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Toodyay Ride All the usual crew were there plus Volker Beck , a German
cyclotourist on a SWB equipped with Radical Pod bags and other snazzy
gear. The first stage of the trip involved wending our way
through the backstreets and hobby farm zone then taking a 15km limestone
track to the hills so that we could avoid the busy highways. The Hookworm tyres were a prophylactic for the rough
track and kept us trikies out of snakebites. A taller and wider profile
and higher running pressure (110psi) than the Comp Pools (90psi) that
Greenspeed recommends for their trikes but not the same sort of grip
on the road, as we found out on the first tight roundabout. I remember Gary promising that we'd only do 5km of soft
limestone track, not 15km of sandy, muddy, rocky trail, so I'm glad
I was set up for offroad. We had an impromptu stop at the start of
this trail when the motorised division met up with us. Not everyone
in the HPV group was up to doing a 103km ride across the Scarp so
some chose to come by car and do bits of the weekend by bike or trike.
A short coffee break then the lighthorse division was
off, Gary leading the way as he'd recce'd the track before , though
in the opposite direction. This presented a problem when we came to
a fork in the road that he'd flashed through before without noticing,
we ended up chosing the left fork (the right one) but the cars that
later followed chose the right fork and ended up back in Perth and
very perplexed. The track was a bit of grind in places though we had
our moments, like Gary trying to sneak past me near the top of hills
to grab the King of the Mountain points (fat chance, I own that polka
dot jersey ), and when I gave up trying to avoid a long series of
big potholes when I was riding alongside Volker, on the trike it was
like riding a wave machine next to Volker's stable and suspended SWB
that was on the smooth part of the track ( up and down I went like
on a po-go, that got a good laugh out of Volker) Trikes were first to the top then SWBs, this set the
pattern for the rest of the trip (sorry Gary but get a trike). A steep
hill but it had a long, long run down into the Valley and through
scenic greenery , creeks and orchards. We stopped at an unattended
roadside stall ( you buy your stuff and drop the coins in a tip can,
an honour system in this day and age) and can away with pannier fill
of mandarins. When we all got together a little further down the road
we figured the HPV group had bought most of the stall, everyone had
stopped there. There was a orange stall further up the road that got
raided also. Lunch was planned when we got to Julimar Rd, the start of the steep stuff. As we leaving the Chittering Valley road two cyclists flashed past the intersection, needless to say we caught up to them and talked, first thing one said to us was "I built one of those once". Ron and Fleur were building a straw bale house just up the road from where we saw them and had decided to go off camping for a night when we met. We invited them to lunch , a spread of food that didn't last long anyway with all those hungry cyclists around. Do we eat to cycle or cycle to eat? Ron once built a
LWB with 26" MTB wheels front and rear, and he 'd ridden it up
north, Broome. Amazing that you can meet HPV riders in the back of
beyond when you see so few on the streets of Perth. We left them at the top of a very long hill, 8km down the road, the next 30km were all ours. Here I found that I was leaving everyone behind on the uphills (being a fit roadracer) but also on the downhills, something to do with being on a very low trike, the most aerodynamic , and being the heaviest rider. I stopped for a snooze at the top of one hill and got woken up by Mike King and his AirZound horn as he flashed past (thanks Mike), he got 100m away from me before I got back on the road and travelling downhill, for the next 2km he pedalled his trike down and I coasted and almost caught him before the next hill intervened . I've been meaning to go on a diet to help with my road races but maybe I shouldn't? The motorised division met us on the outskirts of Toodyay, on their trikes and bikes, with news that "there's only 10km to go", funnily enough this wasn't taken with the humour it was given. We'd done 102km that day. Camp was at a caravan park in Toodyay. Dinner was at the local pub, lots of Guinness and they staggered the 1km home. The next day was to be in York to check out the annual Jazz Festival and scare the locals with our funny bikes. Plans got changed a little, we decided to throw all the bikes on the cars and drive the 65km to York so we'd have more time to look around. Ride back of course. Guess who's trike got to go on top of the VW Combi and guess who’s trike seat ended up at York covered in bugs like a radiator grill, yuck! The ride back to Toodyay was into a headwind that became more
insistent once we got away from behind the hills covering York. On the way
out there we had passed a carpark full of paunchy looking guys, about 40-odd,
all milling about and looking like "we aren't rendezvousing for a paintball
game, really" (paintball is illegal in WA as the cops want to hold
a monopoly on pointing guns at and shooting people). I told our little group
to keep an ear open for the poot-poot-poot sound of a paintball game as
we rode along but the wind soon finished that little idea. The halfway point
of our ride was naturally enough another Tavern, at Spencer's Brook, but
the trike got there first again, just in time as it started to bucket it
down. Plans for some of the vehicular crew to trade places and ride the
rest of the way to Toodyay were quickly abandoned in favour of downing Guinness
and watching a couple of silly sods who should have known better to ride
off during a (brief) break in the monsoon. The road goes under the Great Eastern Highway and then up a 10km long hill. I planned to leave Gary at the top and fly down to Toodyay a.s.a.p as he had lights, I didn't (or rather I did but there was a faulty connector somewhere). Anyway basically for the next dozen km I sat on 40-55k/hr into Toodyay, including pulling out onto Toodyay Rd just in front of a line of cars and having them sit on my tail at 55k/hr for a few minutes (I love to educate motorists to what a bike or trike can do) . Gary arrived back at Toodyay soon after, with a similar breathtaking experience. The last night in Toodyay was spent having a BBQ , something
the HPV group seems to do a lot. The rain had eased off hours earlier
and the night was easy. The HPVers in the nearest tent didn't spend
so much time that night complaining about their flatulence problem,
and I had grown accustomed to the rocky floor beneath my tent, so
I got a better sleep. This was good as I was riding home the next
day. Come sun up and I decided to carry all my gear back with me instead of letting one of the motorised division help. Having pigged out all weekend and kept the others fed with fruitcake and boiled sweets there was a lot less gear to tote home. Also the only other rider game to ride all the way home was Gary , on his SWB (and we know how they perform on hills against trikes) so I needed the extra weight as a handicap, to slow me up on the hills., so he told me. The others had opted to drive back the way we'd come but drop off at Ron and Fleur's straw house on the way (the two MTBers we'd met days ago), plus check out Ron's recumbent. As we were on our own we chose to ride back a different
way, via Toodyay Rd, normally busy with traffic but we were leaving
early enough to avoid most. Apart from the occasional drenching the ride was okay apart from my broken spoke on a front wheel (the same side that I broke the mirror on days earlier) . The roads were wet all the way until we got to the Scarp and once the traffic got busier we opted to occasionally ride on the shoulder so they could wizz past. My one remaining mirror on my trike even got sprayed with mud when a truck roared past too close, until I realised that it was a sheep truck and it wasn't mud. After Toodyay there was a lot of little hills building
up to the experience that someone labeled '9-mile hill' though it
was hard to see where this hill started or ended, just that by about
25km from Toodyay we seemed to be at the top of something and could
see for miles and mostly down . Probably not very steep or high in
comparison with some of the terrain elsewhere in the country but a
nice feeling to know that you've got to the top of a long downhill.
You could almost smell the ocean air. The part of the ride that I kept telling Gary to prepare
for was 20km further away at Gidgegannup , a 2km steep uphill but
with lots of roadhouses on the top. A few km before this was a steep
little hill at Noble Falls where Gary dropped his chain halfway up,
fixed that, got 5m further and broke his mirror off. A bit of electrical
tape works wonders, always carry the stuff. After 45km of good hilly stuff we rode into Gidgey for
a good rest and pigged out on fast food. With only a dozen km to go
we'd drop off the Scarp and beat the others back to Gary's place,
so we thought. Toodyay Rd goes down the Scarp via Redhill and though steep and fast it was unfortunately full of traffic, lots of trucks, so we had to take it slow down the hill . We thought that it would be flat roads so easy from
there but once away from the foothills we were hit by a terrific headwind,
worse than that the way we had to go home, about 20km odd, was through
sand patches and we got wind-burnt and sand blasted for the rest of
the trip . I had the face of a Badger by the time I got home and took
my sunglasses off. Also Gary's second helping of fast food at the Gidgey
roadhouse was starting to take effect and he slowed down miserably.
I stopped once to wait at traffic lights and was blown backwards along
the road at walking pace, pretty windy! Not even being on a recumbent
can protect if the headwind wants to get you. We crawled along at
9-12k/hr, with a break only when Gary's rear tyre and tube blew. We
didn't beat the others home, not by a long shot. Oddly enough the ride ended the next night , not after
240km of pedalling. We all gathered at Mike and Paula's for a dinner
that included some left over ingredients from the trip. Mike presented
Volker with a spruced up Leatherman clone (must- have multitool) that
had been found on that limestone track in the first hour of the ride
( the benefits of being on atrike and low to the ground). This was Volker's last night in Perth, the bike already packed
(bar some parts he'd sold to Gary) for a trip home to Germany the long way
via the rest of the world. We wish him well and hope that he'll come see
us when he comes back. P.S we saw Ron's recumbent two weeks later when he brought
it to our recumbent meet in Freo. An amazing machine, a LWB with 26"
wheels, an aluminium boom and ASS with a cog at the bottom of the steerer
linked by a BMX chain to a cog at the fork, the framework all held together
by tension straps (apparently) and everything painted in Italian Chrome.
He'd bought it in 1984 and there are others like it hidden around Perth
somewhere.
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