12.81km / 53:29 / 80m / 27.0°C
Intention was to ride to Traralgon and catch the train, strong winds gusting brought us to a dead stop on flat roads. Abandoned and returned to Sale to wait for the one train at 2.09
The wind just didn’t let up all morning, from when we’d had breakfast at the bakery it was building and we commented that it’d make for a slog of a ride, but we had all day with trains every hour from Traralgon, or at worst we could get to Rosedale and catch the 2pm train that comes through from Sale. Buffeted us around to the outskirts of Sale and then the first inkling that it was not to be … we were googled. Or google-mapped to be precise. Google’s “cycling directions” had us turn off the Princes Highway onto “The Ridge”, then use a short connecting road at the end of it to get to Arnup Road and continue on south. Of course once we made it to the end of The Ridge we found that our “connecting road” was a gate into a paddock, and a few sets of bootprints through the grass along what I guess must be a right-of-way on the maps. Walked in half-way along it until we got to a land-owner’s electric fence and decided not to lift the tape and try and get through the second half, so rode back to the freeway with a tailwind, then south-west again down Settlement road. By now the wind had increased and the gusts were almost knocking us both over, each one had us stopping and standing leaning into it until it let up. Discretion won, we turned tail and returned to Sale for a coffee and a couple of hours sitting around in the cafe/library before taking the short ride up to the station for the very full train back to Melbourne
Belly laugh of the day for the V/Line station staff who told the cyclist ahead of us that “they don’t like bikes on the trains, they’re dangerous. If you have a derailment they can injure people” – mate, if your trains are routinely derailing then a strapped down bike is possibly not the most important thing to be focusing on. Also, “You might not get the bike on, there are two bus-loads of passengers joining from Bairnesdale and people take priority”. So, um, none of them have bikes since you won’t carry bikes on a bus, and there are six bike spaces on your train, and you won’t let passengers travel in the bike spaces, so what are you on about?
Broken clouds, 29°C, Feels like 27°C, Humidity 13%, Wind 7m/s from NW - by Klimat.app
My 1376th day in a row riding a bike; the last 6 days of 2019, my and all of 2021, 2022 and 2023 so far…
Garmin / Strava / ridewithgps
