On Saturday morning one of my colleagues, Jim and I set out to Hawks Nest. We made it a very relaxed ride, stopping 5 times on the 80km ride. I packed my tent and sleeping bag and used the new pannier bags which I'll be using on the trip up to Brisbane. As I got on the bike, I realised that the bike is too small (short) for these pannier bags and my feet kept hitting the bags at the back. Fortunately, when I met up with Jim, he had a quick look and showed me that the carrier on my bike can be moved back a bit still. I would had stuggled all the way up to Brisbane like this if we didn't do this weekend trip together.
Jim and our bicycles
I usually go straight from Raymond Terrace through to The Rock petrol station with only a quick stop at a rest stop along the way. The rest stop is just a toilet in the middle of nowhere, so that doesn't count as much of a stop. This time, however, we turned down and stopped off at Karuah. Stopped next to the bridge and had something to eat of what we had taken along with us. Saw some dolphins under the bridge and some touring bowling team drinking beer at 9 'o clock in the morning:)
Water movement after Dolphin stuck it's head out
I kind of missed the dolphin, but you get the idea :)
Beer drinking bowlers
Going through Karuah we missed a couple of rolling hills and the one hill that normally gives me a bit of trouble on that route, so I was pleasantly surprised when we got back on the highway and I realised we'd missed all that.
Had a really good cup of coffee at The Rock and then continued on for the last 15kms to Hawks Nest. At that point I was still talking about cycling on past Hawks Next to push my kilometers for the day over 100kms. haha, little did I know...
The last stretch to Hawks Nest has a good couple of hills and one particularly nasty one at the end. I had forgotten about these, but erm, was quickly reminded about them. The exstra weight makes a huge difference and I have not managed to lose any body weight as I had hoped to do before the trip. So, I struggled!! And, for the final hill I got off and pushed the bike up the hill.
View of Hawk's Nest and Tea Gardes with Nelson's Bay on the other side
All went well and we arrived at Jim's brother's house at 12:30, exactly 6 hours after leaving Newcastle. Not a terribly fast trip at all, but an enjoyable ride. Jim is much fitter than me and our speed was mostly governed by my level of fitness.
Went for lunch at the same cafe as I had lunch last time and what I suspect may be the only cafe in Hawks Nest. For supper we ordered pizzas and both ordered large. I commented that I'd rather have too much pizza left over than being stuck out there without enough food the whole night. haha, good choice!! Jim weighs less than half my weight and even he said that it wasn't a very big pizza. Fortunately I had bought some muesli bars for the trip home on Sunday, coz the pizza was just small enough to drive me to crime during the night if I did not have something else to eat. We watched my future wife playing pirate on Australia's funniest home videos and thereafter I jumped into bed.
Trip home on Sunday was again fairly relaxed except that there was a slight headwind against us, but nothing major. I am disappointed that my legs took a bit of strain and I've decided to leave the tent and sleeping bag at home for the Brisbane trip. If I had lost a couple of kilograms of body weight as I planned, I may have been okay, but just taking too much strain with the extra weight.
So that's it... My final trip before heading to Brisbane. As I said, I'm a little disappointed by my performance, but I am confident that I'll be okay and just going to go have fun on the trip to Brisbane. I think sometimes we stress too much about silly things and now it's time just to be excited and to enjoy it.
