Easter Weekend

April 18th, 2003 at 12:00am

Cycling again! I guess it’s official now, I’m heading to Cairns. I’ve spent the last few days at Alan’s house, mainly helping him with a big tiling project on his front porch. In between sorting tiles and cleaning up cement, I worked on all of my own little projects, a lot of which really needed attention after 18 months with the same gear, like sharpening my pocket knife and repairing holes and zippers on various items. The porch isn’t finished yet, but I decided to leave today, mainly because I was anxious to get on the bicycle and start moving. And I was afraid that if I stayed too long I’d get comfortable and not want to leave, so off I went.

This morning I cycled from Alan’s house to the train station at Robina (19 km) and then hopped on the train for 2 hours to get to Brisbane and north of the city where I could comfortably start riding. It was certainly much different than riding the train in Thailand with the bike to get north of Bangkok. Here in Oz there was an elevator to take the bike down to the platform and then I just rolled it right inside the train. In Bangkok there were 4 STEEP steps to get into the train and the doorway was too narrow to carry the bike up and through with the bags on and the train barely stopped for 30 seconds and I remember how Cathy and I missed the train on our first attempt because we couldn’t get the bikes on fast enough. Very civilized and easy in Australia.

I got off the train in Caboulture, which I think is about 70 km north of Brisbane, and from there I started cycling north towards Glass House Mountains National Park. Today is Good Friday and EVERYTHING is closed, but there was a lot of traffic on the roads from everyone getting away for the Easter holiday. I managed to find one Information Center open along the way, and stopped to pick up some maps of the Sunshine Coast. I wasn’t sure how far I was going to go, but the ride was pretty easy with gentle rolling hills, so I just kept going and wound up here at Caloundra on the coast, some 50 km north of Caboulture. I’m camping in a campervan park tonight which is full of campervans and motorhomes (I think I have the only tent) and it’s way overpriced because of the holiday ($17.50 AUS), but I don’t care. I still had a great day, and I’m slowly feeling fitter on the bike, and I’m looking forward to the next 1700 km!

Distance: 68.70 km
Time: 3 hours 35 minutes
Avg Speed: 19.3 km/hr

The Glass House Mountains

It looked picture-worthy at the time OK?

Entry Filed under: Australia,Cycling,Sunshine Coast