Mt Nebo Ride

It was good to get a decent ride today. It’s been a bit slow since that big Toowoomba adventure.

Just Scott, me and Shirts this morning and there was no definite plan apart from climbing up to Nebo then down to Samford. From there we would just let our legs decide. If they felt good maybe Clear Mountain, Eatons Crossing Road etc. If they felt bad we could just head home via Ferny Hills.

I was wearing my new knee warmers today. A dude at track had been appalled when I showed up without any a few weeks back telling me the cold would damage my knee joints and he was seemed very serious so I obeyed. Anyway – apart from making the mistake of wearing them outside my bib shorts — which Shirts set me straight about — they felt good and kept me pretty warm up there in the mountains.

There’s been times up in Nebo in winter where I have had trouble controlling the bike I was shivering so much with cold. The cold doesn’t really affect you much when you are riding. It’s just when you stop and cool down and start off again.

We met this happy little fellow at the cafe in Nebo Village.

I should run a caption competition for this photo!

Then Shirts headed home and Scott and I kept on up towards Glorious and the turnoff and descent towards Highvale and Samford. We took it pretty easy seeing as the roads were so wet and those switchbacks where you had to corner and rub off a fuckload of speed.

But then Scott was like, “Oh shit” and he stopped and he discovered he’d broken a spoke. So he wrapped the dead spoke around it’s closest buddy and because the wheel was now so out of true – and thus rotating with a big side to side swagger – you release the back brake to allow the wheel to spin without rubbing against the brake pads. This turned out to be not that easy as the wheel was seriously out of true.

So we limped on through Samford and then into Ferny Hills where Scotty could get a train. Good excuse for a new bike he said.