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Just did my first long haul mountain bike ride 19 days :)
Well there is a little group of us up here - I am the baby at 51yrs and our
oldest rider is 64. Last year they crossed the Gulf of Carpentaria, some cross country, no roads, just map and compass. We dont have back up, you take all your gear on the bike. This year we have done a wonderful trip from Atherton, Mt Garnet, Minomooka, down to Mt Fox, up to Ingham, across the Cardwell Range (our only bitumen run ) then back up the Kirrama Range and home. It was a wonderful 19days of hills, creeks,camping under the stars. We posted dry food to 2 stations and had an absolute splurge in the food shops in both Cardwell and Ingham. Although I have done a bit of touring on my Trek Hybrid this was a first for me on my new Giant Alias MTB compliments of the Kevin Rudd $900. I call my trusty steed "Kevvie"LOL. I am now planning our next off road adventure - what fun kathy |
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#2
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Just did my first long haul mountain bike ride 19 days :)
Kathy and Steve wrote: Well there is a little group of us up here - I am the baby at 51yrs and our oldest rider is 64. Last year they crossed the Gulf of Carpentaria, some cross country, no roads, just map and compass. We dont have back up, you take all your gear on the bike. This year we have done a wonderful trip from Atherton, Mt Garnet, Minomooka, down to Mt Fox, up to Ingham, across the Cardwell Range (our only bitumen run ) then back up the Kirrama Range and home. It was a wonderful 19days of hills, creeks,camping under the stars. We posted dry food to 2 stations and had an absolute splurge in the food shops in both Cardwell and Ingham. Although I have done a bit of touring on my Trek Hybrid this was a first for me on my new Giant Alias MTB compliments of the Kevin Rudd $900. I call my trusty steed "Kevvie"LOL. I am now planning our next off road adventure - what fun kathy Your adventure brings back memories from 1972 when I rode a BMW to Cairns and back. The warm nights were wonderful at 120kph. I do so wonder how the heck I survived. I wouldn't dream of buying another motorcycle again. If you are down our way in Canberra, turn up at Dickson College car park before 8am winter or 7am summer and do a ride with us. We stick to roads though. But there is a big mountain bike scene here if you like dry bushland, and mountain ranges which are snowcapped in winter. Today was a little ride of 60km, starting at 8C, and with drizzle rain and 10C on the return. I had a puncture. But sometimes its -3C at 8am. No wonder only the hardy ppl turn up in winter, and not many females. I'm glad I didn't vote for Kevvie though. I'm not old enough to have gotten the pensioner's hand out and I wasn't elligible for the $900 gift to workers even though I earnt a wage and had a tax return. But I don't vote Liberal either because they have no ideas. Nobody voted for Kevin to spend 300 billion on the national credit card and bum out over carbon reductions so bring on the double dissolution! Oh what fun awaits Kevin........ Patrick Turner. |
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Just did my first long haul mountain bike ride 19 days :)
I too dont agree with the $900 handout, but at least I spent it on health improvement and not at the pokies. I thought about giving it away, but who to give it to?? The aid agencys just spend it on the pencil pushers, I have doubts as to where it really goes. So anyway, decided that at 51 yrs old with the ability to ride I thought that a MTB might keep the health bills of the nation down just a little. (BTW my sister got the damn $900 and she has lived in Canada for almost 30yrs! She got it because she owns 2 homes here and does an aussie tax return! Now that is disgusting Kevvie!! Kathy |
#4
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Just did my first long haul mountain bike ride 19 days :)
Kathy and Steve wrote: I too dont agree with the $900 handout, but at least I spent it on health improvement and not at the pokies. I thought about giving it away, but who to give it to?? The aid agencys just spend it on the pencil pushers, I have doubts as to where it really goes. So anyway, decided that at 51 yrs old with the ability to ride I thought that a MTB might keep the health bills of the nation down just a little. (BTW my sister got the damn $900 and she has lived in Canada for almost 30yrs! She got it because she owns 2 homes here and does an aussie tax return! Now that is disgusting Kevvie!! Kathy I think you are 100% right about the need to keep the nation's health bills low by staying fit so you don't get all the ills that unfit people sustain as they age. I cycled and raced for 6 solid years prior to 1993 when my knees became painful, so I hung up the wheels. Then things improved and I had a few years just working as a builder, but then the knees got a lot worse and the doctors reckoned I needed titanium joints which costs the public purse a huge sum. I had a small autheroscopic op and things got lots better immediately and I didn't need to take ****ty medications like VIOOX which I was taking, and which nearly caused serious heart problems. ( VIOXX was then banned, and Merck, the makers of VIOOX are being sued for billions...) . I got back on the bike 18mths after the op and my pains reduced and I lost 20Kg in 6 months, and for 2.5 years I have remained at my racing weight when I was 20 years younger. My health is a LOT better due to the bicycle, and where I cycle isn't terribly important; that I get off the butt and cycle is the most important part of cycling. And after 2 years back on I bettered my 40km time trial time and got a time equal to the age standard time for a man 5 years younger than I am. I thought the Kevvie handouts were utter madness. The $900 handouts cost about 10 billion, and doncha think that ploughing 10 bill into the public hospital system would have been better? If they wanna hand money out, then make sure people earn it by building new hospitals and paying nurses a decent wage. Having said that, even though one throws money at problematic health care, there are only so many people who want to become doctors and nurses. I doubt we need a broadband communications system costing 43 billion, present estimates, likely to end up at twice this with tyical blow outs. I already have 100MB/S broadband from Transact at $50 per month and including phone and cheaper than Telstra ever was because he ripped me off all the time. If they change the system, maybe people like me will pay $200 a month. Nobody has said what the broadband changes will cost the average punter. Nobody has said what the ETS scheme will cost. I have watched Penny Wong on TV spouting a stream of spin words for 1/2 an hour after which I am not the slightest bit better informed about anything. Bull**** is the politician's speciality eh. Stern just publically condemned the lack of action by the Krudd government. $900 isn't much though, as average weekly earnings in Oz are about this much, and of course $200 might go back the Govt as tax. If there is a credit squeeze - recession, then people are not busy, and companies and Governments have to sack people who have no work to do. Trying to avoid this issue is a ruinous practice, so OK, raise the dole Kevvie. The problem goes deeper though. I was brought up to save up until you could buy something, and it included the idea that business could only expand and grow if sales provided enough profits which could be ploughed back into the business to grow more business, and unless you could adhere to this idea, you had no right to be in business. But now everyone needs credit, and ever expanding debts to keep the business functioning. Sounds like a house of cards to me. But now it takes two young people working full time to buy a moderate house. So the birthrate has plummeted. When I was 25, my wage was enough to pay a mortgage and keep a wife at home to be with children. So despite huge increases in worker productivity its more difficult than ever before for workers to buy equity. Anyway, the chickens will come home to roost in the next couple of years. When we find the cost of energy rising, and carbon emissions rising as well, and when people find tax cuts will never happen and that the GST will have to be put up to 17% to make ends meet, they'll soon tire of Krudd & Co, and vote for someone else; anyone else! The next lot won't do much, all too little late. Meanwhile farming in Oz will become more risky than ever as rainfall averages slowly reduce. So, with a world wide policy practice of too little too late, the atmosphere will continue to warm, ice will melt, and sea levels will rise alarmingly and flood all the coastal cities. The water has been up about 130 Metres above present levels before even without the anthropocentric cause of climate change. ie, huge sea level changes have occured in the last many millions of years without mankind helping things along. Sea levels have also been a lot lower than now, so much so that you could ride a bicycle from Victoria across Bass Straight to Tasmania. With flooding cities it means much basic building infrastructure will be lost, requiring its replacement on higher ground. For awhile cities will be like Venice is now but with time the waters will rise way above that. Imagine Sydney harbour with 20M more water; its total mahem. The constant rebuilding needed will be a constant greehouse gas generator, and constant consumer of forests and minerals and oils. In the distant past before we learned to rape and exploit nature as violently as we do now, we were hunter gatherers and the sea levels could go up and down and sideways without causing any bothers; we'd just move along. But now we can't move so easily. Each and everyone one of us has too much damn "stuff". Finally, life on the planet has taken about a billion years to evolve. Experts say there's another several billion years during which life could evolve several times over *again* if life were 97% wiped right out. After that the sun expands and absorbs the whole Earth. So if an asteriod hit the planet tomorrow like one did 65 million years ago, then expect a temporary stop to life as we know it for a million years which is hardly much time at all, and then nature will throw the dice once again and whatever evolves will evolve again. Maybe cockroaches will evolve into "intelligent" expoititive creatures like we are, and they'd dig up fossilized bicycles and wonder how the hell they were used. With 6 legs and external skeletons its amazing how fast insects can travel without wheels. Possibly, the cockroaches will find the fossilized remains of the huge rubbish tips we left behind to be very nutritious, and easily digestible by means of applying a big squirt of green digestive juice which would disolve a pair of discarded carbon handlebars in seconds. Hmm, yummy. No doubt that as the numbers of intelligent cockroaches increase, they'll have wars, recessions, plagues, and like us life will never be without problems. I think that thoughout the universe on millions of planets there are experiments with life going on right now and for what purpose I have no clue, and for that I'd need brain of infinite cabability to understand. My little brain is merely finite. Perhaps there are many planets where life evolved and was estinguised by one specie's mistakes, and many others where life has yet to begin. I should then be satisfied with a nice ride on a sunday, and luckily I am, while knowing that I am temporary, and that all of the presently known existance is also temporary, and that Nature and Earth will give Mankind and Womenkind the Order of the Boot if either or both feel like its a good idea at the time. Now if we we able to transport people, goods and services much faster than the speed of light, and if we had a rapid reponse program to genetically alter ourselves to suit new planetary conditions or locations, then that would merely seed out our little particular sample of intelligence around the universe. Trouble is we'd soon find there were other uppity thinge's tryna do the same thing, and problems with bondaries with many other distant universes..... Would we bump into God? Just don't ask the Pope about it. Patrick Turner. |
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