Back at Gap Creek

It is hard not to remember the old days when I ride at Gap Creek. Next year will be 25years since we started racing mountain bikes in Brisbane with a loosely organised dash around a loop at Gap Creek Reserve in Brisbane's western suburbs. There were no permits or clubs or well made trails. I can't even remember how long the race was though it traversed a loop leaving the current carpark and finishing down the end of the current Rocket Frog trail back into the open field. It may have been two laps but I'm not sure. The downhills were steep and followed old motorbike tracks. There were fitter riders present but they were a bit intimidated by riding on dirt. Mike Roberts arranged that first race and was more skilful than me so I have always suspected he let me win because he had organised it. Soon we had a club then a national association then commissaires and rules and fights and a new association and blah blah blah. Don't let mountainbikers say they are friendlier and more easy going than roadies. Peoples is peoples!
Anyway, I got my old Mongoose going again the other day and hit the trails at Gap Creek now I am back in Brisbane and what a joy it was. The early slogs to gain access and make a few trails have been superceded by the fantastic efforts of people and council who have managed to create loads of sweet sustainable trails in this lovely bushland. I am normally a retro old hardtail stalwart but singing down the tracks on the full suspension was just so much fun. It was almost as good as those first rides where we sometimes knew no bicycle had been before.
I have many bikes and this old 'goose is a mixture of parts. The original Rockshox rear unit I replaced with a Fox thingy. It stands the bike up straighter and I like it. It was the most expensive thing on the bike. The old plastic thumbies and cheap rear derraileur I got of a Repco piece of landfill but they still work perfectly well.

Paracycling Nationals 2011

Two more photos this post and more below of the terrific competitors at the Australian Paracycling National Championships this weekend at the Sunshine Coast. Click on any photo to make it larger. There are quite a few different categories in cycling and handcycling. Some of the handcycles are low and fast F1 machines! They may be slow uphills but you won't catch them going downhill. The whole weekend is an inspiration and there is always a great camaraderie and WOW there are wheels everywhere on and off the track.
Some categories didn't have more than one rider this year. You can see in one of the photos the only two tricycles (the rest are handcycles) and behind there were some women waiting to start including Jing from Canberra. I have met her the last two years too. She has one leg but averaged about 28kph!

2011 Paracycling Nationals

Thought I would post some photos of the cycling over the weekend. I raced the last two years on the tandem with vision impaired rider John Wood from Rockhampton Cycling Club. This year we had moved so I just picked him up from the airport and got him to the races and he and Martin Cooper, also of Rockhampton Club rode very creditable times. Unfortunately they did not get a medal as this year there were 6 tandem men which was a great field. Both days in the TT and the Road race they were fourth by about a minute. Considering the pedigree of the first three finishers the team did a fantastic effort. Averaging 40kph over 80klm on an up and down course where John and I did about 28kph last year was just amazing.

This years Benchmark !

I always need something to train for to enjoy my cycling the most. I was just looking at the winter events and thought a 6hr MTB race in June and the Epic again in August might be fun to aim at. In this light I went for my usual short training ride and decided to take some stats on it and note them down. This gives me something to work at bettering over the coming months.
The hill I dubbed Col de McCloud some years ago is in an old farm that has been split up into large acreage blocks. I can do a good climb from the creek to the far ridgeline that looks west and today I was pleased to find a tree that had fallen has been removed so I can ride it all now without footing. This changes sometimes as the steep dirt trail degrades but I am pretty fit now so it should stay rideable. (more power makes slippery climbs easier) There are one or two very short slightly downhill bits but otherwise it is definitely uphill. My granny is 22t front to 25t rear sprocket and this is needed.

Climb distance 2.14klm Total elevation gain 266 metres
Average grade 14% (max 25%)
I rode it twice today but only timed it the second time at 22min 19seconds
It is a grunt in places but it feels good when it stops!
Short postscript.... I do have a 28t granny I saw today (the next day). Don't think I could make it on 25t yet. My first climb the day after the above time was 18min 30sec. It was a cool afternoon about 18deg. This makes a big difference as I found out in Timor last year trying to climb at 35degC in high humidity. It dropped me about 3 gears at least.
....best time ..7th July 17min 10sec 14degC

Clever lights ready for Winter

Well I am really happy. I just bought some great LED downlights globes from the ebay shop in the link you get if you click this blog title. The guy there was really helpful and these are cheap and bright. Nominally 4w 12v they seem about as bright as a 20w halogen.
It suddenly occurred to me to make a great bicyle headlight. Rather than go battery I dug out my old Sanyo Dynapower generator. These were all the go back in the 70's and early 80's when lights were dim and roads were quieter. I'll post some pictures asap.
Anyway I mounted the generator over the rear wheeloff the brakes (the preferred non standard position) and fitted the globe --with a little silicon to a sweet little old headlight (Union I think) that fits over the front brakes.
Now some will say the Sanyo was 6volt! But a little known fact was that the dynapower was current limited by its winding to about .5amp which gave it a power generation capacity of 3 watts. However if you unload it the voltage just goes up with speed which is why people used to blow bulbs if they didn't also run a tailight to overload the generator and keep the voltage down. So fitting the LED 12v lamp means it runs up to 12v .4amp without any trouble. The LED globe lights early at slow speeds and won't blow. It is GREAT!

Arcadia?

It is nice to be living in our own house again and it is such a contrast from the manse in Rockhampton. Surprisingly, since we have otherwise moved back to the traffic and chaos of big city life, we now live in a quiet arcadian location. In Rocky we were in a conveniently sized regional town but harrassed by traffic on one of the few urban arterials which ran only metres from our bedroom window.

Cycling in Rocky was hot much of the year and it was most enjoyable to rise early and do some miles in good sized training bunches of roadies. I miss that here and I miss the friends there. The roads are hilly and complicated so that it is hard to find those kinds of rides. On the other hand it is cooler and I can ride my mountainbike straight out into the forest climbing up from the pretty creeks to high ridgelines through ferny corners and tall shady trees. Mostly the steep hills are ridable even over 20percent gradient…as long as the legs and lungs hold out. I can do a hard loop with fun descents and great views that takes me 50minutes. It is 12klm with about 500 vertical metres of climbing in total.

The bird life is abundant. In Rocky we had some smaller birds flitting through the garden but a fairly small number of species. The little Misteletoe Bird was the highlight. This morning I was woken by Noisy Friar birds cackling. They are more pleasant than the raucous Cockatoo’s screeching. I’ve been discouraging them with a few well placed stones and they stay at a reasonable distance from our house now. Often Kookaburras wake us at dawn and if I lay awake I can hear many other birds calling. Pheasant, Pigeon, Drongo, Magpie and Butcherbirds are but a few. Up close there can be Blue Wrens tapping on the window after insects, the buzz of Double Bars or high peeping of Red Browed finches and the trilling of a family of Red Backed Wrens staying in touch. I haven’t seen a Wonga Pigeon yet or Satin Bower Birds which used to frequent this place but was surprised when a White Headed Pigeon swooped past at speed. Others that fly past are King Parrots, Yellow Tail Black Cockatoos and Rainbow Lorrikeets. I should start keeping a proper list. Now that I think about it many come straight to mind so there are ALOT. Wood Ducks, Pale Headed Rosellas, Peewee, Willy Wagtail, Blue Jays (Black Faced Cuckoo Shrike),Koels and Channel Billed Cuckoos at this time of year, the ubiquitous Swallows and Cattle Egret.

Whereas in Rocky we stayed indoors and closed up house to keep out the traffic noise here it is hard not to just sit on the verandah and watch the day go by without doing any work at all. Matter of fact I think it’s time I had another cup of tea! But first I should just go and pick some guavas before they are too ripe and start some jam.

Come visit us sometime

Red Bike Restoration

I just wanted to put up pictures of my Colnago because it worked out so well. The frame was nearly a write off when I got it but did a pretty good paint job on it that I am happy with. Mostly Record gear except for the Shimano cranks with lovely red Sugino chainrings. I fiddled about with making spacers so the 10speed ergo levers work acceptably with an old 7sp suntour cogset. I have two wheelsets, one with veloflex clinchers on rims(unknown) which look a lot like Fiamme red label tubulars. The other wheels are the wooden ones from the last blog posting with the old Vittoria Pave tyres.

New Old Wheels

Well it is way past time I added something to this page. Having just had to start moving all my bikes to another house I realise I have an awful lot of bicycle things. This fact didn't stop me from buying some more for myself as a birthday present. I found some lovely wooden rims from Italy on ebay and with another gift from Phil at Different Cycles, a pair of Campag hubs, made up some wheels for my Colnago. Then another exciting find on ebay was some Pave tyres in traditional colours. They look so good together!
Building the rims was not as hard as I imagined though they are flexible and can go out of true easily. I was careful to build slowly keeping tensions even by feel and then went to a bike shop to check spoke tension with a gauge. They were pretty even at 50kg so I just had to tweak them up a bit more. I read somewhere about 70kg is a good tension but I don't actually have a gauge. The ride is yet to be confirmed as it has been flooding everywhere and I have only had some shorter rides on wet roads. It did seem like they were different in feel but the tyres help that too. It is a much less harsh ride. Some people probably equate the kind of feel to a deadness or slowness because they feel so different to skinny clinchers at 145psi. I'll have to do some more rides swapping wheels to see. I have never felt I was slower because of this feel but certainly more comfortable. That is important now I am over 50!

Maybe not better than Sex

We are having a "classic ten mile" for the first race of the road season at our club this year. The handicapper liked the idea of a short time trial and an old "non-democratic" measurment seemed like a connection to historical races in this area. Consequently I thought I would race the event on a historical machine.
The machine I am working on is a Healing I picked up recently at a second hand sale. It is an old well known Australian brand famously ridden by Russell Mockridge. In order to be a little competitive I thought I would build up some wheels with 60 year old Chater Lea hubs that were left to me by a dear friend. I fixed them to some Fiamme Red label 'single'(tubular) rims that I've had hanging around for 30 years. Geez, I must be getting old! In part I used these rims because they match as a 32/40spoke combo. It must be 30 years since this was a common arrangement with wheels. When I can afford them I would like to get a pair of Ghissello wooden rims to be really period cool!
The wheels turned out much nicer than I had thought and look a treat while all is still polished and the plain steel spokes have not darkened. With tyres they weigh 2.5kg (without sprocket) and spin as well as Campagnolo Record. I was very surprised at this. The hubs had been in an old box for about 20 years gathering dust. They have a grease nipple so you can easily lube them.
I have just finished glueing on the tyres. For people who do not know, tubular one piece tyres were the racing standard for most of the 20th Century. They have special rims and the tyres are held on by their inflation as well as the glue. It can be a sticky and awkward process getting them on but the mind wanders in the tedious process and I was thinking about sex. I thought perhaps the two practices were related. After all when you just resign yourself to the idea that it is going to be a sticky job it is not so bad. It even becomes part of the fun sometimes. But then again, maybe it is not that great. Sex does take your mind off the job!
Anyway, next will be riding them. I sit with those who feel that even a cheap tubular gives a superior ride. The construction of the tyres is quite different ,without crossed threads, and this may account for it. Young riders are also amazed at how quickly you can change a flat tyre out on the road. I am not surprised that they don't take up the old habits though as it is a sticky process and maybe not better than sex or even just riding your bike.