Buckley's Ride on Hollow Beam Bike

Ian Knox heading out of Werribee

Kevin on his Low Racer, heading out of Werribbee

Coming into Geelong, Ian and Kevin

A slight navigation error - the recumbents got to this point about 200m off the route before turning back.

Hi

As detailed in the last few posts, after months of patiently ordering in parts, in the last 2 weeks, I've had time to put my hollow beam wooden bike together. A few weeks ago I booked in for another Round the bay in a day ride, thinking I would do it on my aluminium frame recumbent.  But my latest wooden beam bike had come together quite nicely and I decided to bite the bullet and ride on it instead, and I was glad I did.

So about 20 Audaxians gathered  at the North end of Albert park, and I was pretty busy registering for the ride, paying for parking, saying hello to a few aquaintences and reconstituting my bike from its "folded up inside the car" to its "ride me, I am a bicycle state".  (This involves bolting on the seat and handlebars. )

On the ride I knew Ian Knox (Challenge Hurricane), Rick Harker (Road bike but some-time recumbenteer), Kevin Linnett from Wollongong (home made carbon low racer), and had seen various others on different rides around the joint. We set off as a group and kept together pretty well, making light work of the headwind all the way to Werribbee when we split up a bit and the recumbents ended up on their own all the way to the ferry about 120k in. The winds changed a bit in our favour at Geelong but we got some wind gusts and rain in the mix.  It's meant to be summer here so it wasn't that cold, thankfully.  The ferry ride was a bit rough due to the weather and quite busy due to the time of year.  I ate quite a bit on the ferry and got my Brevet card signed then joined Ian Knox for the ride back.   Quite a bit of cross winds on the way back and we were feeling a bit tired but made it back by 5:30 to Melbourne. So we had an average including stops and the ferry trip of 19kph which was not bad I reckon.  Very pleased with the bike and the way it went.

Left Side with plywood plate on the hollowed out main beam.

Right view, this shows the bottom of the hollowed out main beam.