It has been around 12 months since my last reasonable ride, the Monaro Prologue, so it is time to hit the road again. Phil, a fellow Brisbane-ite I had met a couple of years ago on the Tour Aotearoa was feeling the same and suggested the Munda Biddi. Rolling forward a few months, I am sitting on a plane heading to across the country to Perth to meet up with Phil and Stephen for the 1000km ride down the West Coast to the bottom of Australia.
The Munda Biddi trail is mostly gravel and travels inland to the bottom, it looks to be well maintained with campsites and small towns along the path. The whole course is described in an excellent app with maps, water stops, town facilities major sites etc. I wish every ride had something like this!
Most of my gravel riding has been on a Specialised Diverge, it was fine on good condition fire trails or light single trail but it runs out of capabilities (or I do) fairly quickly when things get rougher. I didn’t really want the weight of a hard tail but want bigger tires, titanium also seems good for the type of rides I do. The result, a very shiny new Curve Big Kev. My excellent local bike shop, Pedal Inn, had rushed to get the build finished only a little over a week ago so it’s had almost no road testing, the little i had feels great! What surprised me the most is that the weight is pretty much the same as my Carbon Diverge and only a kg or so heavier than my Cannondale Synapse road bike. I guess titanium really is magic.
One of the guys had bad issues with saddle sores on the TA so wanted to take this ride pretty easy, around 80km-ish per day. Even if this gets a bit longer once we get ride fit it should leave plenty of time for writing and photos. I’m looking forward to trying to get things out in a reasonable time, I still haven’t finished publishing all of the TA!
I was doing quite a few gear changes for this trip so hopefully it will all work. A new Nemo Dagger tent; no more tail wag and rear tire rubbing now with a Tailfin pack; a heavy Jetboil stove for longer gas life rather than my normal titanium cup and minuscule Soto Windmaster; finally, lots of camera gear. My bags are heavy.
