It’s been about a week now since the new GPS arrived, and I’m mostly loving it. The unit comes packaged with the heart-rate strap and cadence/wheel sensor, and Aust/NZ topographic maps on an SD card; the maps are decent but I’d like to replace the basemap with the OSM CycleMap as the inbuilt ones are not cycle-friendly enough. DC Rainmaker… Read more →
I’ve uploaded the data to Garmin Connect. The first thing I can see from analysing it is that my heart rate shot up from 140 to 178 over about three kilometres on the ride up (from the bottom of the hill to Glenbrook), and I hit 70km/h briefly on the way down the same section. There were several sections of… Read more →
… but it’s the quickest way from the heart of the west. I left Des and Deb’s place at about 6:15 and rode down the Great Western Highway through a pea-souper. The fog had closed in last night and hadn’t lifted and the visibility was only a few hundred metres. I really should have kept my lights on the bike… Read more →
The RTA hates cyclists. You might have already guessed that, but I have proof. I rode through the inner west to Meadowbank (where there’s these ugly apartments called Shepherd’s Camp or something similar – no self-respecting shepherd would come within a mile of them, I’m sure). From there, the bike path winds along the north of the river until it… Read more →
Danya and I rode around the eastern suburbs today, as another training exercise for the ‘Gong, which is in two weeks time. It was going to be a straightforward loop out to Watson’s Bay, down to La Perouse and back to Marrickville. Unfortunately, Danya got a flat on the climb from Watson’s Bay, and we ended up with a more… Read more →
Since it’s been a bit wet to ride as consistently as I have been lately, I decided that some better local mapping is in order. While I have been driving roads and correcting local data on OpenStreetMap, I felt that the map still looked a bit bare, especially given the bridge and fords crossing nothing. Free satellite imagery unfortunately doesn’t… Read more →
Blue Knob Originally uploaded by wamblicious I was wandering along the Casino to Uki route using Google Earth, and realised that the only peak that matched the profile in this photo was Blue Knob. Homeleigh isn’t even really visible, as there’s another range in the way, from where I was riding. It was then I realised that I had a… Read more →
I woke up a bit sore, but not too bad, considering. The saddle-sores had lessened, but the legs were still feeling over-used. It wasn’t raining, but the sky was more threatening than yesterday. Not enough to convince me to put on a raincoat, though. There was a decent headwind, and it took me an hour to get to Braunstone, crawling… Read more →
Today was nothing special, but long. I left at 6:30 – only an hour to pack, compared to the two yesterday – and reached Whiporie at 9:30. It was nice and cloudy, so the temperature was kept down. I had a burger and a sports drink for lunch, but the burger was late coming out and I’d finished the drink… Read more →
After a period off the bike to rest and recuperate (among other things 🙂 ), I was ready for the road again. I got up at 5:30, but didn’t leave until almost 7:30. Packing up everything including the tent etc. took more time that I wanted. Marissa was still up and looked slightly embarrassed about it – we’d said our… Read more →
I decided that today would be the day to take the N800 and GPS and do some more mapping for OpenStreetMap. First I went up Upper Wilson’s Creek, which has the feel I recall for the whole valley during my adolescence – numerous creek crossings all in flood, small windy roads where cars have to pull over to let others… Read more →
Today was the day of the saddle sores. For a long while after getting back on the bike at any point, I’d have to try and find a comfortable position, stand up on the pedals and side out of the saddle for a few meters, and then sit down again, hoping that I’d have got used to the pain. After… Read more →
Hills and more hills, today. Looking back from halfway, it was obvious that I’d crossed the shield wall of the old volcano – this wall of mountains, the Mackellar Range, was all along the horizon. For some reason, I’d had it in my head that Kyogle was 20km, not 30km from Casino. The heat and the flies were building to… Read more →
An awful day. I threw a back muscle when packing this morning, and had no power in my legs all day. That, combined with the excessive packing I have obviously done, meant that it took 7:30 hours on the road. The last 50 km from Whiporie to 4:30. I was almost out of water, too, given the heat and the… Read more →
The Coffs Harbour motel was most generous with breakfast. Basically I was given two for the price of one. The woman also gave me a banana, and asked if I wanted any avocados, as they had heaps. I ate everything but the banana, which I saved for the top of the big hill. An inauspicious start to the ride; I… Read more →
The trip up was reasonable. Bobbie dropped me at the station at about 6:15; the luggage people asked what I was giving them for transport, and I said it was a bike – they said OK. At Coffs, I was walking along the station towards the luggage cart and didn’t see the bike bag, so I called out that there… Read more →
Edge 705, originally uploaded by wamblicious. The new Edge 705 is available in Australia, finally. While it’s not perfect, it’s much better than the old 305. You can see the map screen, with the OzTopo Roads map being shown. I got it bundled with the maps from GPSOz, so I wouldn’t have to depend on the crappy default maps that… Read more →
Unfortunately, I realise now, I didn’t make any GPS markers for Mullum or other easily recognisable places, or I could have geocoded a local map with them and produced a better record of the walk across the property. That means that we’re stuck with the low quality Google satellite imagery or me finding an already geocoded map. Anyway, here’s the… Read more →
