Nerd Em's Adventures
30 June – 11 July 2022
50 miles or so
I was back where it all began. Back to where I felt like I belonged for the first time in my life. Back to where I found people like me. Back to where I rode every night for hours. Back to where the bike became a lifestyle.
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29 June 2022
13,000 kms or so
The climb out of town was steep at first before moderating. The dam wall, the sparkling waters of the dam, and the snow-capped peaks of the ranges around Mt Bogong far behind the dam were perfectly framed. You could make postcards out of scenes like that. And after the longest stretch of cold, grey and wet days to start winter that I’ve ever experienced in Oz, a sunny, cool day with gorgeous views was much appreciated.
Read moreThe rain pelted down. It ran in streams and sheets down the gentle slope. It had started as a few warning drops around 5.45 pm, but turned into a steady rain by 6pm. Of course, we knew it was coming. We’d driven through 3 hours of rain on the way there, only out-driving the rain in the last 30 minutes.
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15-17 April 2022
120 kms (75 miles)
Daryl Brathwaite and John Farnham are like Vegemite – to be able to stomach them you need to have grown up with them. Otherwise, you just can’t understand what all the fuss is about.
While I’ve been hanging around Australia now for around 24 years, I still don’t like Vegemite. Or lamb. Or cricket or any code of footy.
But I do agree on one thing that is very Australian. Easter is for camping. Yes, Australians go camping en masse over Easter. The cities empty out and the people who may only use their caravan twice a year hit the road for the bush.
Read moreHello, Maggie.
The magpie flies overhead and calls as it lands on the power line stanchion. The angle of the sun has settled further down in the sky at mid-day. There’s shade in the yard from the nature reserve trees well into the morning now.
The passing of time is always cause for reflection. Autumn has always said to me that things will be okay, even in those really hard times in life. And here we are in autumn again.
Oh, Maggie, you swooped me when I would walk through the nature reserve behind my house. But you never swooped me in my yard, even when your young one came to hang out in the afternoons with me in September. He had no fear.
And so time is moving on. I’ll be on the road when you launch your next brood and are swooping again, dear Maggie.
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11-13 March 2022
228 kms (142 miles)
DAY 1 – 73 kms (45 miles)
Sometimes what you think a ride is going to be is not what it ends up being. You might have some ideas in your head of the route you’ll take or where you’ll stay or what sort of approach you’ll take (e.g. hard and fast, slow and exploratory). But then you get out there on the road and things morph.
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DAY 2 – 0 kms
The support acts start around 5am. It’s just a drop or two of rain at the start – the kind that makes you think: oh, man, did a bird just crap on the tent?
There are light showers that follow – spritzes of water thrown against the tent like someone flicking a paint brush to dry it. Steadier, light rain commences, a light drumming on the tent that sounds more like fizz popping than splats.
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4-7 March 2022
136 kms (85 miles)
Day 1 – 30 kms (19 miles)
Sometimes a good idea comes out of nowhere. So you pounce on it and make a plan. The logistics of the plan all come together quickly like when all the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle suddenly start to fit and the image becomes apparent.
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Day 3 – 38 kms (24 miles)
First light. Far in the distance a kookaburra chortles. The grey shadows make the vegetation seem indistinct. The pale greens of the eucalypts bleed into the darker greens of the cassias. There is no dew, but you can see your breath. Just.
And the mozzies can smell your breath, too. They are already flitting about the tent.
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5 February – 14 kms (9 miles)
I don’t really know where I am. Lost in a forest…. (that’s a Cure song). Or maybe not. How can you be lost if you don’t know where you’re supposed to be?
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