Am I doing this for fun? My dramas on the Otway Odyssey.

If I believed in things like fate, I would definitely believe my racing career was jinxed. So far, I have done recce rides of 6 races and not actually made it to 5 of them. I looked almost certain not to make this one either. Firstly, from being heartbroken, secondly from a shopping injury. Yes, a shopping injury. I was holding the shopping trolley with one foot hooked over its bottom rails whilst I used both hands to lob a heavy bag into it. The bag hit the top of the back of the trolley, sending it for a little kick, which wrenched my hamstring. That’s it, I’m online shopping and getting home delivery the week before races in the future. I moped on the couch for a day, limped around work for a day, managed to score a physio appointment at short notice (more than a minor miracle) and left with my hamstring taped up like a football player.

Simey attempted to be reassuring by telling me the hardest part of any race is getting to the start line and I am far from alone in injuring myself at the last minute after weeks or months of preparation. He also said athletes compete with far worse injuries than this and I should toughen up and go. I may be extrapolating a little, but basically, he was being a combination of an unfamiliar comforting Simey, and familiar blunt Simey.  I spoke with a few people about it and started a running total of advice – 5 for fuck it, go race, and 2 for be sensible, go sit on a beach. The physio suggested I could ride, just to pull out if I started getting sharp pains. What was the worst that could happen? Well, I could be on the couch with a mangulated leg for months …

The voice of enthusiasm won out and I headed down for the important bit at least – free champagne. I met with some of the other women riding and walked through the transition areas. I guessed I was racing. The next morning, I am there for coffee and watch the 50k race start. The 100k start was a bit too early. There are a lot of racers, and the end of the pack are really very leisurely. I decide I am starting near the front. I sort my stuff out and I’m so nervous I feel sick. Just as I’m about to head up to the start line, I run for the side of the oval and throw up. Nervous is bad enough, so nervous I am throwing up is really the edge of tolerability! I wish the other girls a fun race and say I am getting up there because I can’t deal with waiting anymore.

We roll over the start line and up the hill. I could do with about a litre of Mylanta. I’m incredibly tense and am sure there is more stomach acid in my oesophagus than in my stomach.  But I’m making good time up the hill, then we are all funnelling into the single track. The crowd has thinned a little on the hill, but I’m suitably mediocre to be in the middle of all the other mediocre people. There’s a lot of us getting onto Red Carpet, and I’m nervously looking at all these people and not concentrating enough on riding when I clip a tree and go flying over the handlebars into the next tree. I rub my shoulder whilst people stop to see if I’m ok. Apparently it was speccy, and I went for a good fly through the air. The guy behind me suggests I walk the bike back to the marshal and get a lift out, but I am stubborn, and get back on the bike. I’m stuck behind someone very slow on the rest of Red Carpet, but at least that gave me time to calm down.

Despite that, I was feeling miserable riding back up to the footy oval. My shoulder hurt, I’d crashed where I really shouldn’t have and I’d ruined my chances of placing. I was almost ready to give up when Charles caught up with me. Charles was also the walking wounded, riding with sore knees, sore back, sore bum, but he wasn’t falling to pieces. His company kept me on the bike and we rode through the transition and onto the Yaugher trails. I get back into the swing of things and start riding fast again. The trail has slight turns in it, but you could basically ride a straight line down the middle. I remember the instructor who told me "we are on mountain bikes, we don’t need to avid a bit of leaf litter, take the straight line because it’s fastest". So I take the straight line. There’s something in the leaf littler that catches my wheel though, and I’m flying again. Someone suggested they should follow me with a go pro. I land on the already sore left shoulder and my bike’s handle bars are twisted. I sit on the side of the track and have a cry whilst Charles straightens my bike. I do really owe a lot of thanks to Charles for getting me through this race. Stubborn and stupid are my middle names though, so I get back on the bike and off we go again.

Finally, I start actually riding well. The tracks flow, I pass other riders (even going uphill!) and out onto the bit where they have fortunately cut out most of the horrible gravel road from my recce ride. Passing people hasn’t turned out to be such a stress. Lots of people just pull over because they aren’t racing, others ride to the side for you. I get less stressed about people passing me, although I do find myself saying "Go, go, go!" to encourage them to get past quickly so I can go back to concentrating on my own ride.

The race photographer is in a boring section of trail and takes a few photos that look like I’m out for a Sunday stroll. Jess Douglas rides pass me near then end of her 100k. She can’t remember my name but does remember vaguely where I came from and calls out “Hey Horsham girl, how’s it going?” I can’t say I’ve ever been called a Horsham girl before! I say I’ve been in struggle town, 2 falls and a mechanical, but I’m still on the bike. She says she’s had 2 falls as well, and her ego is struggling. Mine too! Jess has the most incredible thighs I’ve ever seen on a such a small woman and they power her up the hill and out of sight in no time.

That stupid gland is strong again, and I roll past someone at the start of the wild downhill section and catch up with the hoards pushing up the sandy hill. It’s really churned up. My shoulder tells me about pushing the bike and I favour the right arm. It turns out that it’s even possible to overtake whilst pushing the bike. I’m back on again and onto the techy climb. I pass several people already pushing low down and get over the worst of it, but when I see the line of pushers around the next bend, the fuck it wins out. It’s not like I was riding a winning time at all. I get back on near the top, pass the few final pushers (yes, Simey, it is faster to be on the bike even in granny gear) and onto the weaving descent. Someone later commented that this wasn’t even fun single track, and I can see what they meant. There’s too much negotiating of trees and grass trees close to the track, and the slow weaving and winding doesn’t compare to the fun of tracks in which you can more freely move. The course setter for the Odyssey likes his courses to be difficult though, hence keeping in the sandy hill, and the tricky to navigate descent.

Despite the dramas of the journey, my legs feel remarkably fresh as I cross the road into the final run to the footy oval. There’s a woman finishing the 50k ahead of me and we both get up in the pedals and push it through to the finish. It’s nice to be able to finish strong and we grin at each other as we pull in. Somehow I’ve still managed to come 5^th. Then I drop the bike and head for the medic tent to get the shoulder looked at. It has full range of movement, and they aren’t worried about it, but an hour later when I try and drive the van, it’s seized up and I can’t change gears with it. I head back to the physio when I get home and finish as I started – all taped up like a football player.

The unintentional mountain biking holiday.

When I left Natimuk, it was 41 degrees. By the time I’m on the ferry to Tassie, it’s howling winds and rain the whole way. I tried to go out on the deck, but as the wind was about to pick me up and blow me off the boat, I thought better of it. Thus rather than a glorious birthday lounging on the deck of a boat staring at the ocean, mine was lounging in a chair looking out the windows at the ocean.

The ferry was running late, I stopped for shopping in Deloraine, I scoffed down some food and kept on driving towards Derby. I consider stopping for the night, but decided I can drive a little further and thus find myself on the winding road over the range between Launceston and Scotsdale a bit after 11, mists floating across the road, when what looks like a young girl from Picnic at Hanging Rock crawls out of the bushes. Then I see a car overturned off the side of the road and I think her family must be stuck in the vehicle as I pull off the road thinking fuck, fuck, fuck …. She turns out to be the driver of the car and there is no one else in it. She’s trying to call 000 but failing and I take the phone and tell them where we are. I can’t find any injuries on her, but she has hit her head, is hysterical, drunk, possibly drugged and confused about her evening. I can’t tell if that’s intoxication or head injury. I settle her in the van with me and reassure her whilst we wait. With great relief that my birthday has not ended with a major trauma scene, I hand her over to the paramedics and drive on. Extremely cautiously.

I wake in Derby to blue skies and settle in for a coffee at the café whilst I wait for Simey to make it over after his attempts to hook up in Launceston. By the time he arrives just after 9, the blue sky has gone. Still, we head out to the car to shuttle up to Blue Tier and it starts raining. We go back in the café and stare morosely at the radar. It doesn’t seem to have much chance of improving, so we decide to just head out anyway. We drop a car at Weldborough pub and continue up. Simey tells me the trails at Derby are better than those at Forrest. I’m a little dubious. The trails at Forrest are pretty bloody good, and Simey hasn’t exactly done a lot of riding. Plus he was here with his favourite squeeze, so he was probably just having an overall awesome time.

We get out at Blue Tier and it’s not quite as bleak as we expected.  There isn’t snow for a change. I always get snowed on in Tassie. We rug up for the ride and head out on an undulating trail with a few techy features through beautiful alpine meadows. 

It gets wilder, windier and wetter. My glasses need windscreen wipers and demisters. But the trail is awesome. We drop into fairytale like myrtle forests and over gorgeous trickling creeks. We slide sideways on a fair few wet tree roots.

A tree is down over the path and I get one of those delightful short person moments watching someone of 6 foot 5 crawl under a tree. 

Then we hit the main descent, and it just goes on and on and on, gorgeous flowing bermed corners, into rainforest and weaving between giant tree ferns. When we get to the bottom, I think it must be nearly over, but Simey assures me we go up, and then there's another fantastic descent.

It gets muddier. Sloshing through puddles, sliding out and flying off the bike, what mud hadn’t come up at me, I went down to it. I try riding without my glasses. I could actually see better, but then I get an eye full of mud and get them back out again.  It’s the most fun I’ve ever had getting muddy and saturated. I might not have been so enthusiastic about it had I gotten cold. Not a single layer came off in all that riding. 

We pull over at the river at the end and decide we are so wet, we may as well jump in the river with all our clothes on to get the mud off. We throw the bikes in as well. I didn’t throw my phone in, but it seems to have objected to either flying with me off the bike, or getting a bit too muddy as well and has seized up. Simey has also seized up and needs a little nanna nap in the car before he can make it back to Derby for shower, beer and dinner.

I don’t have the delights of a car shuttle the next day, as Simey is off on the ferry, so I start from the trail head at Derby ready to slog up the hill. The climbs are incredibly well crafted though, and I weave up hair pins and the height is gained easily. For a while. Still climbing 5 k later, I know about height gain now. The upper trails are more techy and I’m grunting over rock steps and working really rather hard. I am a bit chuffed to overtake 3 people pushing their bikes though. At about 8k, I get to the top. The down is fast, techy and exciting almost straight away, with sections of armouring, rock steps and steep corners. All that height disappears far too quickly, then I traverse across the hillside to the bit of fireroad called Heartbreak Hill. I’m not going to be heartbroken by it. I completely expect to come off the bike before the top. I’m thrilled at each little section I make it through, getting to a less steep bit and attempting to still my racing heart in the tiny respite before the next. I’m not sure if it’s my head or my heart that gives up on the second last rise. My stubbornness isn’t quite as good at suffering on the bike as it is at suffering on the rock. 

The single track continues around the dam, undulating that seems to err on the side of up. I smash the derailer into a boulder and come off. So has the chain. And the derailler doesn’t look quite right. But by time I’ve faffed with it a bit, it all seems to be working again, so onward forth.

The descent is wild. The berms are massive, and tight, steep corners weave down, one after another after another. I fly (complete with the bike today) over jumps, launch down steep granite slabs and drop offs and I adore my bike. Seriously, I just point her at anything and as long as I can stay on the bike, she gets me down them. I skid to at stop at them bottom and have just exclaimed how mindblowing that descent was to absolutely no one when someone comes down the trail behind me and does exactly the same thing.

Somewhere in here, I realise that my improvised top tube bag has come undone and all my beautifully cut into bite size pieces of fruit bar have gone. Lack of food seems a good reason to bail off the extended loop back to the car. The climbing in it might have influenced me as well, I howl down Howler, and find myself riding through the Derby Tunnel. Caving on a bike is weird. I’m riding haunched low on the bike as I’m afraid I’ll bash my head on the ceiling and focus on riding towards the light at the other end. I’m really not fond of caving …

As I’m eating lunch by the car, I start chatting with a collection of guys besides me. They have a 5 bike shuttle and there are only 3 of them … It’s not hard to sweet talk your way into a ride back up to the top when you are one about only 3 women on the trails. I throw my stuff together for another run in a rush. As I roll out from the drop off, I feel trashed. Riding up the hill again seems a very distant possibility. But as I only have to roll down, life is good. The ongoing themes of massive berms, incredible flowy descent and techy rock gardens continue. I’m super excited every time I get through one, and again rather chuffed to roll past 2 people walking their bikes. I stagger back to camp where I contemplate yet another set of muddy shorts and realise that I don’t own enough bike shorts to ride in Tasmania.

The next day, Abby and I are meeting at Fingal to climb, but she has a few things to do on the road, so I think about getting another quick ride in. When I am offered company on the trails (via some therapeutic Tindering), the deal is set and Will and I do some sneaky shuttles up to the drop off point above town. The trails at Derby are never really giveaway downhills though, so even after shuttling, we have 3k of climbing track to the highest point on the trails. Will is a bit of a biking machine, so it’s good for me that his long travel bike is out of action and he’s riding his cross country bike. I’m still working at my limit to keep up with him. As we fly over rocks and whoop around beautifully cambered corners, it’s impossible to grin enough. Then we are back in the centre of town. Abby is happily slacklining at Aspley so we drive up for another run. After all the gnarly riding I’ve been doing, I’m a bit lax at concentrating on the final easy corner down to the river, loose my front tyre in gravel and peel off the side onto my shoulder. Shoulders have become the bane of my life in the past 8 years. We sit by the river and chat for half an hour and it seems ok to ride back down. To my great relief, I can still ride, although I feel it twinge when I pull myself forward on the bike. We retire to beer drinking. A bad news call to Abby reveals that she hurt her knee slacklining as well. Maybe we were both trying to do too much of a good thing. We decide resting at Derby for a day and trying an easy ride the next is the way forward.

In the way that Natimukians (or ex-Natimukians in this case) appear everywhere, I bumped into Callum and Kit at the trailhead. They hadn’t been able to get a shuttle space up Blue Tier, so I volunteer my rest day services as chauffeur, then settle in at the Weldborough pub to wait for them. The publican even insists I don’t have to pay for my latte. They rock up an hour and a half later with the expected jubilation. Callum had come off the bike a couple of times due to being more focussed on looking for fish in the streams then riding the bike. We stuff ourselves with food and beer and Kit is keen for the next leg back to Derby, so even though the voice of wisdom in Callum says he is climbing tomorrow and he’s already done 3 days riding, the voice of enthusiasm wins out and I drop them at the Atlas trailhead (that was 6k of uphill they missed out on at least) and tootle back to play games with Abby at camp. The back road from Atlas trail head to Derby passes through active logging areas, reminding me that Tasmania is still a battlefield of logging, environmentalists and ecotourism.

Mountain biking has really transformed Derby. We say that climbing saved Natimuk, and it did, but it didn’t do anything compared with the impact of mountain biking on Derby in less than 5 years. With a population of 173 in the 2016 census, it now has 2 pubs, 2 cafes, a pizza bar, a food caravan, 3 bike stores, a plethora of shuttle companies, multiple free camping areas with facilities, a general store and a few oddities like the school house museum and lapidary club. New buildings are all over the place, and whilst I expect that population has gone up, they seem to mostly be holiday accommodation. The town is in a pretty spot by the river and is generally rather nice to hang out in. Tasmania seems rather slow to catch on to meat free eating though, and whilst the food is pretty swish, the vego options are a bit like it was being vego in the 90s. Despite this dietary timewarp, everywhere is incredibly friendly. They claim the mountain biking attracts 30 000 visitors per year, each staying 4-5 days and brings $30 million dollars a year to Derby. $1000 per person seemed a little optimistic at first, but I guess those are my travelling standards. If you pay for accommodation, bike hire, shuttles, food and the inevitably large quantity of beer, I guess it gets to $1000 pretty easily. What climber spends $1000 per visit in Nati? 

My trip appears to have turned into an exclusively mountain biking trip, which is a first. I have to admit Simey was right - the trails at Derby are a step up from Forrest. I hate admitting when Simey is right, so it's fortunate he isn't right very often. Abby and I brave our injuries on a gentle ride around the lake, then commit to the trail up the hill. It’s all fine.

We grab some lunch and launch out on the trails again. It’s amazing what injury denial will do for you. Abby gets complimented on her retro bike. She bought it in 2002. That’s still 20 years more recent than her van.We end up eating rhubarb and custard calzone in the pizza bar playing speed scrabble.

We commit our broken bodies to the ride from Blue Tier back into Derby the next day. The start is in the cloud when we leave my van at the top. I make 3 false starts down the trail for things I’ve forgotten, like my phone that I left resting on a rock. Then we are off, and whilst the logs are still slippery, it is nothing like it was on Sunday. Although I’m kinda glad I had the Sunday experience. It was fun.

We stop for lunch at the Weldborough pub, along with a hoard of others. It must be the busiest pub lunch in rural Tasmania! Almost everybody is shuttling up to the start of Atlas from here. One of the guys on the shuttle tells us there’s heaps of space, we could just ask if we can get a lift, but we are committed to the suffering. We launch up the dirt road, and aside from waving flies out of my face constantly to avoid breathing them in, it’s fine, and I arrive at the trailhead 4 km up the road and lounge around waiting for Abby. It is supposed to be 6 km to the trailhead, but here we are. A logging truck drives by and considerately slows down to a crawl past me. A ute inconsiderately fangs past, sending dust everywhere.

The single track weaves steeply up the hill just out of the trailhead, then meanders back out of the forest onto another road. Hmm … The road becomes outrageously steep and as I spin up it at about 0.001kph, I am about to blow a foofer valve when I top out and find another trailhead. Sorry Callum and Kit, I left you climbing those hills too … Still Trailforks doesn’t even show a road going here, so who knows how to find it. 

Like all the “downhill” trails I’ve done here, Atlas doesn’t let you escape without a bit of climbing, and the trail undulates before a steep descent to join Dambusters. Sweeping berms alternate with gnarly rock gardens, and a few drops that are definitely not blue. Mountain biking needs some more grades. It’s a bit like early climbing grading systems. They don’t work so well. I’m voting for yellow, green, turquoise, blue, navy, grey, black. Double black seems a little like the climbing grades of Hard Very Severe or 5.10 a, b, c and d. Someone is going to ride something even more dire one day, just as someone is going to climb something even harder, so just move onto to the next step instead of pretending this is the end of the line! Try adding purple, rainbow or baby pink! We catch up with the group of guys who were the only others to ride up to Atlas. I ask if they are as trashed as I am. They are, but they are still riding the St Helens trail the next day. We aren’t. There is a couch in Derby with our name on it.

We stagger back to Abby’s van having survived 40km, with 600m up and 1500m down. Whilst driving back up to pick up my van, we admit we are not going to cook tonight and book at the pizza bar. Blue Tier is still in cloud when we get back to my van. At the pizza bar, we catch up with the other 3 girls out on the trail today – we were still well outnumbered by the 3 busloads or so of men on the trail as well, but there are a few other women out here. They too are riding to St Helens the next day. We are not diverted from our couch mission.

Abby’s bike gets still more attention as I watch a guy checking it out from my van. My bike is locked in front of it, and he’s obviously trying to peer around it. Who cares about fancy modern bikes when  there’s an old school Santa Cruz around? Abby’s loving it, and swears it rides beautifully. We play a bunch of speed scrabble and 5 second rule. We are both crap at pop culture. Seriously, 3 Adele songs? Who the hell is Adele? By the end of the trip, we know every card in the deck, but we still don’t know a single Adele song.

The next day, Abby has to catch the evening ferry, and the retro van travels slowly, so we are up early (ish) to get a ride in before she has to leave. We ride up the usual trails, down to where they all converge at the mid point, then veer out east to the only non-black trail I hadn’t yet done here. I didn’t dare try the black trails, there were exciting enough bits on the blues. Derby seems to run hard grades. I chatted with one guy who had just done one of the double blacks about what the harder trails were like. He said he wouldn’t really call them fun. As the blue trails here are definitely the most fun you could ever have on 2 wheels, I didn’t feel like I was missing out too much.

Krushka’s is another awesome trail, equal parts climbing and descent, and I take the time to practice some techy sections whilst Abby caught up. I didn’t really expect to be waiting for Abby. Abby is a machine at everything she does, and she’d done a lot of riding previously. But she hadn’t been on the bike much since moving to Natimuk, which isn’t exactly the mountainbiking capital of Victoria. Plus the knee, plus she kept wanting to look at the views, and then of course, she had to identify some birds.

The trail whoops back down with typical sweeping berms for miles in between some exciting rock gardens. Rock gardens sound so gentle. Just like a few decorative pebbles. These are not decorative pebbles. They are chunky and convoluted piles of granite, with drops, jumps, wheel catching grooves and step ups. At the end of the trail, we whip down our usual way, until I spy a trail not marked on the map and figure I’ll go for an explore. It’s a divinely smooth series massive berms and roller coasters, in perfect condition and just made to hoon down. I hoon. Abby missed me disappearing down it, and we don’t find each other again until the trail head. Some food is scoffed and Abby has to hit the road. I hit the trail again, with another loop to the top and down my newly discovered hoonfest. Whilst dutifully scanning strava that evening, I am excited to discovered I am the third fastest down that trail. Some things are irresistible, you know. Of course I had to go back the next day.

Monday morning however started with a meltdown. Things just do their building up kinda thing and all my amazing coping I had been doing came to an end. Work were being shits. Centrelink were being shits. I’d been dumped by my boyfriend. Well, ok, we’d only been dating 3 weeks or so, but being dumped sucks anyway. There was Douglas stuff, house stuff, stuff stuff … I’d lined up some quality Tindering, but Will’s work meant that the distraction of wild riding and wild sex failed to eventuate. Well, at least there was still the wild riding. I had a comforting chat with my Mum (seriously, how do people cope without their Mum? I’ve just turned 46 and I still turn to her) and decided to head home. The weather was turning that afternoon anyway. I went out for the wild riding and made an attempt to emulate the sort of kilometres and climbing I’d be doing on the Otway Odyssey. Since the break up, I’d decided to abandon the Odyssey, then decided to do it anyway, then changed my mind back again more times than I care to count. So I was at least making an effort at training for the Odyssey whilst I vacillated. I rode the single track to the top, then the mixed trail down the far side, back up the dirt road, down to the mid point, up again then all the way down to the trailhead. 29k. 800m of climbing. Not a bad emulation. And I scored Queen of the Mountain on the hoonfest.

It’s starting to rain as I get back to the van. I throw the bike in still grotty, in fact, everything has really just been thrown in since my impromptu decision to go home tonight.

It’s always reassuring about your decision to leave to have the weather crap out at the right time. I’ve booked a cabin on the ferry for the first time in my life, and the first thing I do on board is jump in the shower. A shower and a bed. It’s unheard of luxury. Unfortunately, one of the other women in the cabin snored, and one of my ear plugs had fallen out and disappeared into the depth of the bedding. Still, it was the best ferry crossing I’ve ever had.

The management of the ferry seem to think we need a lot of time to get up in the morning, and they give a wake up announcement at 6. I groan, and decided more sleep is not going to happen, throw my stuff together and hunt out coffee. They are doing a roaring trade. Sometime in the midst of killing time queuing for the ferry and getting pizza, I’d done some more therapeutic online dating. Thus I headed straight off the ferry to have breakfast with yet another mountain biker. Certainly, I have picked a good obsession for meeting men in. We grab brekky, talk bikes and riding a lot then Charles heads on a riding trip to Thredbo, whilst I head off to ride the Odyssey course. I have decided to toughen up, heart break is not a good reason to abandon a race you have been intending to do for 6 months.

It is a bit triggering, rocking up at the rec reserve. The other time I’d ridden the course had been training with Andrew. Although, that was more me training than him training, as he would ride laps up and down the hills whilst I spun on in granny gear. But if there’s any way to get emotional bullshit out of your system, it’s heading straight into 3.8k up a hill. It in fact fuelled me to my fastest time up that hill. By the time I’m on the glorious flowing descent, I’m not thinking about Andrew. I’m have a raucous time flying downhill. Sometimes I wonder if all those years of climbing have given me a skewed sense of fear. But I love fast downhill.  Occasionally I think about how much it would hurt to come off at this speed, but that is a fleeting thought amidst wild grins. There’s a woman in the track just after the final jump and I yell “excuse me” as I come round, and she zips out of the way in time for me to launch out of the track and back into boring dirt road slogging. Have I mentioned dirt roads are not my favourite riding? But the last bit back down to the rec reserve is gloriously fast … again not thinking too closely about coming off at 50kph.

I have a second bidon on the van to swap over on the way back through the reserve, in good practice for racing, but I’ve barely touched my first one. I take a big swig and grab the second anyway, because it seems sensible, and head over to the Yaugher forest.  More dirt road slogging gives way to the Super Loop, which despite it’s super status, I still manage to miss a turn and have a brief back track. I thought I had the route here sussed, but maybe not. I motor down Foxtail, go the wrong way back on the Super loop (that is the actual race route, not my mistake this time, but I was hoping no one would come riding in the other direction at a great pace) then my least favourite section of the race takes these horrible chunky gravel roads through pine plantation. This was part of the changes to the course this year to eliminate some of the climb up Kangalang Rd. I would much rather climb up Kangalang and do more of Red Carpet down, but here we are, bouncing away on fist sized gravel that is both uncomfortable and a little scary that your front wheel will slide out when one moves unexpectedly under you.

There’s a great mystery in the course about how it regains the Super Loop. I’ve tried to find it 4 times now. Twice, I just carried my bike through the scrub. Who said this was adventure racing? The other, I took a fire trail that regains the loop further on. I do that again, but miss the point where it regains the loop. But as the course regains the firetrail a few hundred metres later, I just keep going. After this fire road, it heads down Vista, which has a steep, straight single track heading down for what seems like ages. It’s really just a matter of the size of your stupidity gland how fast you go down it. My stupidity gland seems fairly large. What goes down must come up however, and Vista does it with a horrible sandy climb that surely no one will actually be able to ride. Certainly I won’t. I jump off and start pushing as soon as it seems like the more efficient means of upwards progress.

The next section of Vista is the crux of the race. Do rides have cruxes? Am I confabulating my obsessions? It’s a long climb that starts with some techy steps over tree roots that I am thrilled to get over, but then it just goes and goes and goes and …. still goes. I knew it did that, but nevertheless, I would get sucked into to thinking this rise or that corner was the last. It’s cruel stuff near the end of a race. And it’s at the 5k from the end mark for both the 30 and 50k races. Granny gear is fully engaged until I am going so slowly that it’s hard to maintain balance. Plus I’m about to blow that foofer valve again. Seriously, I need to train this foofer valve a bit more. I give in and walk a couple of metres and jump back on in a slight slackening of the angle. Again I’m not sure when it’s my mind or my body giving up. I haven’t done enough riding to know when it’s the “fuck it, just get off the bike” winning out yet.

Vista weaves tightly through grass trees on the descent, and it’s one of those times I’m glad that I’m short and on an extra small bike. Somewhere I come across council workers with a broken down ride on mower in the middle of the trail. I push around them then my bike breaks down. I’ve knocked the chain off. I throw it back on again with no care for how greasy my gloves get and get to the final bit of inglorious slogging before the final descent into the rec reserve.  I pull up by the van after 2 hrs and 14 minutes of riding. I’m pretty ecstatic with that. Strava thinks I’ve done 1.5k and 187m more climbing than the course should be. I ducked the bike under a gate, got lost once, walked the bike around a mower, threw a chain and I’m still within 15 minutes of the winning times in previous years. There’s a pretty big grin on my face as I start the drive home.

What's wrong with working with the Lib Dems anyway? Where do I start ....

I’m hearing some concern that I am letting my political position get in the way of working with the Liberal Democrats to fight the Grampians bans; that we can work with the Lib Dems on this without supporting their other policies. I don't think it's that simple. I disagree with the National Party on many things as well, but I think working with the local National Party member on the Grampians bans is a good idea. What is different about the Lib Dems?

Firstly, the Liberal Democrats are hardly well regarded politicians. They have almost no political clout or standing. They are laughed at (quite possibly because they deserve it).

Secondly, they are raising a motion in the upper house, which is for all intents and purposes, useless. It’s grandstanding. If you pay attention to politics at all, you’ll see plenty of radical (at both ends of the spectrum) motions raised in the upper houses of our parliaments and they have a brief moment of talking about this for before they are swept aside. Passing such a motion does not affect any actual change. The Legislative Council is a house of review. Changes to legislation happen in the Legislative Assembly.  People are asking what this means now – in terms of practical change, it means diddly squat. We got some publicity, and we got associated with the Lib Dems.

Thirdly, these guys are anathema to any green leaning person or politician. Look at their policies. They want to break down National Parks, deny climate change is a problem, reject the value of the environment outside of commercial ones, deny the extinction crisis exists and I expect if they ever develop a policy about cultural heritage, they’d say that had no value either. Then they cover their arses by saying if these things ever really turned out to be a problem, they would be resolved by market forces if we just reduced regulation and commercialised stuff. Hunting saves endangered species. Forestry saves old growth forests. I’m not joking, this is in their policies. I hear a lot of people criticising PV for the Peaks Trail, the impact of that and accusing them of using these bans to push climbers out in the process of making money off parks. Go have a look at what the Liberal Democrats advocate about commercialising natural assets and contemplate that future. Ecotourism is nothing compared to what they want for our parks.

Fourthly, they have added their agenda of breaking up National Parks to the motion. Their edited down motion is an improvement, but note the last point on it still. As long as this happens (and I suspect they realise it’s not most climber's position, because it seems to be discussed as an aside, as if we might not notice it), we can’t accept their support for our position without being entangled in theirs.

Working with these guys is an almost instant refusal of involvement by all environmental and left wing politicians. When we collaborate with these guys, people looking on are going to tar us with this brush. We already have a bunch of media, bureaucrats and politicians saying we damage the environment and destroy cultural heritage and then we sign up with a party with horrendous environmental credentials. How do we argue that we care for the environment and respect cultural heritage whilst standing with a party that thinks we should allow land clearing, whale hunting, logging of old growth forests and clearly state that individual freedom, private property and prosperity are more important that the environment? What is the risk that this just reinforces an image of climbers as selfish hedonists wanting to just do what they always have done?

Addendum: I wrote this yesterday, and this morning I have read the proofs of the discussion on line. https://beta.parliament.vic.gov.au/parliamentary-debates/Hansard/HANSARD-974425065-2354/?fbclid=IwAR1exkYNCWuffthPi9vgZdgt_l-2rmCvzBYpabXBv5IGe8mW6cCntBO_QkM. Please take the time to read the context in which Tim Quilty is raising this. His speech begins with a rant about totalitarian regimes and how one couldn’t have a fishing club in Russia or China. His next point lumps us in with loggers, hunters, four wheel drivers and fishers. He goes on to an extensive spiel about the need to curtail government and spruiks his point about breaking down national parks. He sounds ignorant rabbiting on about Parks being managed from Melbourne by people who don’t know or care about the park, when we know that the Grampians have a regional land manager in Halls Gap and Arapiles has one in Wail and local staff who are devoted to land management. It's also worth noting other member’s statements of support for the concerns, but being unable to vote with the motion due to fundamental disagreements with aspects of the motion and Liberal Democrat policies.

The language the Lib Dems have chosen – lockouts – has been freely adopted by climbers around the discussion, and I wonder about that as well. Because people are hurt and angry, are they picking up on these extreme voices and running with them? Falling in with their language also suggests to others we are falling in with their positions and values as well. Can we stick to using bans please?

Have a read of that speech and consider if you really want that to be what represents you.

Are raving libertarians good bedfellows?

Many of my friends will be following the Grampians access saga. I’ve been remarkably quiet for opinionated old me about it, loosely related to computer dramas and other life shit getting in the way. And maybe by going on holiday. But recently, things have taken a turn in a direction that inspires at least a brief rant, because ACAV are working with the Liberal Democrats to raise the topic in parliament and asking climbers to blindly support it.
Is no one else concerned with jumping into bed with the Liberal Democrats? You may remember them from such illustrious members as David Leyonhjelm. There's a little taste of him here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5R7s5JBz19U. You may also like to look into their policies. Try their environment one on for size: https://www.ldp.org.au/environment. They have a great attitude to climate change as well: https://www.ldp.org.au/energy. Don't get me started on the economic, health and welfare ones. Their website is full of unsubstantiated claims that sound like the fanciful whims of blinkered ideologues.
I’d not heard so much about the Victorian representatives, so I did a little googling. You too, may enjoy this inspiring maiden speech by the same Tim Quilty that is introducing this motion: https://www.theage.com.au/politics/victoria/mp-tim-quilty-s-rexit-speech-20190219-p50yw6.html. You might also like to read their motion closely in consideration of their policies, because they have thrown a little bit of their own in it by connecting discussion of the bans to a motion to decentralise, break down and privatise national parks. I’m really uncomfortable about collaborating with them.
Discussing the issue in parliament is great. Introducing it via a fruit loop party, maybe not. Adding wild libertarian ideas to the discussion, yeah, really probably not. Perhaps there are wiser things then joining in with far right libertarian, self interested, privileged nut cases out of touch with reality and without empathy.

On moratoriums and access

Climbers are all up in arms this week. Not surprisingly really, given that we started with a proposed voluntary moratorium on new routes in the Grampians and progressed to a proposed ban on all climbing in the Victoria Range. What shouldn’t be surprising however, is that we have got to this situation. Climbers have been in denial of their impact on the environment for a long time now. We all like to think we are lovely, caring, green, lefty people. In the meanwhile, climbers drive around gates, ignore closures, drop rubbish, leave literal shit piles, have illegal fires, collect illegal firewood, “clean” cliffs, damage vegetation, the list goes on. Even when we are being responsible, we still have an impact in our use of the park, and the increase in bouldering and accessible sport climbing crags has had a huge effect in recent years. Anyone else remember what Andersons looked like before it was a popular bouldering area?

Bouldering has a lot of people massing around the base, exploring between boulders, flattening landings with pads, then jumping on them. No wonder it ends up cleared. Similarly, sport crags are high traffic areas. There are just more people in general at our crags these days.  Erosion and clearing around the base increases, tracks broaden, chalk becomes even more prolific. We like to think we are an alternative sport, but we are not so much these days. We can’t be a tiny group flying under the radar. We need to step up and take responsibility for managing our impact, and policing other climbers who are not. We need to participate in the solutions, not just waiting for someone else to. Ever just gone climbing when there was a working bee at Arapiles? Time to stop being selfish and do your bit to maintaining our crags. Ever said “someone needs to fix this”? Well, become that someone. If you don’t know how to fix it, offer to help and learn. Climbers are talented at ignoring concerns until they become an access crisis. These issues about development and impact are not new. If you haven’t heard about them until now, well, take it as a lesson to keep yourself better informed in the future and get involved.

I am actually against the moratorium, simply because I think we will spend too much time debating the moratorium rather than getting on with finding solutions. I suspect in 6 months time, we will still be arguing about the moratorium, not discussing the problems leading up to the proposed moratorium in the first place. As you might have noticed, complaining about the moratorium and sledging the VCC, PV, the Greens (hell, why not blame the purple people eater whilst we're about it?) seems to be taking up the majority of conversation at the moment. The rate of new route development is not actually that great that we will risk terrible damage if we leave it be whilst we negotiate access issues. It just angers and distracts climbers from what we need to actually be doing now and as a voluntary moratorium, it’s almost worthless practically. All the people who are currently ignoring other actually legislated restrictions are almost certainly going to keep ignoring voluntary ones.  Its one advantage is that it may send a message to PV that climbers are trying to do something to address their concerns. There are climbers slinging abuse at the VCC and others in classic selfish, thoughtless wanker mode. If you’re one of them, take a chill pill, get some perspective (like permanent crag closures) and see if there’s something constructive you could do instead.

Yes, there are many crags in the Victoria Range that are in Special Protection Areas. This isn’t new and it isn’t news. 2003, remember? It’s just that climbers have never bothered to keep themselves informed. There is an “it will never happen to us” attitude. Whist a small group were talking about the growing concerns from traditional owners, Parks Victoria and other park users, most climbers were just pretending these concerns would go away. That what they did didn’t have an impact because they were just one person. Until we had hundreds of such one persons. Burying your head in the sand has never been particularly effective. Do your bit to minimise your impact. Educate others to do so as well. Speak up when you see people doing the wrong thing.  Join groups working on the negotiations. Engage in adult discussion with PV and TOs about our concerns. Next time you hear a whisper about access issues, check it out and see if there is anything that you can do before it becomes a crisis.

Climbing accidents and climbing culture.

Arapiles saw some terrible accidents the other week. There have been a proliferation of accidents requiring rescues in recent years and in the midst of processing the recent accidents, I have been reflecting on what is happening and what we can do about it. I suspect the increase in accidents result from both the steady stream of new climbers to trad and aspects of climbing culture that feed risk taking in new climbers. Accidents most frequently involve inexperienced trad climbers, poor use of equipment and poor judgement.

Climbing does belittle the bumbly and idolize the hardman (I am using the gendered word intentionally). We can become very grade focussed and people feel inadequate for not climbing hard enough. This leads to people coming into climbing wanting to increase their grades and push their limits sooner than they safely should. Climbing hard is great. I love it and I choose to climb hard stuff most of the time. But I have a long background of climbing behind me that makes it safe for me to do so. When we promote a culture of climbing hard, people want to take shortcuts in the learning process in order to climb hard. They want to climb the same grades on trad as they do on sport or in the gym, and this is just not a realistic place to reach in a hurry.

Back when I was a lad, there were more self limiting factors on progress. When you learnt on rock and on gear, you were developing strength and climbing skills at the same time as leading skills. You only progressed at a rate that the strength and skill developed. This meant we did spend more time on easy and moderate routes in our early climbing career. We couldn’t actually climb hard enough to get ourselves into trouble that quickly. These days, people come into trad from climbing gyms and sport climbing. They are strong. They can pull harder moves. They are physically capable of getting themselves into more dangerous situations.

Learning trad takes time. Fortunately for us, Arapiles has the best easy routes in the world available. There is no reason to skip consolidating skills on easy routes. They are fun. People should be learning to place gear, build belays, read routes, manage the rope, protect for the second etc on easy routes. It’s not about the climbing, it’s about the skills. When people just run up the climb on minimal gear because it’s easy, they cheat themselves of the learning experience. Just place gear. That’s what you are here for. There’s no point in doing miles to practice if you don’t actually use them to practice. I also want you to have enough gear in so that if anything unexpected happens, some of it could turn out to be crap, but you’ll still have other gear there to save you. By the time you’ve romped up hundreds of metres of easy routes, I want you to feel confident to place good gear efficiently enough that you could do it under increasing amounts of duress. We don’t learn well under duress. Our brains are busy just trying to get through. We learn when we are safe and comfortable. So take advantage of our beautiful easy routes.

Climbers are also holding onto a view of themselves as dirtbags. Once upon a time, underemployed climbing bums, students and drop outs may have been a dominant number of climbers. Lots of us have lived hand to mouth out of the Pines. But that is not the main demographic these days. Climbers pay to go to the gym several times a week, then pay for petrol in their fancy SUV to drive out to the crag for the weekend. We have money. Therefore, we could be paying for climbing instruction. But mostly, we don’t. We still like the idea that we will find someone to teach us. Surely someone would love to be our mentor? We think it’s ok to say, hey, I’m a newbie, do you want to teach me?

Well, as one of those potential mentors, I can say the number of requests well exceeds my interest in mentoring. There are so many people coming into climbing these days that the number, time and goodwill of potential mentors is not able to keep up. Teaching climbing is a skill and doing so takes away from our time to climb for ourselves. I am becoming old, cynical and selfish and you have to be a pretty special person before I’m going to spend my precious time teaching you these days. We should be prepared to pay for instruction the way we pay for other things. Besides, relying on meeting mentors risks meeting crap mentors. There are in fact more than a few not so competent wannabe mentors out there. And if you don’t know what you are doing, how can you assess the quality of teaching you are getting from your newfound mentor? Or the youtube videos you are watching? Suck it up and pay for a course. A few hundred dollars will set you up for a long life of climbing. You’ll still need to gain loads of experience and still need to find competent climbing partners and assess the value of information provided by others, but at least you will have a grounding of good information to base that on.

Another foible of climbing culture is the tendency to romanticise our own rough and rocky road to climbing competency. Many of us didn’t learn in ideal conditions. We threw together a hotchpotch of gear and information, we got ourselves into messes, we somehow got out of them and we can tell an unfortunate number of stories about stupid mistakes and near misses. This isn’t actually anything to be proud of. But you will hear people say they survived it, it was good for them. Like people say about smacking children. But I really think we could do better. We know a lot more about the learning process, teaching skills and we have abundant good, affordable gear available these days. You don’t need to buy a nylon rope from the hardware store and tie it around your waist anymore.

The other much underutilised skill in climbing is judgement. The idealisation of hard and bold can get in the way of people exercising judgement. Rather than just encouraging people to push their limits, we need to teach people to recognise when it is safe to push their limits and to be aware of when they are putting themselves into a risky situation. People can be crap at assessing risk. When we encourage new climbers to climb harder, we don’t teach them to assess when they are ready to climb harder. Talk with them about their climbing, their gear, their skills. Point out risks and things to consider when choosing climbs, placing gear, managing the rope. Direct them to safe climbs to progress on, discuss why they are safer choices so they learn to assess the relative safety of climbs they will do in the future.

Climbing has inherent risks. There is a tendency to want to go around making climbing safe for everybody these days. More bolts, more anchors, more reinforcing of routes. Sport and indoor climbing have created a community of people who think trad is scary and dangerous. When we only think of trad being scary and dangerous, we underestimate the risk involved in other forms of climbing. Creating a bunch of easy sport crags is not only not possible, but isn’t going to prevent accidents anyway. People still hurt themselves on sport. The amount of rock and routes around are far greater than the number of climbers around.  It’s just not possible to safe up the cliffs for people. The most practical way of making climbing safer is teaching people to be safe climbers.

Minimum unit pricing is a minimal step toward addressing alcohol misuse.

This month, the NT brought in a minimum unit price on alcohol. This is being lauded as great leadership in the battle against alcohol related harms, but what price based strategies like this seem to miss, is that problem drinking is not just a "let's have another drink" choice. These people are drinking as a result of other issues in their lives and they have an addiction. They will keep drinking until they are able to find healthy, functional ways of dealing with the issues in their lives, and they will need to come off alcohol slowly, under medical supervision. They already spend a fortune on alcohol. What bright spark thinks they will just stop because it costs a little bit more? Do we drive less because petrol costs a lot more than it used to? Did increasing the price of alcopops reduce teen binge drinking? Anyone noticed the current smoking rates despite the massive increase in cost? Similarly, sugar taxes are a crap way of addressing obesity.  Drinking coke and eating mars bars already cost a lot more than water and fruit. That does not stop people who want to drink coke and eat mars bars from choosing them. Does the illegality and cost of smack stop an addict using it? Do people only drink because it's cheap? What a ridiculous concept.

Those of us who do not a a drinking problem are mostly capable of rational thought about it. We can think, shit, I can't really afford another drink tonight. But imagine if you have an addiction. Physical symptoms that kick in if you don't drink enough. A mental health problem you are self medicating. You feel like you can't cope with the world if you don't have another drink. Are you going to think, oh dear, this all costs a bit much, I might just stop now? Of course not. You are going to drink away all the money you have available, then probably feel even worse about yourself, your life, your drinking, letting down your family or friends and want to drink more.

Price targeted interventions are like the GST. They are touted as fair things, effecting everyone, regardless of income. Did no one stop to think about the relative impacts? A bottle of cheap wine in the NT will cost $10 instead of $6.  That $4 will be meaningless to a well off alcoholic, but a much bigger issue for someone in poverty. For an impoverished person with a drinking problem, they are going to keep drinking, except now they will have even less money for food, housing, clothing, medication, you know, life essentials. They will resort to crime or begging in order to get the money to keep drinking, lose any housing they have managed to hold onto, forego food, because continuing drinking is not really a choice until the underlying issues are addressed. Price increases only add to the socioeconomic costs of problem drinking.

Price related interventions are a classic example of individualising problems in our society. We will punish the people who make poor choices by increasing the cost. If that has other negative impacts on their life, that's their fault because they made that choice. They should realise the consequences of their decision. The underlying message of individualising broader social problems is that people who drink are bad, people who are poor are bad, people who are obese are bad.

Truly great leadership would promote social and structural change. It would address poverty, violence, dispossession, isolation, mental health issues, racism and homophobia. It would fund support services and rehabilitation. It would challenge toxic masculinity. It would target the companies making money out of alcohol. It would restrict advertising. It would challenge the Australian culture of drinking. It would work to disassociate binge drinking from sport, parties, nights out, bbqs and other celebrations. Increasing the price of alcohol is an easy way of looking like they are doing something about the problem without actually addressing any of the fundamental causes that take drinking from a recreational pastime into a problem and not stepping on the toes of big business who make money out of alcohol.