New Tyres

After Colin’s tyre self-destructed (See last post) I checked mine and – yes – they are worn.

New Tyres for Bluey

I looked back over this Blog to see when I last replaced the tyres but could not find that post. I’m sure it’s in here somewhere. Never mind, new tyres were ordered from Melbourne.

Big Apples, 20″ by 2.15″ wide, balloon tyres. A friend recently went on a cycling trip to China and before he left he bought some new Schwalbe Marathons from eBay. They gave him a heap of puncture problems BUT he now believes they were not real Schwalbes – the name was not raised on the tyre.

With the first wheel it was bloody hard to get the old tyre off. It had stuck itself to the rim because, I assume, it’s some time since I took it off to mend a puncture. I ended up leaving the wheel out in the sun for half an hour which made the tyre more malleable and then the tyre lever could get under the beading to heave it off. Luckily the other two tyres came off with ease.

While the front wheels were off the trike I took the opportunity to clean the surfaces of the hub and brake pads as they have been screeching a bit recently. A fair amount of black dust came off both.

The new tyres for the front wheels were soon installed.

That left the rear wheel – the one with the Rohloff hub. How do I get it off? After watching a couple of YouTube “how to” videos and finding the booklet that came with the hub I reckoned I knew what to do. Then immediately stuffed it up by selecting the lowest gear before removing the click-box fitting when I should have selected the highest gear…..

No matter, after replacing the tyre and putting the wheel back on the trike there was a certain amount of jiggery-pokery required to get the click box back on – but it did go on in the end. It only took two cups of tea – one while finding out what to do and one to calm things down when it just was NOT going right.

And there it was, a trike with 3 new tyres. The old ones – well they were surprisingly worn. The rear was useless so it was binned. The two front ones have some life left in them and I have one, Colin has the other and they will serve us as emergency tyres.

I took a short ride around the block to check things out. The gear shift worked and the tyres stayed on and stayed inflated. Job Done.

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New Wheel Bearings for Red Magnum

We planned the camper-trailer trip to Ross again once Colin had fixed the underpinnings of his camper. Then, when he was riding back to Longford from Prospect, his trike rear wheel began making ominous sounds. Here is an extract of his notes:

“I estimate Red Magnum has done somewhere in the vicinity of 10,000 kilometres including Tony’s trip to Adelaide. It has never missed a beat; is on the third set of tyres and I am happy to replace the bearings/races in the rear wheel. What a great trike.“

I set to with Ride with GPS and calculated how many kilometres I had done on Red Magnum before Colin took over ownership in July 2019. I had completed 4,100ks. Since then, on Bluey, I have cycled a further 17,300 kilometres. Now Colin hasn’t done quite that amount but I reckon he has easily covered 10,000 ks which puts Red Magnum’s total distance cycled up over 15,000ks cycled by us – to which must be added the distance cycled by the original owner, if we knew what that was. Quite a bit of that distance has involved the trike carrying a full camping load or towing a camper trailer too. So – not so dusty and, as Colin says, “what a great trike”.

The rear wheel is in the local bike shop getting a new sealed cassette wheel bearing thingo fitted.

When it’s back we can think again about the Ross trip.

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The Ride of the Week

The weather in the north of the State continues to be a delightful Indian Summer. It IS getting cooler but still very pleasant. To take advantage I decided to ride to Carrick again this week but this time taking the longer route via Whitemore. I fancied a faster ride so charged 2 batteries so I could use higher powers.

With not much in the way of clouds in the sky, the overnight temperature was a little low. I needed the windproof riding jacket plus mittens with heat pads inserted to start out with. My circulation wasn’t good and fingers were cold.

The traffic was extremely light for the first stretch to Bishopsbourne so I stopped and took several snippets of video without bothering anyone. Unfortunately I upgraded the software for the 360 camera and all footage taken today is just not sharp. In fact, when I zoom it gets very pixally. It would seem the new software is for the latest cameras and doesn’t support my older one. Research is called for so for now – no video. *

That took a while so by the time I pulled into the Bishopsbourne Sports Grounds to bin a plastic bottle found along the way, it was beginning to warm up. I removed the heat pads from the gloves and took off the windproof top. I hoped I would not need either for the rest of the day and this proved correct.

On the way I noticed various types of Wattle are beginning to bud up. One very early variety is already showing yellow. I took video of them but used the action camera instead of the 360 so I couldn’t pull off any snapshots – the software won’t allow it.

Another yellow flower in the hedgerow and through some of the woodlands is our old friend, Gorse. The spider-mite is still having only limited success knocking it off.

Ravens abound at the moment, all busy finding stuff to eat. Roadkill, things living in the pine trees and cockchafers in the paddocks. At the Sports Ground the swallows are still doing acrobatics but I guess they will be off to the mainland soon. Yes, it is all happening !!

The onions have been harvested from their paddock where they have been lying around drying for a few weeks. Sheep are now in the paddock eating the remaining onions plus any grass that has shown its head. Will the sheep incorporate the onion vibes into their meat like the ones feeding on salt grass? I suspect not as it’s a once in a lifetime treat for them.

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After the Sports Ground the next leg of the ride took me down Pitts Road then along Oaks Road to get to Whitemore Road and Whitemore. Traffic remained light but as Oaks Road is wider (it even has a centre line) what traffic there was, was really shifting!

Running through Whitemore I marvelled again at Shaw Contracting – a national construction business which runs out of this tiny village.

Just past Whitemore we come upon this :

To my left there was a big “thundercloud” building up. A dirty white column of smoke with a mini thermo-nuclear head. Not a real one of course but an imitation created by “burning off”. It is the season and things are being set on fire in order to keep the bush clear of low scrub so that, when a wildfire comes through, most of the low-level flammable material has already been burnt. Stubble in paddocks is also being set alight as are piles of timber heaped up when paddocks are cleared of trees. All in all not good for the climate but good for people – a topical dichotomy.

Today’s burn was far enough away I didn’t cop any smoke from it.

I don’t recall seeing this strip of grass close to the gravel before. It looks like it has grown on the strip which is graded once a year and new gravel added. Were grass seeds added too? It looks like a variety of grass I met in outback NSW a few years back. That grass broke apart in the winds and created huge drifts of grass heads when they got stuck in fences and hedges.

Just look at that day. It certainly was a day to be out and about, cycling.

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A short while later we arrived at the Meander Valley Highway where it was a turn left and cycle a couple of kilometres to get to Carrick and the rest stop where I had lunch.

I brought along an Aeropress plus coffee beans in the grinder. Perhaps too many beans as the resultant brew was very strong but smooth and enjoyable. I lunched at the stop on the Highway and quite a few cars pulled off and drove around the building before heading back out onto the Highway. I have no idea what they were looking for!! Perhaps they were on a car rally and needed a picture of something to prove they passed by.

I was riding using higher than normal power levels today so changed the battery before continuing. The first and older battery had burnt up 4 volts in 35 kilometres – not so good.

The ride back to Bishopsbourne starts by cycling through a new lifestyle property development. Large acres, small houses and huge sheds seems to be the go here. The local shed manufacturers must love this type of development.

Checked the sign for Hawthorn Park and at the bottom it states “Another Shaw property development”. Looks like the Whitemore based Shaw Contracting has another arrow to its bow. ( Or string even).

A little further on and I passed a number of wood heaps generated as the paddock owner has pulled out all trees that were growing alongside the road. This was done some time back and last winter I rescued a billet for use as my chopping block at home. I thought this lot would be burnt by now.

From here the run back to Longford continued to be good – especially as a light breeze now came in from behind. That gentle push and the fresh battery soon had me back home.

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Now we wait to see how long it will take to get Colin’s wheel sorted.

’til next time ……………………………

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*. Video problem is that the new camera in this series generate 8k images while my older one produced 5.7k images. The new software allows for the 8k but when zooming one has to know when to stop if using 5.7k. I haven’t learnt how to do this exactly so still no video. 3 attempts resulted in 3 sets of blocky images !!