Oppy Prelude

Trike as ridden in Great Ocean Road 200.

Bike Light Hacked.  There is a small bit of drilled plastic below the screw which reinforced the case....

so a screw could be added to attch it to the back of the trike.

Hi

There are some big rides coming up on the Audax calendar - The 1200k Great Southern Randonnee comes at the end of the but for this yaer at least I will confine myself to a couple of shorter (but not short) rides.  An email from Simon Watt led to me joining an "Oppy" recumbent team which aims to travel  360k in 24 hours in a loop out of Geelong.  I'll be riding with Mick Creati and Graham Signiorini.

This sort of distance can't be covered without a well-fettled vehicle and training.  A week ago the trike didn't have lights, a lid for the boot, wide ranging gears or any padding on the seat and it now has  all of those things including an extra 202 km travelled courtesy of Peter Donnan's Audax midweek great ocean road ride.

Before I'd even started fettling, the trike had achieved "The holy grail of recumbent cycling", that is, going to the grog shop and returning with a slab of beer and some wine in the back.

I didn't have my camera with me on the 200k ride so a description will have to do, and in this case the ride is not the main event, so lets just get on with it.  We set out of Anglesea about 8am into drizzling rain which persisted all day - it was all absolutely welcome as the countryside looked dry as a dead dingo's donger with some cattle craning necks over fences in the paddocks to reach the grass on the roadside verges.

The first bit of the ride was all hills and everyone else on the ride was ahead of me pretty soon but I managed to catch up with one rider for a short while.  The chain got clogged up in the chainring a few times and this is something I'll need to fix for future rides.  Other than that everything went fine.  I was a bit slow over the hills to Lorne (84k) and it was headwind into Apollo Bay from there, but with rolling surf on the left there was plenty to see.

A quick stop, refuel and change into dry clothes at Apollo Bay and then it was back along the coast to Anglesea.  This included going through the recently fire-ravaged town of Wye River, seeing the new growth starting to appear.  There were roadblocks for roadworks but that didn't worry me much, you just wait a bit and get to wave to the workers who are very friendly.  I was back at Anglesea in plenty of time for the Audax 200k time limit and chatted with Peter at the end of the ride over a cup of tea.  He's in an Oppy team too, so I'll see him in a week or two.

That's it for now.  More fettling is due.  For the Oppy I'll need lights that are reasonably bright and will last for six or seven hours so that is one of the next things to fix.

All for now!

Regards

Steve Nurse

During Construction.  An existing plywood seat was extended with a curved ply base and a side-frame to support the coreflute.

Once finished, this made for a very stable, beer and wine-carrying tailbox.