DAY 5 - BATHURST NSW

BATHURST NSW

DAY 5

LITHGOW - BATHURST

83.11 Km

Total Time – 08.40 – 16.10 (7h 30m)

Time on Bike – 4h 34m 57s

Max. speed – 77.4 km/h

Av. Speed 18.1 km/h


Something happened today.

As unfathomable as it may have been, I so nearly got on a train and came back to Sydney.

I know in my heart that it wasn’t because I had the shits and was just about to give up so soon.

Not at all.

It’s just that I was confronted with a problem that seemed to literally have no solution and given that it was not able to be solved, there was no other way of continuing.

Had things come to this, it would not have been game over – just a major setback and well…..

With the bike back in working order, the trailer was also due some attention as it is just as important for this to be working as one with the bike.

Each step of the process offered an improvement but delivered nothing.

I could see there was something wrong – back to front - with this stupid piece of aluminium on wheels and this was the fundamental problem.

Bad design or maybe the wrong piece of equipment altogether – an impasse was at hand.

Stuck in Lithgow and going nowhere – except with a one-way ticket to Sydney in my mouth, fuddling this way and that on the platform with my troublesome equipment.

The longer I looked at it, the more I could see what was wrong – IT was wrong, but what to do about it?

Sure enough, returning to my buddies at Insane Cycles down the way and telling them what I thought was wrong.

Could they fix it? It wasn’t conventional, but still worth a shot.

10 minutes later, hey presto – it might just have worked. Pretty Zen, but Bathurst was still on. I had to give it a go.

Back up to the train station pleading my case and a full refund was granted. I didn’t need to go back to Sydney after all.

And the bike and trailer just sung through to Bathurst.