Dave and Jen For Oxfam

With a weekend of great weather comes the temptation to use our weekly longer rides as an excuse to slip down the coast for some ocean-side fun. A temptation we don’t so much as give in to as ask to catch up, speeding away down the highway with the bikes in tow. Aiming for a late afternoon ride we pull up at Burleigh and are happy to see sunshine and a gentle offshore breeze. Putting frames together and helmets and gloves on we don’t leave until making sure Squishy is packed safely. yes, im getting used to Jen’s insistences that i ensure the safety of a stuffed animal, which sounds even more naff when i type the word “stuffed animal”. Lets call him “mascot”.

With the masculine and not at all embarrassing mascot tucked safely away inside my Black Wolf backpack we pedal slowly up the Esplande and soak up some sunshine. Winding around the headland the ride continues along dedicated and shared bikeways which consist of embedded pebble style concrete and the “ever which way” wanderings of the sunbaked locals and inattentive tourists. Perfect for a purposeless peddle. Most Australians and a fair chunk of travellers to Queensland would know of Surfers Paradise and Bill Bryson’s description of it as a place like pretty much anywhere else, except with “more crap”, is as fitting as any. The original plan was to ride past Surfers and up towards Narrowneck before resting, eating, stretching and riding back. Plans are good things to have and even better things to break.

Getting ahead of ourselves here, we pick off again with a Mongoose and a Giant winding around humans plodding along the pavement alongside some beautiful beach on a beautiful day. I had bought some Gatorade powder recently for no other reason than a consumerist impulse buy and managed to turn a hearty laugh into an apologetic smile when Jen, unbeknownst to the contents of my bottle, was faced with a sudden mouthful of whatever some laboratory technician thinks is “summer crush” or “orange awesome”. Something along those lines.

It’s a warm day but far from hot, and far from the humidity Vietnam and Cambodia will offer. The bike path gives way to road and we peddle through what many like to call some of “the most expensive real estate in Australia”. Basically beachside properties of no particular note, surrounded by busy roads and a block or two from original beach shacks and buildings already sized up for demolition once a pesky old resident falls prey to their mortality. It’s a nice enough ride if not much to see on this stretch, with some of it a one way street and dedicated bike lane. All common ground from my youth peddling along it with surfboard under one arm.

So, Surfers Paradise. The road that leads this way hooks around a roundabout and becomes a narrow street that shows its age. There is no denying the Gold Coast has grown rapidly even in the years since I grew up there, and certainly the bulk of this within the lifetime of the generation before. It’s a great place for a weekend away, and everyone coming to the area should check out the viewing platform on the enormous Q1 tower at least once, but any suggestion of Surfers Paradise being anything other than an area of poor town planning and general decline would be madness.

In as much time as it took to type the above paragraph, we zoom past Cavill Ave without interest. With the Gold Coast Indy only a week away, roads are converting into the race track and grandstands appear on either side of the road. Savvy hotels and apartments have already put up security fences in preparation for the lawn and garden trampling hordes that attend the days of racing in earnest. I’ve had fun in my late teens working at the event and share a few tales to the occasional disbelief of Jen. It is a curious event and even with my complete disinterest in automobiles going around in circles it’s something to check out if you get the chance. We soon near Narrowneck where I had planned we begin our return journey.

But we didn’t. Which is a quick way to move on to the actual surprise of the trip that lay ahead. With agreement that we feel fine and want to continue riding north I mark out a path in my mind to head towards the Seaway, passing Sea World on the left and ending up at The Spit. To my happy ignorance a path continuing north winds instead into the relatively untouched and forested dunes. We race along and slow down only to make sense of an Indian family insisting we turn back because there was a snake on the path (who don’t know the secret that in Australia, we pay the snakes to keep the tourists off the paths and herd them into our Souvenir T-Shirt stores). Wondering how they got this far from the Souvenir stores, we stretch out into the kind of enthusiastic speed inspired by fast paths, dense trees and the sudden disappearance of traffic, buildings and people.

Eventually the cement gives way to a kind of hard packed sand and we grin further. Winding around corners and short sudden rises and drops we slide, hop and jump crests with manic energy before a sudden wash of loose sand throws us into a wiggly halt and we realise we are at the sand pumping jetty. Pulling through the sand we pedal the last firm path and emerge on the Southport Seaway itself. Sharing fixed smiles, we peddle right up the sea wall to the very tip itself, and take a break to drink, eat and peer down past the high-rises of Surfers Paradise to the distant Burleigh Heads in the ocean mist.

We amuse the handful of onlookers by doing our “round and round” photograph “thing”, which I will explain at another time besides the throw away description of it being a time-lapse photography project we have been doing for a while now. Squishy makes it out for a cameo and photo or two and then we begin the journey back. The Gold Coast sun offers an apology for having to set, but offers a beautiful sunset in the process. As we reach the car, we flick our lights on and do a slowly lap to cool down.

Feeling good about the distance, unexpected tracks near the Seaway and a day away from computer screens and spreadsheets, we climb in the car and head on back up the highway to Brisbane. Another weekend training ride over, thoughts and chatter turns to the remaining few and the realisation that 34km’s along beachside pathways, bike tracks and road is probably not the kind of training we really should be doing for the trip ahead. We shrug, and watch the Kilometres peel away on the GPS as Brisbane’s CBD creeps closer with the promise of another week closer to boarding time.