Ride Report for
Bunya & Ironbark Saturday Arvo Ride 4th Sep.
With only 4 along for the ride this week.....Bbanger, Darb, Pinesheriff and Mat, headed out to take on House Mtn again.
With the first part of the ride focussed on being educated on the local environment by BBanger.......SORRY PIP, but you missed it. Yes, the Bat Cave, this was a slight detour.
Quite a daunting experience to say the least. With BBanger leading the march into the black hole of batville, Darb elected to stay behind and guard the bikes....not that he is afraid of the dark or anything or being attacked by swarming bats in a tunnel you can't see 2 inches in front of you. (Looking back that was a good call Darb)
The idea was to walk as far into the blackness until you hit something solid I guess, then turn around and with the daylight in the distance (light at the end of the tunnel) gaze up and back toward the light to be amazed at the millions of bats hanging from the ceiling.
Needless to say a torch or even a match would have been nice to try and see what your next step had in line for you, but with BBangers reassurance to just keep walking into what appeared to be possibly the beginning of the end, we trudged on a little further with me thinking is the next step I take going to be my last.
I think it was the unannounced attack of being swooped by a squealing blood sucking miniture F1- 11 that brought about this overwhelming feeling of self preservation and every man for himself attitude, and I was out of there. To make it worse, Mat was talking about contracting some type of Hendra virus as well which also added more fear to what was now a panic situation.
To be honest, I thought I could hear Darb calling for help thinking he was laying his life on the line in protection of the bikes.
Thankfully Darb and the bikes were all OK and after re-gathering ourselves we headed on to the next leg of the ride - the Hse Mtn climb.
(Boy! Pip, you don't know what you missed)
Mat knocked the Mtn climb off in an un-interupted 22 minutes which was outstanding. Also to Darb's credit he made the climb non-stop also, but being nature loving people, Bbanger and the Sheriff had cause to stop momentarily on the way up (hmmm.... just briefly) and take in the serenity of the mountain and the views on offer. (This is also known as a breather)
A quick re-group at the top and we headed back down, down, down.
The descent down and to the bottom of Mayfield Rd was again, something special. Bbanger lead the charge under pedal power (What was he thinking…pedalling) and with us all getting to the bottom in one piece minus a few millimeters of smoking brakes pads Bbangers pulled out a 101km/h top speed as recorded on his speedo, Mat with about 85, the Sheriff with a cautious 74 and Darb somewhere in between.
The normal well paced cruise back toward Bunya followed, taking is some pony trails, a creek crossing that left The Sheriff with 2 water filled shoes and a mechanical stop at about the 27km mark after Stans No Tubes just couldn’t seal up a side wall tyre cut to Mats rear tyre.
Todays ride starting and finishing at Bunya encompassed in round figures about 39km’s, with 818m of climbing with an Av Sp of 16.3km/h. With an Av temp according to Mr. Garmin being 24deg it was a great ride on another great day to be alive.
Bring on the next ride.
