Originally sent Jan 5, 2018
The Munda Biddi Trail is finished!
The end! Southern Terminus. I only remember this photo as being terribly surreal. What? It's over? No! Don't let it be over. It can't be over.
Again, the photo links (2 albums this time!) for those that just want to peek through random photos:
A bunch happened in between since the last update.
After
the heat (and then rain) we headed further south on the trail and
decided to pop in to Margaret River (WA's Napa) via Ferguson Valley
which the trail passes straight through.
I'll say, like Napa, a lot of the locations are clearly built at great expense, only to produce medicore wine.
That
said, I made it into a shop and replaced one of the rotors on my brakes
that had gotten bent and met some people that were super excited about
bikepacking becoming a thing in Western Australia.
The beaches weren't bad, glad I brought the hammock at this point
It was a really nice few days off and definitely a good reward for making it halfway through the trail.
From
here on we would entire a different wine growing region almost every
other day. Ferguson Valley. Nannup, Donneybrook. Manjimup. Pemberton.
Northcliffe. Walpole. Denmark. Albany.
And frankly, they all
produce wonderful wines. We'd pop in to a bottle shop whenever we got
the chance and would buy the "most" local bottle of wine we could. Life
was hard.
But back to making it through those section of trail.
The
hut outside of Manjimup is probably one of the two most memorable huts I
can recall on the trip. Not because the hut itself was spectacular, but
because it's one of the few significant vistas we had.
There's a better shot of the hut itself in the gallery, but man, this was a really epic toilet location. You all know my sense of humor. This had to be here. I'm holding back the vulgarity.
We
rode through some pretty severe heat for a few days and eventually were
rewarded with cooling temperatures as the climate began being dominated
more by the Southern Ocean over the Indian. It's nice being on the
southern coast.
We had our next set of days off in Pemberton, which is famous for a tall tree and a little tram. Ahh, WA tourist attractions.
Kookaburra silhouette in Pemberton
The time there got cut short through when we started looking at the weather and eventually the news.
So,
rather than hang out in a caravan park in my little tent we opted to
load up on food and find shelter in one of the trails many huts.
It was a rad experience.
This
is probably one of my favorite videos of the trip. It's in the album,
but I can't inline it into the email so here's a direct link
This
was a tamer point in time. Overnight the winds were howling, rain was
going sideways. And man was I glad for that tin roof overhead.
One
of the cool things about the trail and this region has been learning
about the Noongar (local Aboriginals) language for - it's used for
naming a lot of the huts, towns and, the trail itself. Munda Biddi
translates to "Bush trail/path"
Yirra Kartta, the hut we
weathered the storm in, translates to "High Mountains" which it was. The
hut itself was situated next to an aboriginal site - a granite
outcropping that has quite a view the hills.
If
you find yourself curious, there's a really fantastic write up on the
Noongar tribes and translations of a lot of the names here: http://www.followmyride.
After the storm....
The trip to this point had been punctuated by virtually no major incidents.
There were a couple of minor things:
1.
We saw a tiger snake. Identity we later gained confidence in after
talking to a local vet. One of the most venomous snakes in the world,
but had no interest in us. Felt us coming, slithered off the path as we
stared on at the snake know for "being aggressive" literally not care at
all.
2. I had one incident where the cycling gods had decided
the trip had just been way too easy so far, so on a very mundane and
flat stretch of dirt road they grabbed my wheels and lifted them
sideways. Minor road rash ensued, but didn't really prevent anything.
So, the storm kicked up quite a lot of debris. A lot of debris.
And
unfortunately some of that debris got in my wheel about 45 minutes into
the ride after we left that hut and decided to eat my rear derailleur.
What do you mean the deraileur shouldn't be bent into your spokes?
With
a little ingenuity and a lot of muscle bending it back (and the
chain...) and re-truing the wheel, I finally succeeded in making the
thing rideable again.
We were a little way from a highway, and decided to cut down to the nearest town, Walpole, about 40k away.
For
a moment, I was sad that we'd be missing the next hut but as it turns
out if we'd continued the trail is actually closed that direction as is
the hut due to a prescribed burn.
We'd just missed being detoured for another burn a few days before, and man - those areas look crazy!
https://photos.app.goo.gl/xUliqnTEet2w5dUo2
Turns out there's a limit to how many photos you can inline, so I'm making this one text. It's a burn area! It's cool!
Anyway,
I got into Walpole and after far too many hours of shenanigans (ask
over a beer sometime) organized getting a new deraileur (which turned
out to be the wrong pull ratio) delivered by courier overnight from
150km away. For $10. Not bad. It wasn't perfect, but it was good enough
to finish the trail on.
Now, there are some problems finishing a trail on Dec. 22.
1) Christmas is looming
2) Western Australia is really bad at shipping things.
3) Nobody lives here anyway, so they don't worry about things getting shipped.
My
bike is built in SF and deraileur hangars are often custom to the
frames. This one is no exception. The good news? There's a distributor
of this bike based in Melbourne and the hangar is available.
So, order placed Dec 22. No problem it'll get here soon, right?
Well, bike shop expected it would show up before the new year and they could do the work on the 3rd of 4th.
It's the 5th as I write this. The part hasn't shown up yet.
But,
it could have been worse. Looking down the barrel of 2 weeks of waiting
to get a part, I did the most reasonable thing I could and joined Jess
in Bali for Christmas and NYE.
Because it would have cost
about the same amount as sitting in Albany for 2 weeks. And there's
nothing better than celebrating Christmas in a country that doesn't
celebrate christmas.
We did a lot of touring
around there, and that's the whole second album, but there's one shot I
got out of it that I'm particularly proud of:
Mount Agung releasing a small plume of ash in the shadows below a firework going off on NYE. Agung has been in the news itself recently here.
And
now, I am back in Albany, hopefully with a rideable bike tomorrow, if
not, trying to figure out what it'll take and how long (and may wind up
with a middle ground, having to have the shop here ship the part ahead
of me and crossing the nullarbor with a bent hangar. But hey, at least
I'll have a proper deraileur again.
How was your Christmas and New Years? Time off? New years resolutions? Always curious to keep in touch with everyone.
Best,
Jas.
P.S. I didn't even get to tell the story of the bird that loved to attack me! Bastard.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/
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