Thursday 2 January 2014

Hop to it

The road offers some unexpected fun

26th of December 2013 - 28th of December



The trip starts not as a big epic solo, but rather as a series of social hops. First thing to note that on the first stop which was Orange, the road from Crookwell was not always sealed. Not so fun on a loaded up bike with road tyres. Uneventuful, but not preferable!

Near Orange I caught up with some friends of friends who happen to be keen mountain bikers, and also gave me free lunch. I like these people. Overnight at a friend's sister's place (I camped outside because I could), then as a group we set off. 2 motorbikes, and 1 car complete with a family.

27th of December riding to Boggabilla near the Queensland border was hot. Close to 40C. Not so fun in motorbike safety gear. What was fun though was a series of well spaced bumps in the road that had both motorbikes leaping off the road. Think of speed boats when they race over the ocean waves. Each time they leap off the top of the wave, the engine revs until they land again. That's what we were doing with the road. Sweet! They were smooth bumps at least. All this shaking however rattled my new toy on the bike to pieces, which was a USB power outlet to keep my phone charged. The innards couldn't handle it. Bugger. Something for me to sort while in Bundaberg. This is so much like my trip in South America, where in the first couple of weeks I was hunting parts for the mountain bike.

Boggabilla itself is like most of the towns in this region. A scattering of houses, big silos and a train track. I like big engineering, so I found the scenery fascinating.

The next day was no cooler. My friend Nathan and I both on the motorbikes took the more direct route towards Bundaberg. His family in the car got directed by their GPS to go via Toowoomba and Brisbane. Their trip took more than 2 hours longer. Ouch.

 The roads were not remarkable beyond the moments of long long flat straights. Except just before we reached a town called Childers. Nice twisty stuff. Nice! We were going to come back this way later, and it will become memorable for me, but more on that in the next post.

All arrived safely at my friend's cousin's place in Bundaberg, where we stay to see in the New Year. That night we were introduced to doing our bit for the environment. Cane toads are a terrible introduced pest. We were also shown a cricket bat. Thunk!

Not so many photos for now, but after a week or so I'll patch together some of the videos from the go pro that I had on a chest harness. So a small wait for a greater reward.

2 comments:

  1. So bumps and twists and thunks have kept the trip alive so far. A fun first post.

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  2. Happy New Year Scott - Looking forward to seeing the video.

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