Tag Archives: cycling

EPIC FAIL: Rainbow Beach Ride

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In January I meticulously planned a ride from Rainbow Beach, across the Leisha Track, up Teewah Beach, across the river on the ferry to Tewantin, and back to Rainbow via the Cooloola Way. It was around 150km of riding in total. I only managed to ride 15km: from the beach ramp at Rainbow to the Teewah side of the Leisha track. I didn’t factor in trying to ride into the galeforce wind on Teewah Beach. Ugh!

Leaving on the ride

The problems started early; before I’d even gone 15km. The beach was blocked by a massive treefall just before Inskip Point. To get through I had to unpack everything off the bike and stash it in the timber. Then I had to grab the bike and carry it through all the logs and sticks while unsuccessfully avoiding the waves breaking around my knees. After I parked the bike on the other side, I had to go back for the packs, which were more difficult and cumbersome to carry though the log jam than the damn bike was! I really wanted to go for a swim because the water looked so nice, but I decided against it and that was a good decision given how much time it took me to get anywhere once I got out onto Teewah Beach.

Log jam near Inskip Point

I was meant to ride 25km from the Leisha track, but only made it 17km because I pushed the bike almost the entire way. When I did try to ride I got a massive rippling cramp in my right thigh, so stopped and drank a little bit of seawater. I also licked my arms to get the salt off. It seemed to help with the cramp, but I couldn’t ride. It was waaay too windy. I did not expect that and felt kind of stupid for not even considering it.

Inskip side of Leisha track

In my journal (which I really hate writing by the way) that night, I wrote: It really wasn’t that fun today, or even fun at all if I’m really honest. It was really fucking hard. I don’t remember the Wongi ride being this hard…I don’t know how people camp in sand. It’s fucked. It gets everywhere, even into places you know you haven’t touched or opened. And, it’s sticky too because it’s kind of wet, so it’s not like you can dust it off. It’s sooooo annoying!

Camp at Teewah Beach

Lots of people stopped to give me lifts on the two days I was on Teewah Beach, but I wouldn’t have been able to fit Fatty in any of their cars, so I kept saying no. Some people eventually did come along with an empty ute tray, so I got a lift with them. They also gave me mini Mars Bars, so that was pretty cool. They were all very beautiful people. Beautiful in the way that people from cities normally are, not like me; someone who looks like they just fell out of a tree! Ange, who sat in the front told me about her business: About Faces Noosa. No wonder she was beautiful! They talked a lot about Yoga and it made me want to give it a go.

Sunrise on Teewah Beach looking south.

In total I rode for 15km and pushed the bike for 33km. I don’t recommend doing this! I couldn’t even complete the “easy” return section of the ride along the Cooloola Way, so I had to stay in a caravan park and get picked up the next day. When I was there, I wrote in my journal: I like Tewantin. I reckon I could live here.

When I got home I came up with a five year plan to buy a house in Tewantin. I would never have thought of this had I not had this epic fail, so it wasn’t really a fail because I got to learn some cool stuff and come up with more cool plans for the future. I also got to meet some really great people and made it home, even though at times it seemed like that would never happen. This guy wasn’t so lucky…

Near the log jam: he didn’t make it

Fatty and Skinny in Woodgate

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Sometimes people tell me I’m skinny. I don’t think I am, I’m just really fit, so I have a fair bit of muscle and not much body fat. This doesn’t happen by accident because I train pretty hard, which is why I don’t really like getting told that I’m skinny. I just think that people aren’t generally used to seeing women who are my age and look like I do.

When I was a kid, I was teased for being fat. I don’t even know if I was. I do know that I was taller than everyone else in my classes all the way through primary school. It wasn’t until around grade nine or ten did the boys start to overtake me in height, and even then, there were only about four of them. Mr Fell, who was a teacher at my primary school in Hervey Bay whispered in my ear one day, “Jenny needs to go to Jenny Craig” What kind of an arsehole says something like that to a kid?! Ugh.

Me and Fatty have started hanging out a fair bit lately. This is Fatty in his natural habitat. Taken on the latest secret track I discovered in Woodgate:

I found a secret track on Google Earth a while back, so yesterday I set out with a hand drawn map (I don’t have an internet phone) to see if I could follow it:

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I rode for two hours, mostly through deep sand along the secret track and back home again. It would’ve been around 30km. It was a really hard ride, but still, it was awesome, and this time I didn’t fall off, although I came close a couple of times. See, the bike needs to go forward when I’m on it, which is the whole concept behind cycling, and if I don’t have enough momentum when I hit a deep patch of sand, then over I go. It all happens in slow motion and is quite painless due to the soft landing. Getting the sand out of my shoes, and last time out of my hair and ear, is another story, especially when I’m all sweaty.

I fell off once due to a spider’s web. I’m really scared of spiders and I rode down yet another secret track and went face-first into a spider web. All I could think of was having a giant spindly-legged beast on my face or on my helmet and I screamed (even though I’m a girl, I rarely do this and my screams sound nothing like you’d imagine a girly scream to sound)  and jumped off the bike mid pedal, it stopped going forward and promptly fell on my leg. Fatty is heavier than a regular mountain bike (due to his obese wheels I’d say). This was about three weeks ago and I still have the bruise. There was no spider. This is how big a spider is:

 

 

But this is how big it feels to me, even if its non existent:

I looped around back to a track I’ve ridden down multiple times and Fatty said he wanted a rest, so he posed for a photo here:

I love Fatty, but it wasn’t always like that. And the thing is, he doesn’t even belong to me. He belongs to the cool guy I’m married to. When the cool guy bought this bike I told him he was being ridiculous. “It’s a stupid fad these fat bikes. We’ve already got bikes, why do you need one like this? It’s ridiculous, look how big the wheels are!” It’s pretty funny now that I’m the one who rides Fatty all the time and am always going on and on about how great it is to have a bike that can do the things that Fatty can do. There’s no way in hell I’d ever be able to ride a regular mountain bike in the places I take Fatty, and there’s no way I’d ever be able to make a regular mountain bike go as fast as I can get Fatty to go. On Fatty I feel like I’m invincible. I didn’t like Fatty in the beginning and sometimes it’s good to be wrong about things. Mr Fell was wrong about me too, when he believed I was worthless, and I was wrong about myself for a long time believing that I was fat, ugly and nonathletic.

Be wrong and see where it can take you