71. Cycle - Pymble to Akuna Bay and Back

What a great cycle. Marcus and I started the day at Pymble Station where we cruised down the Mona Vale Rd throught St Ives and into Terry Hills. There were a few steep hills on the highway but it was all worth it as we still managed to keep our average speed about 30km/h. On 2 separate occasions cars went past us sounding their horns (despite the fact we were in the cycle lane) however, the first culprits were Kelly and Pete and then shortly after it was Tony trying to force us off the road. They were meeting us at Terry Hills and we pulled into the car park to find some technical difficulties going on. It seems that since our last ride, Kelly had managed to bend her seat in such a way that it looked like it would offer the most uncomfortable ride ever. Luckily with some spanners and brute force Tony and Kelly managed to put it back to some semblance of normality and then we were off.

We started the ride with Tony giving us a run down of the various gradients which went along the lines of "it's all down hill until we get to Akuna Bay so there won't be any need to pedal for a good 5km. This sounded good and after about 500m we stopped at this sign for a pre-cycle snap. We were happy but Tony was about to be proven a liar.

About 2 minutes after we left the "Wildlife 7km" sign we hit our first hill. It was short but seemed deceptively steep. There was a man and woman team that overtook us at the sign and I tried to catch them but they were motoring and I was... well it felt like I was going backward. Gravity is not your friend when you weight 103kg!!! Marcus (as you can see here) was already looking worse for wear by the top of the first hill. However, there was plenty more badness to come.

The rest of the ride to the Bay was down hill and it was awesome and amazingly fast. At points we were cruising at about 60km/h and I was just waiting for the head on car collision which thankfully never happened. In fact that road was the most quiet road I've been on so far. There was almost no traffic throughout the whole day.

Pete cruised into the bay with a big smile on his face and a short distance behind him was Kelly also looking pleased with the down hill action. Tony of course, had put the nose of his 30 year old Kamikazi Japanese bike in a Stukka dive and had beaten everyone to the bottom. Pete later pointed out that Tony's inner tube was sticking out the side of the tire and at last Tony agreed to buy some new tires.

We stopped in at the local cafe and it was Powerade all round. I tried the blue stuff for the first time ever and as Kelly correctly said "It's too sweet". However, I wasn't bothered as the next stage of the ride was ridiculously foolish and I'm glad I had all that sugar on board. It would have been an impossibility to complete the next section if I'd not glupped so much isotonic blueness.

You see, this photo was taken about 2/3 of the way up the Coal and Candle road and Pete says to me and Marcus (who at that point were feeling quite good on the bikes) "Why don't you to go back to the bottom and then try and catch us up. It took about 10 seconds to take the bait and both of us said "OK" almost at the same time. We turned the bikes and bolted down to the marina (stopping briefly to collect the pieces of Marcus' rear light that flew off and shattered all over the road at 50km/h). What we didn't realise was that we had actually climbed quite far and by going to the bottom and climbing back up we had probably given Tony, Pete and Kelly about 30 minutes lead.

However, we dug deep but probably added a good 10K (uphill!!!) onto out total journey. Marcus had to pull over for a quick pee which was a shame because if we had stayed together we would have definitely finished before the rest. Unfortunately, try as hard as I could, I was only able to catch and overtake Pete. Kelly just pipped me to the Terry Hills carpark and Tony was already there resting up in his car. As you can see someone was missing from the photo and it's not because he was taking it. Let's just say he ran out of steam about 3km before the carpark... didn't you mate???

Incidently, we didn't think the guys would believe that we went all the way to the bottom so click here to see the proof.

We were so happy to be at the car park but a sudden, daunting revelation came over us - everyone had a car but us! The plan was to go to the Pymble Hotel for post-cycle beers but that was 12km away. After that massive uphill beasting, Marcus and I were not to happy when we realised that we were going to have to put an extra few km on the speedo. However, the beer was enough of a temptation to motivate us that last few miles and actually it wasn't too bad but still it pushed our ride total distance to almost 51km. I later worked out that the others did 14km (since they met us at Terry Hills and we did that stupid dare AND they didn't do either of the Pymble section) so when those beers were going down we were pleased that we had definitely earned them. A good day was had by all though and here's hoping a few more of you will join us for the next one.

Total Time: 2:26:16
Distance: 50.8km
Average speed: 20.8km/h
Max Speed: 62.7km/h