Rolly rolly

I was lucky enough to see my first roll cloud formation this morning while out riding Ross Highway. A pretty rare occurance for anywhere in the world, except over the Gulf of Carpentaria where the famous Morning Glory forms pretty reliably.

Remembering Willo

Last Friday was Willos funeral in the Southern Highlands. Unfortunately Po and I couldn't make it so we thought we'd do something special for him up here. Jumping on the bikes we went for an awesome 3hr night ride on the east side trails. We found a beautiful little elevated spot with views south to Alice, and on all sides to a gathering lightning storm. There, planted in the red earth, we both left him a candle and a message.

See ya Jimi. You were an inspiration.

Santa Teresa

So unfortunately, I've been getting pretty bored with the riding around here lately. The mtb trails were good. Great, even. But a combination of unsuitable terroir, unsustainable trail works and shite loads of rain have played havok with the singletrack, leaving behind either deep rocky ruts or rivers of deep deep sand.

Rideable? Barely. Enjoyable? Nope.

There's work being done of course (it has to be - just 4 shorts weeks away is the 5-Day Red Cenna Enduro!), but as far as I can tell it's been concentrated in one small area and has generally been of the create-new-trails-to-bypass-the-eroded-ones type of trail work. Sustainable practice?..

(Geeze, I didn't mean this to turn in to a rant now!)

Anyway, the short of it is, I've been venturing further afield for mtb riding pleasures. The other weekend Po had to drive out to Santa Teresa to drop off a TB patient, and so I put my hand up to keep her company on the return journey by riding out there in the morning. The ride promised somewhere between 80-100kms of fireroad, of unknown condition, through some scenic country, with the reward of a sports carni at Santa Teresa and a free lift back to Alice:)

I got lucky on the first one - it was only 80km - but lucked out on the second, the corrugations, but I now have a much tougher arse to show(?) for it. The scenery was great with beautiful rolling hills and barely a blade of Buffel grass in sight.

The ride did drag on a bit. Running out of water and food an unknown distance from Santa Teresa probably didn't help, but passing 2 fellas sitting on an esky full of tinnies under the 'Prescribed Area' sign certainly told me I was close. They gave an awesome wave too!

I got to within 5km of ST when a white 4wd pulled up along side and the driver tried, and succeeded, in picking me up. Luckily it was Po:) ST, and the carni, were great.

The famous church in ST.

"Carn you bloody Hawks!"

The drive back to Alice went smoothly at first. We did manage to convert one of the tyres to a low profile version. Unfortunately it was just the one, and probably a little too low profile to impress the chicks outside Bojangles. There was a slight hiccup in changing the tyre as the jack handle was playing hide-n-seek somewhere in the car, but we weren't far from Alice so a rescue by Po's boss was relatively quick and easy.

jarrad writes notveryregularly at the moment

..yep, it's true, and so its recap time! Hooray! I think i'll start with the most recent and work back as far as my memory will take me.

Kings Canyon.

What a rad place to spend a few days over Easter. Po and I piled our selves and our extraordinarily large esky in to the back of Jess and Geordies Suby and we hit the road. It's about a 300km drive SW of Alice, the middle 100 being dirt, and G kept us suitably entertained with his awesome driving (and Jess on the way back - thanks guys!). After arriving mid-arvo on the Saturday we set up camp and went for a drive to check out the deal-i-o. We managed to squeeze in the Rim Walk on dusk, which proved a magic time to do it. No flies, no tourists (except a few buzzing around up top in them whirly birds), perfect temps and magic light. (Damn, 'magic' twice. Ah well, it's a rad word).

The unfortunate flipside to this was that we had now exhausted our legal options for Kings Canyon.

Bring on the 'stealthwalk'!

I won't delve too much in to the meaning of our newly-coined pursuit. Suffice to say, Kings Canyon is a massive massive park with some amazing amazing things to see, or so we hear..



Now, with that done and dusted, it was time to hit up the town! Bring on $40 steaks and toneless renditions of 'Home Among the Gum Trees'! Yeehoo!

ok, NOW its flowing..

It's been raining on and off for a few days now, sometimes quite heavily, and you could tell that everyone was expecting - hoping - that the Todd would flow. I don't know when it last did flow, but I do know that in the 6-odd months we've been here theres been barely more than a drop fall from the sky. According to BOM we had 0.1mm in the entire month of November, and i'm quite sure that 2009 rated as the driest on record for the Alice. And we don't even have water restrictions!!

Well, Po and I got quite excited by the trickle of beer cans and empty cartons that was the Todd flowing 2 days ago.

The river had dramatically widened the next day, certainly qualifying as a flowing river. Yippee! But the rain had eased. The clouds were rising and dispersing. We went to bed thinking the levels will be dropping back down to the festy trickle of the day before...

Damn no! Piffing down rain over night and through the morning. The fact that gutters here are viewed as a pointless extra meant we had a curtain of water sheeting down all around our apartment. The yard was going under. My thongs even started to float away (just like Rachs at New Years..!)

I got an excited call from Po at 11am. "Stop studying! Get your arse to the bridge! And bring the camera!". The river was thumping. Everyone was out, and excited, to see the Todd flow. One guy on a surfboard was floating down the river near Heavitree Gap. Police, ASTC and SES were out in force blocking the crossings and warning would-be lilo-ers about jumping in.

It's another quirk of Alice that 4 of the 5 river crossings (for vehicles) flood when the river really flows. The Todd effectively divides the town in two, so when there's closures, a traffic jam 100's of metres long forms either side of the one bridge across. Amazingly though, not an angry 'beep' was heard. (This, from a town that gets pissed at having to wait 1 minute for a train, or having to change lanes for a cyclist.. mind you, they probably ARE all pissed)

Ok, now back to the study..