip two.

Sounds like a good plan, but then I realise, I haven’t really headed toward the road. I’m not quite sure where I am. I am using my torch, but this doesn’t feel quite right. So I decide to head back to the bike and try again. But then I hit the road? Okay, that was not what I thought I was doing.

I dump the gear on the side of the road. I am a wee bit concerned at this point that I might not be able to find the bike again, as I’m not quite sure of the path I just took to the road. Oh dear. I’m excellent with directions, so this is a tad disconcerting. At least if it all goes to shit, I head back to the road and gear and wait til first light to find the bike.

So I angle back to where I think I need to go toward that gully. I shine my torch through the forest, knowing that, based on how I had the bike laying on the ground, I should pick up the reflector on the backside of the mirror.

I wander back further into the forest and don’t really see familiar looking tree shapes. I’m kinda in the gully though, I think. I walk forward a bit, shine the torch. Walk forward a bit, shine the torch. Ah, finally! There is the reflector. It’s sorta where I thought it might be, but not exactly. What I’ve ended up doing was walking a big triangle.

I’ve got my bearing now, so it’s easy to carry the bike back to the road. It takes me a few minutes to get everything loaded on the bike and my torch jerry rigged to the handlebar bag as a front light, but then we are rolling slowly back down the track in the moonlight.

It’s cool and the wind against my skin gives me goose bumps. I move in and out of the shadows of the trees using the moonlight to look far ahead. I get further down and can see a vehicle’s headlights and tail-lights on a nearby track. I hear voices. I turn off my rear blinkie and headlight. I roll on, hoping they weren’t looking my direction. People out in the forest at 3.30am may not be up to any good. I don’t want to draw their attention since I do not have speed on my side for a getaway.

I get back to the sealed road and open pasture. Ah, this is so good. I rode nearly every night back at uni and I love night rides. My vision isn’t quite as good as back then, but oh, all those good memories come back. I turn my front and rear lights back on.

I turn off onto the Yack- Chiltern Road – it parallels the freeway for bits and pieces. It’s in the open and then it’s in the trees. I love it! The tree branches reach out toward the road like the mannequins in haunted houses as the torch light illuminates them. It’s like a big, open air haunted house where things just appear out of the darkness as you get close.

Far in the distance there’s something on the road – is it an animal? No, as we get closer, it’s just a clump of leaves on a branch. I watch the truck headlights flash through the trees and wonder what they think of my single little light on the road in the trees.

I power up the hills and love the feeling of zipping down the other side as the forest flashes by. My eyes can’t adjust between the shadowy treed bits and the more open moon-illuminated bits on the faster downhills, so I ride by feel and keep my eyes far ahead. It’s easy to want to look down to the road and the immediate light of the torch rather than into the distance that’s lit by the moon.

We eventually get to Cookinburra Road. It’s a gravel road that will spit us out on Indigo Creek Road where we’ll backtrack to Plunketts Road by the freeway. Last time I rode this road some years ago it was very sandy and corrugated.

But it’s in great condition. I ride right down the centre ridge and roll away from the forest through open fields. The moon gives detail to the grasses and the hay sheds as we go. It’s all downhill, so I’ve got good momentum as the freewheel zings. We come up to a forested bit where there is a creek. The road appears to disappear in the forward darkness and there is the temptation to brake. I don’t. I just ride down through the curve and appreciate the slick of coolness that envelopes us as we slip through all of that thicker veg.

I had some reservations about a night ride. But not now. I love, love, love this. I love getting a little bit out of my comfort zone and reminding myself that my gut feeling is usually right. I love just slipping through the night with the moon on my shoulder. This is soooooo good.

Any of my doubts about the decisions on my immediate and medium-term future over the past few months are flung out into the darkness. Yes, I’m meant to go ride. I’m ALWAYS meant to go ride. I’ve never regretted a single ride.

Maybe my guts aren’t quite right, maybe leaving now is a bit risky, but I actually think I’ll get my guts back to their post-2017 normal more quickly on the road than starting another job (because I can’t just do a job – I have to go full bore and give 120% – that’s why former employers always want me back – and all that work stress is no good for my nervous system and guts).

So all the doubts fly away into the darkness as I ride in that full Flower Moon light. We get down to Indigo Creek Road and I head back west. There is not much wind here, but I know it’s going to smack us as soon as we round the Black Range on Plunketts Road.

I look over to the Black Range – it helps me gauge distance since that is very hard at night, even with a full moon. I just know we’ll be finished with this road at the end of the range. Pedal, pedal, powering it hard. I’m feeling so, so good. I watch my shadow on the road, legs churning, legs pumping, propelling us forward. Oh, this makes up for that shit day into the wind yesterday.

Yes, the wind pummels us as we climb a hill and round the Black Range. But I keep pedalling hard into that wind past the solar farm and down toward the old quarry. There is always a headwind here. I’m sure the wind funnels in the low dip between the range and the spur that runs down to the freeway. It is definitely funnelling away tonight as pedal into it hard.

All the lights at the Logic Centre (an industrial centre and roadhouse) on the other side of the freeway seem to take forever to get to – but on we go. I look back over my shoulder and the clouds below the moon look like a literal fallen angel – there’s a long horizontal bit with two triangular shapes reaching upward. Ah, if you’re religious, you’d know that 3-4am is “God’s Hour”, a spiritually significant time for prayer and divine encounter. Take it for what you will. It’s actually after 5am now, but, close enough. I stopped, but the camera couldn’t pick it up, even with the moon just above.

We climb Dead Cyclist Hill (there’s a cross with a chainring on it at the top of the hill) and the funnelled wind backs off. It’s just a 5-10 kph headwind now. I’m still pedalling it hard, powering up the gentle hills and zinging down the little downhills.

I’m not sure if I can see first light or its just the light of the city. Slowly, I’m pretty sure that’s the first of first light. The camera doesn’t capture it, but a few minutes later, it can get a bit of that red.

Then, there’s a bit more burnt orange, and then a bit more, and then a bit more. The sun is coming. I’m thinking I might hit Wodonga just on dawn.

Yes, we roll past the service station on the western edge of Wodonga just as it no longer feels dark. It’s pre-sunrise grey as we head east into town and take our chances on Melrose Drive (it’s normally too busy to want to ride it, but pre-7am is fine). The burnt oranges turn to swathes of pinks.

I hit the bike path and start to see some early morning runners. I hit Albury just before sunrise as the pre-sun greyness lifts away. I ride through the park and note that a homeless encampment has sprung up between the fence along the bike path and the slope down to the river. It looks quite well-established and a bit shabby. This is a very prominent spot and I can’t imagine the city would want that image in such a highly visible and touristed spot. However, two cop cars show up as I’m stopped to drink some water. Six cops emerge with coffees and sit down at a picnic table. I wonder if they are just getting caffeinated before they go deal with the homeless folks at the start of their shift. I’ve seen tents pop up down here before, but they seem to disappear again within a week.

I move on and take a picture of the river along the new boardwalk and promenade they recently built to ‘activate’ this section of parkland.

I head on up the bike path and spin up the steep grade that gets most people off their bikes to push. I then turn off and head up the heavily eroded fire trail that takes us to the top of the river bluff. I make it up all of this. I wasn’t so sure when I left town on day 1 when my quads hurt so much if I’d make it up and over the lips of the water bars on my way home. But my legs came good after I raised the saddle. I wouldn’t be able to make it up with a full load at the moment, but I’m pleased with this for today.

Then we’re zinging down the hill to my street and then up the small rise toward my house and then up the driveway. It’s 7.10am and we beat the wind. And we got an awesome night ride which confirmed all of my decisions over the past few months.

Yes, we’ve got some work to do to get up to ride fitness in those first few weeks of the upcoming ride. But, importantly, this ride showed that I can manage the gut stuff if I stick strictly to my supplement protocol.

The water attachment points look like they’ll work.

It wasn’t the greatest ride ever, but it was a succcess. Now to get everything together for the big ride, pack up and clean the house over the next few weeks, and go get flung around in a rally car on the 9th!