April 21st, 2011
Grey River to Lavers Hill
Distance: 70km
Total distance: 1555km
Last night was a bit spooky when I heard the sound of some animal digging the ground about 1 metre from my tent. It was probably just an echidna, but I was paranoid and listening out for human intruders and authorities since I wasn’t technically allowed to camp there. The night was very cold too. While packing up, my thermometer showed 8.7 degree celcius!
For a while in the morning, the sky was blue, no clouds at all, and I saw a number of cyclists doing their (presumably) morning routine rides. The 20km ride into Apollo Bay was very nice, I was greeted by fantastic view of the ocean and there was a few good climbs but all within the elevations of 0-100m. After a short break at Apollo Bay, I continued riding and met with a long hard climb. I had to overcome two hills, the second one being Lavers Hill.
The ride wasn’t so bad as I enjoyed riding under the tall and shady trees all along that stretch. The real killer was the second climb to Lavers Hill, starts at about 16km to Lavers Hill. The steepness was comparable to Macquarie Pass in NSW. About 3km to Lavers Hill, a disaster struck! As I was shifting to my lowest gear, my chain went over my cassette and got stuck between the cassette and spokes. This had never happened before, I blamed it on the servicing not done properly when I was in Melbourne. I had to forcefully yank out the chain from the gap between the spoke and the cassette as it was firmly stucked. Hoped I didn’t bent the spoke or the chain in the process. All seems to be well and clear after that but it happened again when I tried to shift to my lowest gear. This happened 3 times altogether and in the end, I just gave up on using my two lightest gears. I found out that my index shifting has gone out of place, but no time to fix it at the moment.
Pushed on and finally reached Lavers Hill, had a meat pie in the only shop there and before I even finished eating, the rain and fog came in. I am trapped in Lavers Hill. With this weather condition, there was no way I could ride another 30-40km to Princetown where the next caravan park is. I didn’t want to set up my tent in the rain so I called into the motel there but it was too expensive. And then I tried the only caravan park there but they ran out of cabins too. So I ended up setting my tent in the rain. Soaking wet to the bones.
After a nice warm shower, I went into my tent to dry my stuff one by one with a cloth and one gentleman came and said to me that someone else have booked the campsite where I pitched my tent. Earlier, the park operator told me to set up my tent wherever I like but seems like he meant only the unpowered sites. So I was forced to relocate my tent in the rain but that gentleman kindly offered some help. Well, it’s a good thing I got this tent, as relocation was easy and pitching my tent in the rain will not make the inside of my tent wet. I was told that most of the other caravan parks were fully booked due to the long Easter weekend. Looks like I may not have places to stay in the next few nights.
While unpacking my panniers content, I found out that my hot flask leaked and my sleeping bag along with some clothings are wet. Great, exactly what I needed. Anyway, it’s already dark now but its still raining heavily. Hope it will stop tomorrow morning or else I may have to endure riding in the rain on a slippery road downhill with my cranky gears and an unusable right brake (yeah, the sticky brake problem still happening). This has been my unluckiest day!