Dave and Jen For Oxfam

If you have kept up with our posts about training rides you might notice the amount of times the word “rain” has washed across your screen. Living in our home city of Brisbane, Australia, ensures us the kind of weather our home state of Queensland is famous for. Or “infamous for” if you aren’t a fan of the heat. Once again rain threatened to drip through our helmets and down to our madly spinning tires as we spent another training session under a collection of clouds. So much so that I could be forgiven for saying something cheesy like “we put the raining in training”. But I won’t, because it’s more interesting to read what we did in Byron Bay, despite the weather.

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After the beautiful day we had riding from Burleigh to the seaway on the Gold Coast last weekend, this weekend’s session pales in comparison. One of the great realisations of the ease of which we covered the 34km last weekend is that the distance or time in saddle is not an issue. The vast majority of that trip was on road with some fun compacted off-road trails near the end giving way to the odd stretch of loose sand. We definitely need more experience off-road and we continue to enthuse about heading to the trails in Nerang or The Gap.

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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”.

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After a week of long riding, long roads and riding along roads in a line, we decided to spice it up a little. Whilst the weather threatened dubious, we found ourselves giving in to the desire to hike in to a campsite and play with nature for a while. Upon Jen’s most excellent suggestion and surreptitious planning, a schedule of ferry times, tickets and campsite bookings took place and landed in a mysterious pile in front of me. The words “Moreton Island” appear in size 18 Arial font. In bold. Atop the paper stack lay a list of what to pack. There were things like tents, ropes and backpacks. No bikes however. A riding training session without bikes you ask? Well, read on.

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Yesterday is a day about things we did not actually do. We did not go for a full day’s ride on the Gold Coast. We did not take photos of the beautiful beaches and esplanade. We did not film anything at 24 frames per second. We did not soak up the sunshine and the fresh air. At no stage did we take a break to rest, eat a banana and recite some kind of pleased utterances about this or that. We didn’t even plot our course on GPS and utilise the Google Maps and Flickr API’s to publish these to the website. Yesterday was nothing like this. Yesterday blames Saturday.

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To salvage the remains of a weekend spent in airports and on a very long and boring train journey, Jen and I returned to Brisbane with the aim of dumping bags on the floor and hitting the bikes for a quick ride. The quick ride quickly became our first time on a path we had previously discussed as a possible training route. Namely, New Farm to West End and back. This ride, which we have mapped online, travels mostly along the various floating platforms and riverside walkways that hug the Brisbane river. The weather at this stage seemed clear overhead. At this stage.

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