Autumn has arrived and the blackberries are not so good this year.
These, close to Back Creek, were OK as they have access to water. Mostly though the fruits are small and shrivelled as there wasn’t much rain over summer.
So, what’s been going on in March?
I set myself a goal of riding 250 kilometres and made it. Mostly short rides and many of them were on the Brompton. I have been using these rides to get ‘ride fit’ so I can take part in “The Flight of the Folders” in Hobart on April 28th. For several years now I have been using e-bikes and Brompton is not electrified and so the need to wake up some muscles.
To get Brompton itself ‘ride fit’ there have been a number of things to do.
Brompton Maintenance
First : fix the clicking in the Schlumpf mountain drive. This is the equivalent of a hub gear in the crank. One ratio is one to one with the chain ring while the other (the mountain drive) gives 2.5 turns of the cranks for one circuit of the chain ring. This produces a couple of stupidly low gears and 4 useable ones.
Once I started riding the bike again there it was – a clicking noise; probably pawls falling into place with no oil to assist. OK. When did I oil it last? Answer; No idea.
Wondering what to use I found a tube of something I bought a while ago from the Schlumpf spares place on the mainland. It turned out to be a tube holding a thickish grease and I pumped a little into the drive. The clicking settled a bit. OK let’s squirt a bit more in – that sounded better. Hmm – a bit more. Problem fixed? Hopefully.
Second : Tyres. The rear tyre was getting a bit slick after 8 years of irregular riding. The front tyre’s tread was OK but the side walls looked a bit suss. So, new tyres all round. Brompton Melbourne had the right tyres on their website. They are rather skinny Shwalbe Marathons, skinny to fit the Brompton fold. Luckily despatch took place during the early days of the middle east war which had not yet affected delivery prices.
Changing the tyres was an interesting exercise. I had to watch YouTube videos for wheel removal and I immediately realised I had never taken out the front wheel. Faced with two knurled nuts with no flats it was a question of ‘How to get it out?’ The answer was to use a 4mm allen key which fitted in the socket (which I initially couldn’t see) which is actually part of the through axle – one of the thinnest axles I have ever seen.
Rear wheel removal was OK – I did remember how that was done once reminded by the Brompton video.
The new tyres were extremely difficult for arthritic hands to get onto the wheels. I was reminding of the struggle I had to change the tyres on the first trike I bought; the Anura with 16” wheels and very tight fitting Greenspeed special tyres. To get them on I ended up buying a “tyre jack”. That memory got me searching for the plastic device and, having found it buried on a shelf, the final work to get the tyres on proved almost easy.
Then I got to practise tyre changing and tyre ‘jacking’ as I had the rear tyre on the wrong way round – it’s a rotational tyre and it’s best to get it right.
Great. with new tyres now on and all gears working after the rear wheel removal, it was annoying to find the lights were not working. Another delve into YouTube gave me the answer to that and following the advice freely given, the little clip holding wires onto the dynamo was now correctly wired and lights worked.
Job Done !!
Can Collecting
I’ve cut back a bit on this activity. Can collecting and a good ride do not go hand in hand. So now I allocate one ride a week for the collection task and then sometimes pick up a few extras on other rides. Can’t help myself!
One thing that is worrying me and that is the number of alcoholic drink cans found by the roadside. Another worry is that the numbers of roadside cans and plastic bottles doesn’t seem to be reducing. Emily tells me in her part of the mainland people are scouring the place for items to recycle. Here apparently we in Northern Tasmania have money to throw away.
A sample of grog cans :
Hoping they are drunk by passengers and not drivers, I believe it’s actually illegal to have open grog containers anywhere in the vehicle in Tasmania. I wonder if the new cameras that detect non-wearing of seat belts and usage of mobile phones are also used to detect cans in hands.
This is reminding me of when I lived in New South Wales where, in the country, distances between places were rated in numbers of cans. EG. Wantabadgery to Wagga – a 2 can drive (Or maybe 3?). I checked the rules and it appears that in NSW the passengers can drink but the driver can’t.
Whatever, we had another $8 off our food bill last time we went into Kings Meadows for the weekly shopping. All paid for by people discarding cans and bottles they had paid the 10c extra on.
The Tricycle
As reported last month, I reduced the price to $300 and shortly had Peter from Cygnet contacting me. He had the cash, wanted the tricycle and drove up almost immediately to complete the deal. It will be used to take his dog shopping.
That’s a relief – more room in the shed and I don’t have to keep taking it out to keep the battery healthy.
Cycling around the Norfolk Plains
The days continue to look good. The daylight hours are shortening as we move up to the ending of summer time and the mornings can be cool and misty – proper Autumn conditions.
I am preparing for colder winter mornings by getting hold of a pair of heated gloves! What I am wishing they supply is an all-round heat that is not supplied by mittens plus heat pad. This summer my hands have stayed aching from arthritis when in previous summers the aches went away. This bodes evil for winter – hence the gloves. Will it work? I will find out.
Efudix and my Head !
While on the subject of my health and it’s impact on cycling I will complete my Efudix story.
The instructions were to put a thin layer of Efudix over the affected areas (whole of scalp!) twice a day for three weeks. In the past it has been once a day for six weeks so this regime is shorter.
At the end of the second week it was becoming difficult to wear the cycling helmet for more than an hour and this continued into week three. I guess this is another reason why most rides in March were short. Anyway, all done now and most of my scalp has cleared up. A few recalcitrant scabby bits remain but they didn’t worry the Doc. Job done.
Riding Shorts
The bridge over the Macquarie River at Woolmers has an outrigger walking/cycling path. One day it was obvious one or more cows had used it to cross the river.
It was time to find a stick and clear the poo. Quite different to playing ‘Pooh Sticks’.
A few days earlier I had noticed some cows in one of the paddocks looking speckled and I had reported it to Mrs C. I thought they may be a cross between Murray Gray and Aberdeen Angus. Either intentional or from a naughty bull.
Then, on another ride, Colin and I came across these. I think they are the same as the ones in Bishopsbourne Road. They don’t really look like the Canadian Speckle Park breed as pictured in Wikipedia but maybe they are. If so, the mix is Aberdeen Angus and Shorthorn rather than Angus and Murray Grey. I will try to bail the farmer up and find out next time I see the herd crossing the road.
Lastly – an aspiring cycling story
Mrs C and I went off to find Tunnel. This is a place of a few houses by the disused railway that is planned to be incorporated into the Scottsdale to Lilydale Rail Trail. Already Scottsdale Rotary and the Council have developed and opened a section from Billycock Hill into Scottsdale; a section I have ridden several times. The extension into Launceston has been long in planning while opposition to it was loud and long. The main opposition was from a group who want the track kept for a Heritage Railway. After several court cases and State government intervention followed by yet more court cases it was decided to do a Solomon, this time cutting the track in half. Scottsdale to Lilydale will be rail trail and Lilydale to Launceston will be Heritage Railway.
That decided, it is now necessary to secure funding to finish the project – including incorporating the Tunnel into the ride. So we are here to look at progress.
OK – nothing doing so far.
The cutting is dark and damp, the sides covered in thick blackberry (all fruit small or undeveloped).
Eventually we got to the tunnel itself only to find I had left the torches at home! At this point the water was flowing over the sleepers into the tunnel.
We had a bit of a peer in then returned to the car. This looks like an expensive inclusion to the rail trail but I hope it features. It’s an added bonus to be able to cycle the cuttings into and away from a tunnel plus cycling through the tunnel itself.
All power to the Scottsdale team raising the money. I wonder if it could be CrowdSourced/KickStarted?
OK. That’s it for March.
’til next time ………………………..
Tony's Tasmanian Cycling Blog 