: Backyard Bliss

By: g | No Comments » |

The working week grinds away until patience wears to blister thin. By the time Friday rolls around once more, it seems like the weekend sanity break just can’t come soon enough. Added to workday woes, we’ve just moved house, have boxes to unpack and a zillion things to do that come with the territory of becoming mortgage poor, but the bikes “must” be ridden…and tonight’s the night!

Our enthusiastic mtb mentor and overall friendly dude, the Fat Hippie, finds our new digs in the dark and waits patiently as work suits are exchanged for baggies, pace vests and the rest of the winter riding wardrobe. The hydration pack is stocked with h2o, munchies, digital camera, first aid kit, spares, pump, mobile phone and a frosty boy. Light brains flick through the twin halogen set up, to ensure that up to 40 watts of light are available, spd’s click in and the drive train is engaged!

Rolling out of our new digs and virtually straight into the bush is just mind boggling, especially after years of car, train and road riding shuttles to get to the start of rides. We chug straight up to a four-wheel drive track that descends nearly all the way to hell and before tyres or muscles have even had a chance to warm up we immediately get into race face mode. Nobody has done this track at night and the down hill quickly sees us out of control, discovering drop offs at speed and gnarly rock shelves that we don’t want to find. Somehow though, we all make it to the gully below.

In this strange setting, our night vista soon comprises a towering forest of gums, flicking past in the light as we play on the trail. Frost on the grass twinkles with clusters of diamonds and the moisture glazed bark of the angophoras scream out a palette of mixed greens as our beams flick along the track. Every now and then the forest canopy opens up and we get to glimpse the rolling cloud breaking over an almost full moon.

We whoop in and out of deep ruts and frequently fly into, or around, muddy bogs which are easily deep enough to park six mtb friendly Soobies. Poo stripes become the order of the night as rooster tails of mud splash and adorn posteriors. Our bikes slip and slide, roost and glide and take all our cares away. Work becomes but a forgotten evil, which is only entertained to support these moments of exuberant escape.

Exploring further, we come across a fern fringed silted up pool, bounded by a small cliff line. Everything is wet here; frogs get their symphony going and a few spots of rain add to the dankness of the glade. Nobody wants to sit down with the fear of freaking fat leaches. We shoot some pictures of the water hole and leave the frogs to their chorus.

On the way out we come across a swampy creek crossing and head downstream to avoid the deepest part of the flow. To our surprise, there is a nice bit of single track sweeping through the detour, so we play on one section and do around nine runs through the creek side so we can experiment with slow synch flash exposures on our digitals. The Fat Hippie makes our night by running the crossing, sight unseen in the dark, ending up axle deep in thick, black smelly mud � looking remarkably like ET running around in the trees with his blue luminescent wire running through his helmet vents.

We cruised the opposite creek bank for a while, marvelling at the huge timber shining away under our combined 120 watts of halogen light beams. Smiles turned to pain as a cracker of a climb then shook us up to the point where we were all pushing bikes against gravity as the trail developed into a worn out old four wheel drive track, heading decidedly away from Hades this time. The champagne cork of our discovery bottle popped us out onto the tarmac two hours after we had dropped in.

So, who�d of thought the slog of moving house could have an upside eh? The moral of the story is that you can have your cake and eat it too, it seems! There�s been a lot of talk in mtb circles lately about people getting bored with riding because all they end up doing is one familiar track. Our local trog through a little known trail just goes to prove that you can get real lucky by sniffing out the unfamiliar and keeping an eye out for new rides. You never know, you might just find a gem in your very own back yard.

Go explore!

Hodgie

 

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