Ossie Nicholson Ride

 

Job is

Done, Brevet card and Garmin at the finish. About 17.9 kph average.

Arthurs Seat photography crew.

Top of Arthurs seat. Who is that guy in the photo? Looks tall and fit, possibly because I had some encouragement from the photography crew - "we saw you riding up..... well done"

Rest Stop near  Rosebud on return leg.

Lifesaver! The Rosebud bikeshop where I bought a new one of .....

these things (derailleur pulley) after the bike saw fit to jettison one soon after Mount Eliza.

Hi

I am now 2 days back from The Ossie Nicholson ride and have a chance to do the blog. I rode it last year and rode to the start, and this year I decided to drive to the start and had the goal of reducing my time by an hour. The fact I drove to the start instead of riding there was certainly a help this year!

Anyway I started off the ride by chatting to Frank who is in his early 70's and is closing in on 75,000ks of Audax riding. He has a steel frame Cecil Walker bike that is about 20 years old and has been updated to include brake lever shifters and an external bearing bottom bracket. I am going to call this future-retroism.

This contrasts with my own designs which use old parts (mainly non indexing shifters and 8 speed cassettes) on new recumbent frames and of course is retro-futurism, a term used and jokingly animated by Nina Paley . Anyway, both retrofuturistic and futureretroistic designs had a great start in the tailwind all the way to Frankston where I kept up with Frank or vice versa with tailwind speeds of about 25 to 30 kph. My plan was to ride all the way to Dromana and have lunch and a rest there before tackling the big hill of Arthurs seat.

Alas the plan was not to be, and about 2ks out of Mount Martha, my bike dropped a derailleur pulley, and I couldn't find it to put it back on. I worked out the bike would run on just the derailleur pulley bolt, and (after this coming loose a few times) if I screwed it in all the way it wouldn't even spontaneously loosen and fall apart again.

Anyway, in Dromana I asked a guy for the nearest bikeshop and he pointed forward and said Rosebud so I rode onto there where (yay) I was able to replace the pulley. I had missed climbing Arthurs seat because of the mechanical issue, so kept going to Portsea at good pace,where I had lunch in an upmarket cafe. (no downmarket cafes in Portsea!) On the way back I climbed Arthurs Seat quite slowly which was not in the plan.

Somewhere along the way (near Mt Martha) I managed to lose my phone during a rest break, and realised I may have done so about 10k further on, between Mornington and Frankston.  From there my riding got better, I just wanted to get back and work out how to find or replace the phone, and battled on all the way to Portsea. The new rainjacket was great, maybe not for keeping rain out but for keeping me seen in headlights. 

I was cold and hungry when I got in, and had to drive home in the rain before contacting anyone to let them know I'd got in. But overall 7pm not a bad finish time given the problems!

Next day I drove down to Dromana to look for the phone, and found the bus stop where I thought I'd left it but not the phone. Never mind, a pleasant drive listening to radio national! Later in the afternoon I replaced the phone.

Many thanks to ride organiser Dieter!