I join the route after Hornsby, so best bet is to meet up at Mt White which is the first rest stop.
Sad 
Fair enough, let’s meet up for a ride or a drink or something sometime now that you’re back.
Man I would 100%, definitely, no doubt be in this year but I’m actually away from this weekend so I can’t make it. Super bummed. Really honestly very let down, boy this is a sad day.
Yep. Had a few sneaky rides in the attempt to save face for the catch up ride.
Thinking if i do do this, possibly doing on the new e hire bikes 
i wonder how long their battery lasts hmmmmm
That’d be bloody expensive at 30c a minute! (Though the app does say how much battery they have)
I’m not sure, the longest ride I’ve done since breaking my elbow has been 40km.
I’ve only done a couple of rides over 30km all year… you’ll be fine.
Hmmm you pose a convincing argument.
We can institute a “go as slow as you need to, and stop when you need to” policy.
I also haven’t ridden much and will be riding my heavy Surly with rack, fenders, etc. I’ll be cruising slowly
This is all coming together beautifully. Think I’ll bring my bluetooth speaker and reggae-filled ipod.
Ok you’ve got me. In, but I reserve the right to bail.
Of course.
This was a fun night out on the bike. Thanks to Carlin and Bigadz and our new mate Tom for the company.
Brief ride report: I left from home and went up through Berowra Gorge and met up with Carlin. We joined the route at Berowra and seemed to be slightly ahead of most of the ride. Got passed a little while later by some fast bunches and cruised our way into the first checkpoint at Mt White. Grabbed some snacks and chatted to Ollie and few others while we waited for Adam, then rolled out a bit later. The Mt White climbs are so nice, long and steepish without being really taxing. Had a little bit of rain through this section, but the temp was still sitting around the low-mid teens so was pretty nice.
Went straight through Gosford without stopping and then on through the hellscape of the suburban central coast. Plenty of pissheads piling out of the pubs but no real problems. Got a puncture somewhere through here, nice chunk of beer bottle through the middle of the tread.
Then it got weird.
Just past The Entrance there’s this desolate bit of coastal road, no houses and just low scrub. It was 3am and had started to rain a little bit. So just rolling along and I looked left, there’s this guy wearing nothing but what seemed to be a loin cloth, carrying a large pine branch over his shoulder. He looked at me and said “morning”, I said g’day and kept rolling. At the next rest stop everyone was confirming that he really existed and wasn’t some sort of sleep-deprived hallucination. Still not as good as the sirens trying to lure me and Alex onto the rocks last year, but definitely weirder.
Right after that a severe rain squall hit us. Soaked to the bone without time to put on rain jackets… Then the 2nd checkpoint with very welcome bacon and egg rolls and more snacks.
The 3rd leg was pretty uneventful. Kept going at a steady cruising pace, Tom’s top-40 R&B keeping us entertained (i’d forgotten my speaker…). Somewhere just before Swansea I went straight over a piece of 2x4 at about 45kmh, somehow stayed upright but shit my pants pretty spectacularly. Adam witnessed it.
Eventually got to the baths in Newcastle a bit after sunrise after negotiating our way through the shitfight of road closures for the V8 race thingy. Had a swim, a shower, a massive B&E roll and milkshake, then on the train and home.
I felt pretty great for the whole ride, which surprised me as I haven’t done many longer rides this year. Our whole crew was in the same boat I think, so it was nice to just cruise without feeling like anyone was holding us up.
A+ will ride again. Props to Carlin for getting through his first long ride after a broken elbow, and cheers to Adz for making the trek up from Canberra.
Sounds excellent.
Does sound like a fun ride. Do you guys get much traffic / how’s the shoulder width to ride on?
Bugger all traffic after Hornsby. Old pacific highway is empty apart from a few boy racers, and there’s OK shoulders in most places where they’re needed. But the lack of traffic means you can ride 3 or 4 abreast a lot of the way if you want.
Quality write up Jono.
Nice write up Jono, that’s about how I remember it, but with more pain. Got cold when it rained and a little delirious with the lack of sleep, but for some reason, I would do it all again.
I’m pretty late to the party but, holy shit, I’m glad someone else saw it too or I’d think I was losing my mind. By the time we got there it had been raining a bit, and it was pitch black. What’s this guy doing carrying branches around at 3am, in the pitch black, dressed only in a loin cloth?