TravellingStrom

Easter Monday Ride

Well, it was a glorious day, the sun was shining and the….. Wait on, this is Queensland this happens all the time, OK, the day was normal, see above 🙂

After doing what maintenance I could over the past couple of days (Sunday was hangover day) I decided to go for a ride. I had a particular destination in mind namely to go back to Glenroy Crossing up north and west of me, then take the road from there southish to Apis Creek and on to Duaringa, which would take me east of home, then south of there to Baralaba . This was going to be a mainly dirt day 🙂 But a few tarmac sections in between. All these roads had been closed for ages due to the recent floods we had, all our flood water came from these areas.

As you can see, not many roads that way, lots of river though

Things did not start well at all 😦 I went out to the garage and rolled the bike off the center stand prior to getting changed

Unfortunately, the side stand was still down and it landed on my foot, then bounced the other way and fell over OUCH, &$%(()F, C$%#@!, G&^%$_ JU, &&^^%ING )(JHGF%$ — BUGGERIT!!!!

Not too much damage done, but shit it hurt for a while. I decided to get dressed, get petrol and see if I could still ride, took a panadol I found in the 1st aid kit, got petrol and it seemed OK. Headed off, nearly crossed the bridge when I had to go back, forgot the air compressor and tyre repair kit doh! Went back and got it and headed off, finally reached the outskits at 9am, nearly an hour later than I intended.

Headed west to Alton Downs and Ridgelands, where the road got narrower

nice country though

The the dirt began, let the tyres down here

I had seen a few snakes on the bitumen, most likely sunning themselves, one was a definate Taipan, pure black the other was a Yellow Belly Black both gone before I got off to take photos, but this Tiger could not escape

The road was good, a bit dusty but made good time, despite the slight pain from my foot every time I changed gears or stood on the pegs, uh, which was nearly always.

I finally got to Glenroy Crossing
It did not look like it was closed but it was a bit damp

I walked the deck to see whether any chunks were missing, yep that’s my bike over there!

If you look at the trees next to the edge, you will notice they are all brown, being totally underwater for a month does that to you, you can see the brown tide level up at the top of the banks, in the trees, a lot of water passed through here, even the water level posts did not survive

These are from up on top of the far bank, you can still see lots of debris

Some nice green country around, amazing what a bit of water can do

Who’s that ugly bastard, I mean, who’s a pretty boy then 🙂

More countryside

Another water crossing, this one is dry, note the high tide mark in the trees

Then I found a bog hole, but managed to sneak through straight down the guts

Still in flood country, even this massive tree was uprooted by the force of water, just cut the middle out and keep on driving

I saw this family of wild pigs cross the road in front of me, managed to get this shot, all you can see is the backs of two to the right of the tree and one to the left, there are about 5 younguns too small to show above the grass height

These were a bit easier to spot, take it easy through them, skittish buggers!

Another crossing, looks nice eh 🙂

While doing these roads, quite often I was hitting washouts which cause the centrestand to bounce down and hit the road, once I was airborne and slightly sideways, front wheel stayed true though, then I hit a cattlegrid that was not flat, it was sloped up and I thought the stand would jam in the grid, so I did this afterwards

This crossing was wet, and a tad deeper than I expected

I created quite a bow wave and got bloody wet 🙂 That was fun! 🙂

I finally got to the Marlborough/Sarina Rd about 11.15am after a good ride, a few scary moments but all’s good. I had a 30km tarmac section heading towards Sarina before getting to the Apis Creek Road, so a quick muesli bar and off I go 🙂

I got to the turn off and was met by this sign 😦

Not looking good sunshine! I took stock of the foot pain etc and decided it was still early, I had plenty of fuel, I could live with the pain, so lets go see the crossing and see how far over it is 🙂

Decision made, lets go, the early parts of the road were quite open and reasonably fast, I was taking it quite easy though because these roads are still damaged by ruts and washouts from the rains and every time I bottomed out, it hurt 😦

Then I started to get amongst the twisties, bits of loose stuff and corrugations, a few pucker moments 🙂

Then after a while I slowed down and chatted to a farmer on his quad, he said no worries, the road was open, they just haven’t fixed the sign!! Glad I continued. I finally got to the crossing at the McKenzie River, a bit of a let down after all that

But once again, look at the high tide mark on the trees. And the corner warning signs have been uprooted

I was starting to get peckish so decided to stop for lunch at Duaringa, another 20km away. I did that and found after getting off my bike that it was quite painful to walk 😦 It was 1.30pm so after a sanger, I decide to give the next dirt leg to Baralaba a miss and just head home straight east via the tarmac. I did that and you can see the tracks from the GPS over the red road.

I got back to Rocky around 3pm and went straight here as I was unsure what damage I had done that morning to my foot

Changed from 2 wheels to 4, they gave me a wheelchair to cruise around in for the next few hours while I got Xrayed, the foot was looking a bit worse for wear

But yippee, not broken, just a flesh wound 🙂 So, got myself some pizza as I was not in a cooking mood and went home and watched the footy with my foot up 8)

Cheers
TravellingStrom
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