March 20th, 2011
Goulburn to Canberra
Distance: 113km
Total distance: 410km
Today will be my longest ride so far for this tour so I started my journey early at 7am. The morning sees me packing my tent in the rain. Took me a whole 2 hours to get ready, from waking up to my first pedal. For my first 30km ride, there was no township at all, only farmlands. At some point, I thought I smelled meat buns, but later realised it comes from roadkills, there were dozens of them! Funny how hunger can play tricks on your senses. Most of the roadkills had been there for quite a while, judging from the remains of only bones and fur.
After about 40km, I reached Tarago, one of the major township around that area, judging from the presence of a police station, fire station, railway station, playground, and a hotel. Not much of activities going on, in fact, it almost seems like an abandoned town. I just stopped for a toilet break. The road so far has been quite flat, but I can see on my right a gigantic mountain range, placed between the Hume Highway and the road I was riding on. At some point, I am going to get pass that when I rejoin the Hume Highway. This probably translates to dramatic hill climb again later in the afternoon. “Okay nevermind, worry that later” I thought to myself.
So I rode for another 30km before reaching Bungendore, while stopping midway to have a quick pre-packed lunch. There I had two options of getting into Canberra, first is via Bungendore Rd that rejoins the Hume Highway, and second is via Kings Highway, passes through Queanbeyan. I read that Kings Highway can get quite busy and lacked a shoulder lane so I chose the former one. I don’t know how is the gradient like on Kings Highway but the one on Bungendore Rd was a killer! Although there were quite short, the uphills and downhills were pretty extreme. Remember the giant mountain range I was talking about? I finally came face to face with it. There was a gap in the mountain range, called Smiths Gap, but even the lowest point of the gap was very high for a road to run on it. The distance for the hill climb was only 1.5km, but it took me more than 30 mins and several rest stops to overcome it. I had a decent shoulder to ride on, several motorists honked at me and gave me a wave or a thumbs-up. Believe it or not but small encouragements like that actually do help boost my spirit.
When I was approaching the Hume Hwy, there was a crazy steep downhill, that was the first time I had a real panic when riding downhill. My left brake wasn’t working as well as it should be, or maybe my downhill acceleration was too much for the brake to handle, as I wasn’t decelerating when I fully pressed the brake. I couldn’t use my right brake as I would just skid, due to a sticky brake situation that I have yet to fix. The road was wet too. Thankfully, the road came to a flat and my brake started to get a grip by then.
All is well when I reached the highway, wide shoulders, mild gradients, smooth road surface. Canberra is quite low in terms of elevation from where I was riding on the Hume Hwy, as it was mostly downhill ride towards Canberra. As soon as I reached Canberra metro, I went straight to Braddon, where my friend, An Yi lives and my home for the next two nights. Today is a Sunday, so being a small city Canberra is, the streets were really quiet, so is the town centre. We took a walk that evening to Supabarn to get dinner and some grocery. Tonight I get to sleep on a futon! Being indoors and away from the weather outside, truly a luxury! XD
