You Shall Not Pass This Up

I have some time to catch up on the blog because my new Advanced Alien Technology is waterproof and I have to lounge in this hot tub until my legs relax. Today I biked up Mount Ruapehu, aka Orodruin, aka Mount Doom. I couldn’t hike as far as Sam and Frodo did because I didn’t bring an ice axe and crampons, but riding as far as I did was good training for next week. 3,300 feet of elevation gain in ten miles, more than half of that in the last three.

Ruapehu is not in Wellington, but tons of other Tolkien stuff is. Tons of hills and MTB tracks too, so more good training. I wasn’t there for the elves and trolls, though. I was there for research purposes, and to give a talk at Victoria University of Wellington. My hosts were beyond generous, and perfectly polite as they grilled me after the talk. Not like Gandalf. He’s such a grumpy gus.

But I won’t bore you with the philosophy. At least not yet. Let’s focus on Tolkien instead. The Weta Workshop tour is touristy as hell and is absolutely worth two hours of your time.

Look, if they’re going to take the time to give the trolls snotty boogers, you should take the time to see what else they’re willing to do.

I saw their swordsmith at work on his grinding wheel, and also got to chat with the dude who oversaw all kinds of cool practical effects in Isengard. Major nerd. My kind of people.

Right up the hill from my gorgeous B&B—with a name like Booklovers, how can you not stay there?—is where they shot the hobbits on the road hiding from the Nazgûl. It’s right on a MTB trail, so two birds, one stone.

Rivendell isn’t far, and it’s right on the way to the Dimholt Road.

Speaking of Rivendell, I never did tell you about my jacket. Not the best rain jacket I own (rain gets through it) but by far the best when it comes to being seen by drivers at night. I am Steve the Gray by day and Steve the White in headlights.

Clearly made by the elves.

I had to do a bit of secondhand shopping in Wellington, to wear something nice to the university. Bikepacking gear doesn’t cut it. So I stopped in what folks down here call an op shop (“opportunity shop”; all the secondhand stores are for charity) to get a makeover. By pure halfling luck I found four gorgeous paperbacks there by my favorite author. I couldn’t say no. They were published in 1973, the same as me. Obviously Booster has no room for them, so I’m mailing ‘em home.

Vandalf the Gray

It’s now two Fridays ago that I rolled into Darwin in my rented MG, whose engine is almost as powerful as me running in bare feet. I have never driven a more timid vehicle. I’m not making this up: you have to start it twice. When you engage the cruise control, it disengages the gas pedal completely. I never measured the zero to sixty time, but the sixty to seventy time is fifteen seconds.

Back in civilization, I finally got a good look in the mirror after a week of camping in 100° weather. First thought: well, you certainly look like a vagabond. Second thought, half a second behind the first: no, you are a vagabond.

Basically I’m a rich hobo. Everything in my life right now fits on a bicycle. I rented out my house, so there’s no home for me to go to. I have no dog care, no lawn care, and frankly not a five star review when it comes to personal care, to judge by the vagabond looking back at me in the mirror. No body wash, no shampoo, no shaving cream: all of that is the same bar of soap. I’m a month overdue for a haircut. The beard goes from nonexistent to scraggly, depending entirely on whether I have access to running water. I hate to imagine what the nose hair and ear hair situation must be, what with the big five-oh right around the corner.

I’m vigilant with dental care and bike care, and after that it’s a short list. Which is not to say I’m smelly. Long-distance cycling requires you to pay particular attention to chafing. Sweat makes salt, salt crystals have sharp edges, and sharp edges chafe skin. So my clothes look like I sleep on the ground, but I don’t smell like I look.

At least not by the time I go to sleep. Halfway through the day and halfway up a mountain, that’s my business. But sitting next to you on a plane, I’ll never be stinky. Though I gotta say, I do wish this was something I could control. If you’re in an airport and I can hear you from across the room, I think everyone who sits next to you should be stinky. I promise, your cell phone is not a Korean War-era field radio. Whoever you’re shouting at, they can hear you just fine.

Anyway, that was two Fridays ago, in Darwin. Today I’m in Wellington, driving a Toyota Ractis I’ve named Vandalf the Gray. We’re heading for the Dimholt Road, aka The Way of the Dead, aka Putanigura Pinnacles. Vandalf can fit a mountain bike with perhaps a millimeter to spare, and only if you tetris it at just the right angle. But its cruise control works, its brakes work, it can accelerate uphill, and it starts every time on the first try. So compared to that MG, Ractis makes perfect.

Litchfield National Park and Not the Other One

Litchfield National Park is just up the road from Nitmiluk, and here again the highlight was the animal encounters. Litchfield is most famous for its waterfalls and beautiful swimming holes, but the guidebooks leave out what for me was the real showstopper. I did next to no research for this whole adventure, so I hadn’t even imagined I would run into these guys. Flying foxes!

You don’t see them at first. You hear lots of fussing high in the trees, but you can’t spot any birds. Then, here and there you spot these odd black pyramid-shaped things hanging down from the higher branches. They look like giant seed pods, maybe, or some weird Australasian fruit you’ve never heard of. Then one of them unfolds its wings and starts grooming.

Sadly I didn’t take either of these photos. I didn’t get single shot good enough to share with you. I’m just not carrying the right equipment for it. Those little guys are backlit, high up, with plenty of foliage in the way. I managed to capture some video, and once I get home I’ll have to find a way to share it. But I do have some pics for you of the Litchfield that the guidebooks all tell you about. (Which ain’t too shabby, foxes or no.)

I stopped through a fourth park in the NT, Charles Darwin National Park. It’s right in Darwin, and it’s supposed to house a wonderful range of exotic flora and fauna. However, it might as well have had a sign on the front door reading STEVE BEIN, DO NOT COME HERE. Three times before parking the car, I passed signs warning me against biting insects.

Keep in mind, at this point I've just spent a week in swamps and wetlands, enveloped in flies, with no signage posted about flying, biting things. Also, this is a little known fact among human beings, but I am the most popular restaurant on Mosquito Yelp. One drop of Bein B-negative and they call all their friends. So thanks but no thanks; you can keep your Darwin National Park.

Nitmiluk National Park: GRRRRAAAAHHH!

I am now fully two weeks behind on this blog, and the Big Ride is only a week away. So I will try to keep you posted, but maybe through more photo galleries than stories. Pictures being worth a thousand words and all that.

I do want to tell you about Nitmiluk National Park, though. It’s next door to Kakadu, most famous for its stunning, steep-walled Katherine Gorge. In the dry season (which is now) the gorge is mostly empty, a staggering thought given the amount of water still in there. What I was kayaking on is 20 to 30 feet lower than the water level in the wet season. Overnight swells of 18 feet are average. It’s hard to even imagine. Obviously I have to come back and see it for myself some day.

Like the swimming in Kakadu, kayaking in Nitmiluk means moving through water that’s crocodile-infested for half the year. The rangers don’t open it up to paddlers until the water levels fall low enough that the river becomes several distinct bodies of water. As in Kakadu, they preserve certain areas for the crocodiles to hang out and trap and relocate all the crocs they can find in the other ones. Well, kinda.

They gave us conflicting information going in. One was it’s safe to swim here because we have removed all the crocodiles. The other was don’t go on the sandy beaches because that’s where crocs like to lay their eggs, and stepping on a crocodile egg gets you a $5,000 fine, and they lay 15 to 20 eggs in a clutch, so seriously, don’t go on the sandy beaches.

I asked the rangers where’s the best place to go look for crocodiles (which I do understand is the exact opposite of where sane people want to paddle). They told me I’m not going to see any. OK, I say, then who’s laying all these $5,000 crocodile eggs? Who left the footprints, tailprint, and big lizardy belly print on that beach next to the sign that says crocs nest there? But oh no, I’m not going to see any.

By the way, in Katherine Gorge these should all be freshies, not salties. Freshwater crocs are yet another fearsome critter that Australians have no fear of at all. “Aw, they’re not the aggressive ones, mate. Just don’t poke ‘em.”

Well, you know me. I came pretty close to poking one. Not on purpose, of course. That’s just how my travel luck goes: bad on tech, awesome on nature.

Because the rangers wouldn’t tell me where to go looking for crocs, I just poked my little kayak into every nook and cranny I passed. One of them in particular was irresistible. I can only describe it as exactly the place Yoda would go kayaking. A curtain of muddy roots with a cave-like hollow behind it: perfect. What’s in there? Only what I bring with me. What I brought with me was the great hope of a close crocodile encounter.

And then, GGGGRRRRAAAAAHHHH!!!

With the canyon wall so close, the roar echoed in my bones. The rangers were right: I never saw a crocodile. But I sure as hell heard one. I pissed it off by getting too close. Less than a paddle’s length, because I pushed off the back wall with my paddle to get my ass out of there.

It’s incredible how big they can be and still take up so little space. Teenage Mutant Ninja Crocodiles would be twice as stealthy as those other guys. I never did see it, but there’s only one thing in that gorge that roars.

On the Steve’s Peak Experiences list, that one-second encounter ranks up there with skydiving and publishing my first novel. Highlight of my time in Nitmiluk, hands down.

Kakadu Pt. II: They Will They Will Rock You

As thrilling as it was to see crocs from the safari boat, and to splash around in their deserted swimming pools, it was Ubirr that revealed Kakadu’s true beauty to me. It’s in the northeast quarter of the park, a totally different landscape than the uniformity surrounding the billabong. There you have the same trees, the same flat land. In Ubirr you get real geography: shapely mesas, bald bluffs, islands of trees in seas of grass.

Aboriginal people lived at Ubirr for 20,000 years. They are the world’s oldest continuous civilization; scholars’ best guess places them at 65,000 years old. Now this may sound like a non sequitur, but bear with me. I always ask Young Earth Creationists how they explain China and India. Those cultures go back waaaaay further than October 22, 4004 BC, which is when Bishop Ussher dated “Let there be light.” (It bothers me that creationists don’t celebrate Earth’s birthday, since they know the exact date.) Now I’ll ask them about Aboriginal people instead, to add about 60,000 years to the discrepancy.

Ubirr is home to some of their best preserved, most replete rock art. That makes it one of the premier sites for rock art anywhere on the planet. I’ve seen some beautiful rock paintings in South Africa and the American southwest, but I must confess they pale in comparison to Ubirr.

These paintings serve many functions. One of them, which I’ve never heard tell of in discussions of any other rock art, is to tell visitors what’s on the menu. Notice how anatomically precise some of these paintings are. They show which internal organs are good eating.

Oh, and here’s a thing I’ve never heard tell of when discussing any other hunting culture: the technique here in Ubirr (and in lots of other places in Australia) was not to kill your prey but to paralyze it. They had different techniques for different animals, wringing this one’s neck, shooting that one in the small of the back, and in the case of the file snake, sticking its head in their mouth and yanking straight down. Ozzy Osbourne, eat your heart out.

I know, I know. I’m vegetarian. I should find this revolting. But it’s pretty damn clever, keeping your prey’s vital functions going until it’s time to cook it. You don’t need a refrigerator. Living meat doesn’t spoil.

Bonus points to Ubirr for being the only place you can still spot a thylacine:

Everything I’ve learned about Australia’s Aboriginal cultures has been utterly fascinating, and I haven’t learned nearly enough to say anything intelligent about it. Someday I will have to revisit all of this and do my homework properly, but for now I’ll just say when you go to Kakadu someday, don’t skip Ubirr, don’t skip the Warradjan Cultural Center, don’t just come for the crocs and the birds.

Kakadu Pt. I: The Safest Way to Swim in Crocodile-Infested Waters

I spent my last week in Australia way up in the Northern Territory, where I hoped to have very close encounters with the saltwater crocodiles. The salties are actually my primary reason for visiting Australia. Back in 2010 I was traveling through Botswana, and on a river safari I saw my first croc. They’re basically dinosaurs, you know. Their genetic blueprint is 200 million years old. So I’m standing there looking at the biggest damn lizard I’ve ever seen in my life, and I overhear the Australians next to me say, “Awww, look how small and cute it is!” Immediately I turned around and said, “Where are you from? Because I need to go there.”

So at long last, there I went. “There” is three national parks, all next door to each other in the northernmost reaches of the NT. The first was Kakadu National Park, where I did back to back billabong bonanzas: a dusk cruise and a dawn cruise. I saw over 100 saltwater crocs, which are said to be the biggest and most aggressive in the world. Ten percent of their diet in adulthood is other salties. The biggest I saw was probably about sixteen feet long (they get up to twenty), the smallest a cutesy widdle baby only five feet long.

The little tykes have the most beautiful coloration, but you never see such fancypantsitude in adults. Why? One explanation is coffee stains: the trees along the river release tannins that stain the salties, so the longer they're in there, the darker they get. (Or oranger, with different tannins.) I’m sure a little club soda will get that out.

Another possibility is wisdom: crocs have some chameleon powers, and maybe the young'uns haven't figured out how to use them yet. I don't know enough about crocodile science to take a side, but I'll tell you this: when I was a kid, T. rex was a kickass super-predator. When that big green badass got downgraded to an overgrown vulture, my life was never the same. But now that I know about chameleon camo-crocs, that hole in my soul has healed.

Also in Kakadu, I took a 4WD tour down to Jim Jim Falls, which is not named for some European explorer named Jim. Jim Jim is the original name in Language (which—I had no idea—is the language group spoken by Aboriginal people). I went down there because it’s reputed to be a highlight of the park and because the dude running it is named Wildman Chizo. Whenever you have the opportunity to spend time with someone named Wildman Chizo, spend time with Wildman Chizo.

(Why didn’t I just bike it? Because it’s 95°+ every day, a 70 km one-way ride, and crocodiles have a much easier time eating you if you’re on a bike than in a 4x4.)

Chizo (pronounced Chizzo, not Cheezo) walks rugged trails barefoot. He lives in a bus. He once wrestled a crocodile, not because it was his job but because there was a croc that needed to be moved elsewhere and he just seems like the kind of guy you ask to wrestle large predators into submission. He has many good stories about smoking dope, and one about what happens when you bring nudist clients to swimming holes where they have those little fish that like to nibble dead flesh off your feet.

Theoretically these swimming holes could also have salties. In the wet season, Jim Jim is a raging waterfall whose mist you can see boiling up from miles away. Crocs can swim wherever they like. In the dry season(which is now), Jim Jim is the most tranquil, verdant, picturesque gorge, mostly dried up but there are still three places you can swim. Don’t swim in the first one. There are crocodiles. Not many, but they’re there.

The upper two pools get cleared by the park rangers before they let any tourists go back there. They go up there with spotlights, trap the stealthy critters, and bring them further down the gorge. But the only thing preventing crocs from walking back up there is lizard lethargy. On the other hand, it’s rough terrain, which is a real hassle on stumpy croc legs. Chizo says they haven’t captured any crocs in the third swimming hole in three years.

Is three years a good number or a bad number? My beloved Chicago Cubs haven’t won a World Series in six years. The drought before that was 108 years. What’s the croc capture rate? Is a three-year lull normal? Are they due?

The rangers are pretty good at catching these beasties, but crocs are supreme stealth hunters. They can hold their breath for over an hour. They can redistribute their internal organs to flatten themselves,  submerging completely in water far shallower than you’d think possible. So here’s the only assurance Chizo was willing to give me: “When it comes to salties, no promises, mate.”

It doesn’t matter. That water is too inviting. And deep! I like to think I’m a decent free diver. I reached the first thermocline with no bottom in sight. Dove deeper, still no bottom. Dove as deep as I dared, still nothing. The water was the exact color of the aquamarine crayon in the Crayola 64-pack, a lovely darkness for crocodiles to hide in.

But no nibbles, no bites, no swimming for dear life. And for being a wild man, Chizo provides a delicious, perfectly civilized lunch complete with tablecloth and tea service. All in all a banner day.

Alternate History: Wallaby Roadkilled

If I were a journalist—or even a decent blogger—I’d have reported this a while ago, like when it happened. But we philosophers aren’t known for getting our writing done quickly, so I’m finally getting around to posting now. Consider this an announcement from the Better Late Than Never Department.

About two weeks ago—so still in Tasmania—I was biking down the mountain from Arthurs Lake to Liffey. There’s a thrilling winding road, and through one of the 55 kph curves I actually hit 55 kph. It felt more like riding a motorcycle than a bike; just lean and lean and lean.

It occurred to me on the way down that the natural habitat of the wallaby is smack in the middle of the road. If one of them had come sprinting out at me, there’s no way my brakes were up to the task of stopping me—not in less than 50 yards, I bet. So in an alternate history, I go over the handlebars and get bashed to pieces when a wallaby clips me, then he shouts “YES! We finally got one!” He and his friends all exchange high-fives and go to the nearest wallabar, where everyone there buys him a drink in celebration of his derring-do. Finally the roadkiller becomes the roadkilled.

But that’s not what happened. I made it down safely, and rolled through the tiny town of Poatina. There I saw a couple of guys on dirt bikes. One was doing wheelies while another dude was filming him. I told him “I could do that, I just don’t wanna.”

He laughed, I rode over, and his buddy and I talked about motorcycles while Wheelie Boy went tear-assing around the hills for the cameraman. Turns out there was an enduro race that weekend, both of these guys were in it, and Wheelie Boy was favored to win. The cameraman was with the local news, there with a reporter who overheard me talking to the other racer. That guy and I exchanged vehicles for a bit. His is waaaaay easier.

So the reporter comes over and says he wants to do a story on me for the nightly news. I said yes, of course, and didn’t think about how stupid I look wearing all my safety gear until too late.

Either Tassie is really small or Tasmanians are avid fans of the evening news, because twice that week I ran into someone who recognized me. Both were polite enough not to mention the news compared me to a mentally disabled person. Skip ahead to eleven minutes in if you want to see the clip about me, or watch the whole thing if you want to catch up on current events in Tasmania as of two weeks ago.

ETA: In case the embed doesn’t work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flsnhv50U4k

Signs and Poor Tents

If my poor tent were a person, it would be asking me what the hell I was thinking when I planned this trip. A couple weeks ago it could barely handle the snow, and now it has to handle the tropics. Spring in the Northern Territory isn’t the least bit like spring in Tassie. 98° every day, ants that look purpose-built to chew tent fabric, sawtooth pandanus leaves poking holes in anything they can reach, and you know that one persistent fly? The one that flies around your head and follows you no matter where you go? Wherever that fly went to school to learn how to perfect the art of annoyance, that’s where every fly here graduated from.

My tent prides itself on keeping flies out and dammit, it’s doing its best. It’s proud of its record against thorns, poky sticks, and sharp stones: 100% flawless defense until this week. Now? Two holes in the ground sheet. Two! The rainfly is still gray but the rest is red with shame.

Last night we had an almighty display of Nature in all her power: a dazzling nonstop lightning storm just east of my campsite. It was near enough for me to put the rainfly on just in case. Which means my tent was fucking hot.

After a sweaty and mostly sleepless night, I woke as a human salt lick. I thought the flies were bad yesterday, but the instant I left the tent this morning they swarmed me like flies on shit. I didn’t even get dressed; I drove to the nearest camp shower wearing only a towel.

Freshly desalinated, I packed up to drive where I am now: the city of Katherine, just outside Nitmiluk National Park. Don’t worry, I’m wearing more than just a towel now. I have flip-flops.

I have time to write because there’s exactly one grocery store in town and they’re not admitting customers because their power is out. Actually, Katherine’s power is out. Nitmiluk’s power is out too, 30 km from here. I need food and there’s nowhere else to get it, so I’m writing in a place I have never seen before in the NT: a parking space in the shade.

I just love the road signs you only see abroad, and since I have a minute, I thought I would share a few of them with you. First up is strangely common. I’ve never driven anywhere where people need to be reminded of this every twenty minutes.

Seriously. On the Great Ocean Road you see this every 15-20 km.

Next up, my favorite category: animal crossings.

Here’s one more, same general category though not technically a road sign:

I’m sharing this one specifically because of where I found it:

Yes, that is a children’s sandbox. Specifically, it’s the “dinosaur discovery play area” at the Cape Otway Lighthouse, a family-friendly tourist attraction situated in a national park. I’ll have to do some writing about this later, but one of the things I admire most about this country and its people is a general willingness to accept that the world has sharp edges. (I appreciated this about Texas too, actually. It’s the only thing I liked about living down there: you have to watch out for snakes when you walk the dog.) Back home I see all these efforts to bubble-wrap the world so no one gets a boo-boo. When we can’t bubble-wrap it, we surround it with caution tape and liability waivers and incantations of corporate legalese to cast wards of protection.

Here they seem to understand what we seem to be hell-bent on denying: you gotta prepare the child for the road, not the road for the child. But more than this, they prefer a world where there are still plenty of sawtooth pandanus to cut into your poor tent. That’s the world I want to live in too, and it’s the one I wish more of my students were trying to get into instead of trying to escape.

And not just my students, come to think of it. Lots of people. In fact, as of right now, even my tent is going to change its attitude. It’s about damn time I brought it somewhere it can really test its mettle. All these years and not a single serious battle scar? For shame. From now on its name is Old Nylonsides, and it laughs at thorns and sawteeth.

Sorry, No Danger This Week

Haven’t been doing anything too death-defying lately, unless you count driving on the wrong side of the road. I took the ferry from Devonport up to Melbourne, which by all accounts is a lovely city. Everyone tells me it’s great. So this borders on criminal touristic negligence, but I only stayed there long enough to drop Booster off at a bike shop to get boxed up for her next flight. Then I rented a car to drive the Great Ocean Road.

It’s reputed to be one of the most beautiful drives in the world, and it does not disappoint. The only road I’ve ever driven that comes even close is the Hana Highway on Maui. But this one has more koalas and kangaroos, so you be the judge.

Koalas, by the way, are much bigger than I thought. Like watermelon-sized. Furry gray watermelons. And they often choose the most ludicrously slender branches to sit on. this is a family website, so I will not share the photo of the koala who invented the wooden G-string.

Along the way I found what is probably the most beautiful campsite I’ve ever chosen in my life. The award for all-time favorite campsite still belongs to the one night I camped in Antarctica, when the captain of the ship I was on was too drunk to be trusted to pick us up from shore. That one ranks numero uno because it’s entirely possible—no, almost certain—that no human being has ever pitched a tent in that exact spot before. But I didn’t pick that little island; it was chosen for me. My site a quarter-mile off the Great Ocean Road had no drunken Russian seafarers involved.

It overlooks Johanna Beach, and because it’s also a launch site for hang-gliders and paragliders, it has a majestic vista. And nonstop wind, but that wasn’t enough to prevent me from sleeping out under the stars. I lucked into a completely clear night with some of the best stargazing I’ve ever experienced. The photo won’t do it justice, but here’s the view from where I slept.

I will say one thing for the Great Ocean Road: I am so glad I didn’t do it by bicycle. Too many blind curves, too many drivers passing me. But someday I’ve got to come back down here and rent a motorcycle to ride this thing. So many curves! And hills! And riding it uncaged you get the smells: rainforest, the spray off the waves, koalas in lingerie….

TT Post-Ride Reflection, pt. II: People Who Were Nice To Me

Irene: The hostess with the mostess, at Smuggler’s Rest in Dover. Dinners, dogs, days zero, one, and the first bit of two of the TT.

Joyce: The jiujitsu gal who drove me from Hobart back to the Trail after Booster’s repair. Huge extra credit for pulling a U-turn shortly thereafter to give me the tentpoles still in her back seat.

Jan and Carmel: A lovely pair who stopped to talk in Poatina. We both stopped off for a bite to eat, only to learn Australia was observing a one-off national holiday to remember Queen Elizabeth. Jan and Carmel worried about where I’d find food so they gave me their trail mix.

Glen and Pancho the Mad Mexican: An Aussie ex-cop doing retirement the right way: roaming the land in his campervan with his ten-year-old chihuahua. Glen was the better conversationalist but Pancho was better at snuggling. Glen gave me food too, and gave me good advice about where to watch the Australian Football League finals.

Bertrand and Callum: The cops who gave me a lift off the Wellington Range. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Bertrand was right and Callum was wrong about whether to go left (into the car-eating mudhole) or right (up the hill and around the mudhole). But hey, we got unstuck without needing the winch.

Audrey: Proprietor of The Bears Went Over The Mountain. She rented me a room despite not being open for business. Despite the absence of Chicago Bears memorabilia, her place is still an excellent B&B&B.

Shane: Proprietor of the Bronte Park General Store. Gave me free camping, free firewood, and sold me the best pair of gloves I own.

Lindsay and Chandell: Their farm in Liffey is right on the Tasmanian Trail, so I camped on their land. I saw they had chickens roaming about so I asked if I could buy a dozen eggs. She just gave them to me, because this is Tasmania. Then, because this is Tasmania, he drove to the general store, bought bread, margarine, potatoes, and a chunk of pumpkin, and then lit me a fire on his gigantic Mad Max-looking barbecue. Lindsay said if he had them eggs he’d fry them up with some spuds and maybe a bit of pumpkin, so here’s a fry pan and any groceries you don’t use, just leave them in the pizza oven. Because of course he has an 8’ tall pizza oven next to the barbecue because why wouldn’t you?

Oh, and then the next morning he insists on driving me back to said general store because riding there and back would add 14 km to my day. Because Tasmania.

Dakota and John: Officers of the Tasmanian Trail Association. Both had helpful advice and both asked me to check in so they’d know I’m safe. (I think they have not read this blog.)

It: Super helpful bike mechanic in Auckland who uses the same Wahoo GPS I own and who helped me get it running. Not It’s fault it never ran right!

Lea Ellen, Ed, and Craig: A lovely traveling trio who stopped for conversation about platypus viewing, travel, and why it’s good to get away from everyone for a while. Included here in part because Lea Ellen said I wouldn’t remember how to spell her name.

Last but definitely not least, Mom & Jerry: A huge shout-out, and this one is woefully overdue. I may relate the full story later, but the short version is two days before my sweet little Cocoa and were to leave Ohio, a neighbor dog savagely attacked her. In the space of two days I went from I’ll miss you while I’m away, Cocoa to I can’t believe I’m going to put down a dog who’s only six years old to yes! she’s got a future after all to okay but where?

She is not an easy dog to care for. She’s badly injured. She has to be picked up (which she hates; see photo) just to go outside and pee. I saw no alternative but to surrender her to a shelter. So when my mom and her hubby Jerry stepped up and said they’d keep her until I got back, I just about collapsed with relief. Major extra credit to Jerry, who isn’t really a dog person—or at least he wasn’t then. I hear Cocoa now has him wrapped around her little toe.

TT Post-Ride Reflection, pt. I: The Camping

Here are some of my favorite campsites along the Tasmanian Trail.

First, the cricket field on the outskirts of Judbury. Cold, but the cows were good neighbors.

Quamby Corner in Golden Valley. Hot showers, well-equipped community kitchen area, and I got to use Pancho the Mad Mexican (his actual name) as my cuddle buddy. We kept each other—well, if not warm then at least warmer.

Right on the TT, somewhere between Arthurs Lake and Bracknell. The stargazing was absolutely stunning.

Sheffield. Okay, so this isn’t camping. This is what a bikepacker’s hotel room looks like after he has been getting rained on for four or five days, he needs to dry his gear out, and he is willing to leave housekeeping a great big tip. I rented a room over a pub— a nice, cozy hobbit-sized room. The doorknob was about knee height.

Liffey. More incredible stargazing and another example of the overflowing generosity of the Tasmanian people. I will say more about Lindsay and Chandrell Jordan in a future post, but for now suffice it to say they saw to it I was well fed.

(That schoolhouse behind my tent dates back to the 1800s.)

Latrobe. My last campsite in Tassie! (At least on this trip.) Platypeese make wonderful neighbors. A special highlight for me was seeing how they enter the water: like a kid on a Slip N Slide! Their entry ends with the most adorable kerplunk.

Dishonorable mention: Glenorchy.

This is where I camped after my first platypus sighting. That was dusk, so I rolled into this place after dark. No lights, no signage, locked gate. GPS thought the hardware store parking lot was the campground. I found the rear entrance only because some kid walking along the street knew where it was. Turns out some of the neighbor kids know this place because they like to steal stuff from campers. No one robbed me, because as you can see, I’m so stealthy and crafty.

I never did find the campground itself. The caretakers found me and assured me there was nothing to fear:

Him: “We haven’t had anybody steal a bicycle in what, ten days?”

Her: “Well, eight, anyway.”

TT Report, Day Last: Devonport!

I made it! Took me almost a week longer than expected, what with the false starts and the mechanical problems, and really we should count me as having finished yesterday. This morning’s ride was just 8 km to the ferry, 19 minutes flat. I did an extra 8-9 km yesterday to account for it, but didn’t bike all the way here. Instead I stayed overnight in Latrobe, the platypus capital of the world, to see more of those little guys. I camped right on the Mersey River so I could catch them at dusk and then again at dawn.

(Yes, I can wake up that early. I just choose not to.)

I rode farther than the official route calls for, to the Mersey Bluff Lighthouse. It’s not the most majestic lighthouse you’ll ever see, but it overlooks the Indian Ocean, and when I was in South Africa I overlooked swimming in the Indian Ocean. So I checked that off my lifetime to-do list this morning too.

That makes four oceans for me, and—an unsung moment, as this happened almost three weeks ago—my seventh continent. I still need to get far enough north in Scandinavia to swim in the Arctic Ocean, and that’ll be five for five and seven for seven. Then I plan to pursue a weirder goal: visit all the tectonic plates. I don’t think I know anyone else who wants to do that. If you want in, email me.

As Worst Bikepacker in Australia I have to say I’m feeling pretty good. I didn’t know if I could do this and I did it. Not with style or grace, but I got it done. More importantly, I had a hell of a good time along the way. The biggest challenges pushed me harder than I’ve been pushed in a very long time, but of course that was the whole point of coming down here. And when you get pushed like that, the rewards are all the more fulfilling.

Stay tuned for a few more posts reflecting on those rewards. For me, next up is laundry day. (I’m writing from the laundromat now. Three cheers to Devonport for free city-wide wi-fi!) Booster already had her shower two days ago, and then another last night, and then a good drying and waxing up. Tonight we jump on the overnight ferry to Melbourne, where I’ll rent a car to drive the Great Ocean Road.

TT Report, Day 16: Roadblocks

I only have one night of wi-fi before I go back off the grid, hence this flurry of posts. I’ll keep this one brief. The short version of today is more extra mileage. Mostly it was due to missing signage, but there were also delays caused by roadblocks.

The roadblocks, however, were awesome.

Thank the cow gods only one of these was a bull. He was just a young’un, but I think he still would have kicked the shit out of me. But he chose to back down, and the only way I can think to put it is his mama scolded him.

He stepped up, lowered his stubby little horns, gave me the evil eye, snorted, pawed the ground, and then looked at the big female next to him. She took just half a step back and kept her big brown eye on him in exactly the way a human mom would. I swear she was half a second away from saying “don’t you dare.” But she didn’t need to, because he did just what a naughty boy is supposed to do: he played nice.

The next roadblock was big, but not too hard to duck around. The real trouble was it was the first of, I dunno, twenty? Thirty? And most were a lot harder to circumnavigate. For example…

TT Report, Day 15: So Many Cox

I have been doing better on meeting my daily mileage goals. In fact, I often exceed them, though I’ve only done that once on purpose. The ride to Arthurs Lake was such a breeze that I pressed on. All the other times, the extra kilometers come from the most persistent problem of the ride: navigation.

It’s clear that my GPS compooter will never give me accurate directions. I’ve given up on that entirely. I’ve even had to give up on it as a compass. (At one unmarked crossroad, it said North was the road to my left no matter which road I took.) However, I did find a way to make it tell me how far I’ve ridden, which it wouldn’t do before. So it is now the bulkiest, most expensive, battery-drainingest odometer on the market, but for an old-timer like me that’s better than GPS.

So I’ve gone back to 17th century technology: odometer, ink, paper.

When Booster and I were stranded in Hobart, I spent an afternoon at the library mapping the middle part of the TT, which has a bunch of confusing detours for flood season (namely, right now). I was advised not to attempt fording the Mersey River, and had to find a different way across. Which I did. Now, armed with my handy-dandy jury-rigged odometer, I found my handwritten turn-by-turn instructions were accurate to within 50 meters. That’s as accurate as the compooter is capable of. They were perfect!

Until they weren’t. But it’s not their fault. The road didn’t comply with the map.

See, Cox’s Road was 3 km too short. I was supposed to turn off of it at the 30.1 km mark, but at 27.1 km it dead-ends at the Lobster River. Should I cross? To do so would be to abandon my trusty handwritten instructions. Worse, I knew the trail on the far side would lead me straight to the Mersey River. The whole goal was to find the bridge across the Lobster and avoid being at the mercy of the Mersey.

This is how you exceed your daily mileage goals.

It turns out Cox’s Road has friends. There’s Upper Cox’s Road, Cox’s 1, Cox’s 1/1, Cox’s 1/2, Cox’s 1/2/3, and Cox’s 1/2/4. I have no idea what these designations mean. They’re not addresses; this is forestry and single-track country. Nary a house to be found. Are they different roads, or different sections of one Cox’s Road? Would one of them run the entire 30.1 km I’d expected?

Call me a Cox sucker, but I followed every single one of them, hoping one would match my holy handwritten directions. No such luck. About 20 km later I had explored every corner of the mountain and had run out of daylight. So for the second time in two weeks I camped on the edge of a forestry road.

In the morning I had no choice but to forward the Lobster River and then see what was so scary about the Mersey. The single-track leading down to it was the hairiest I’ve seen yet. Photos never do these things justice, but here’s one anyway. (Stick Figure Me and Booster added for scale.) Just know this is as tall as a clock tower, steep as hell, slick as hell, with a hairpin turn at the bottom if you don’t want to hit those stick figures (or the fallen trees behind them).

As luck would have it, after walking down the death drop I met my first Tassie Trail travelers, two bikers who had crossed the Mersey only moments earlier. Somehow they survived, so I figured I could too. Their secret? The water is only hip deep.

Maybe I was right to waste half the day exploring the mountain yesterday, when it wasn’t raining. Let the floodwaters run their course, you know. Give the Mersey a dry day to get merciful again. Or, just maybe, I’d only been advised against the crossing because it’s so obvious I’m the Worst Bikepacker in Australia.

TT Report, Day 14: Yes, 14

Back in Auckland, the magnificently mustachioed Benny of Benny’s Bike Shop asked where I was off to. I told him I was heading down to Tassie for 10 days to ride the TT. He said, “What are you going to do with the other five days?”

Fair question. I told him I’d never biked more than 50 km in a day so I thought 10 days was pretty good. But Benny is an actual bike guy. He laughed, but he’s not in the running for Worst Bikepacker in Australia. At two weeks in, surely I’m the front runner.

The best I can say for myself so far is I managed to ride five days in a row without making any decisions so catastrophically stupid that they were life-threatening. The most recent of these was getting separated from my tentpoles on a day of freezing rain. I got ‘em back, but still.

I’ve made some low-stakes mistakes too. A few nights ago the ground was too stony for tent stakes, so I had to get a little creative. It’s not exactly Bear Grylls-level survivalism, but it was still kind of fun tetrissing these together.

I was just about ready to congratulate myself for my cleverness when I realized this is fucking Australia. Some of the most venomous spiders in the world might live right under the rocks I’ve been pulling up. Maybe I should actually inspect them a bit before grabbing them barehanded.

And who should come walking along but this little fella? Exactly the colors of Spider-Man. I thought about letting it bite me. The proportional strength and speed of a spider would make these hills a lot easier to climb.

TT Report Day 13: The Packing List

Thought people might want to know what’s in all those bags!

Here’s my checklist, which when I’m smart I check every time I set out for the next leg. There are a couple of repeats so I check myself before I wreck myself.

BASICS

• Bike

• Helmet

• Money clip

• Passport

• Food

• Agua

• Sense of adventure

LUGGAGE/STORAGE

• 2x Voilé straps for side cages

• 2x Voilé rack straps

• Bungee for rack

• Extra 20” Voile strap

• Handlebar bag & joey

• 20L drybag

• 2x 8L drybags

SERVICE & REPAIR DEPARTMENT

• Air pump

• Toolbox 1 (Gerber multitool, quicklinks, allen wrenches, needle, thread, thimble, superglue gel, patch kit, paperclip)

• Toolbox 2 (spare brake pads, little plastic thing you stick between your brake pads so you don’t lock them shut, sandpaper, spare derailleur hanger, misc nuts/bolts)

• Chain lube

• Ultralight inner tube

• Tire levers 2.0

• Pedal wrench

• Tubeless plugger tool

• Handlebar hidey-hole stuff (spokes, zipties, chain breaker)

• Tire boots

• Gear floss

• Loctite

• Duct tape & electrical tape wrapped around random shit

NAVIGATION & SURVIVAL

• Water—1L bottle and 1.5L bottle

• Water filter

• Wahoo compooter

• Bivy personal locator beacon

• Advanced Alien Technology (aka iPhone)

• Guidebooks

• Prescription meds

• Pain pills

• Chamois roll-on thingy

• First aid kit (antibiotic goop, bandaids, athletic wrap, quick-clot, bite-away, blister treatment, benadryl, bonine, imodium, anti-itch cream, 10’ paracord, disposable latex gloves, spray skin stuff)

FOR GOING NIGHT-NIGHT

• Tent, rainfly, groundsheet

• Tentpoles & their bag

• Tent stakes & their bag

• Bedroll & its bag & strap

• Pillow & its bag

• Sleeping bag

• Nighttime meds

• Tent & bedroll repair tape

• Trash compactor bags for sequestering wet things

COSTUME DEPARTMENT

• Rain jacket

• Rain pants

• Puffy coat

• Gloves

• Merino hat

• Longjohns

• Long-sleeve merino

• T-shirt x2

• Undies x2

• Triathlon shorts

• Giant socks

• Normal socks

• Light socks

KITCHEN

• Cutting board

• Kick-ass knife

• Stove

• Fuel

• Lighter

• Spice cabinet (cinnamon sugar, salt, chili flakes, Penzey’s Sandwich Sprinkle)

• Titanium pot & pan

• Scouring pad

• Spoonula

• Towel scrap

• Sand hanitizer

• Food!

BASIC BEING OUTSIDE STUFF

• Sunglasses w/ Croakies

• Toilet paper

• Latrine trowel & storage pad

• Sand hanitizer

• Sunblock

• SPF chapstick

• Bug spray

• Mozzie net if shit gets bad

TOILETRIES

• Moufpiece

• Prescription meds

• Pain meds

• Soap/shampoo bar

• Floss

• Toofbrush

• Toofpaste

• Nail trimmer

• Shower wipes

• Chamois butter

ELECTRONICS DEPARTMENT

• Headlamp

• Spare batteries

• Plugger-inner

• Charging cable

• Headlight

• Taillight

• Incredibly fucking tetchy motion-sensitive alarm

• Wahoo compooter

• Bivy PLB

• Power bank

• Dumbphone (needed for hotspot for Advanced Alien Technology)

• Ziplock bags for all this shit

MISCELLANEOUS

• Ottolock

• Plastic bags tucked away here and there, ditto for duct tape & electrical tape, ditto for peanut M&Ms

• Extra 20” Voilé strap

LUXURY ITEMS

• Ukulele for no get bored

• Old man chair

• BiteAway

• Journal

• Pen

• Teensy tiny packable backpack

TT Day 11: Some Recent Highlights

Just a few highlights from the past few days:

The geology of Tasmania is unlike anywhere else I’ve ever been. It is made up of 50% soil and rock, 25% wallaby droppings, and 25% wallaby roadkill. I have been here 12 days, I’ve seen exactly one live wallaby, and in just the 2 km between the highway turnoff to Bronte Park and the town itselfI counted 45 wallaby carcasses. This was only on my side of the road. Some were recent, some were just skulls or scattered bones, but unless the left side of the road is somehow more dangerous than the right, that’s about 90 wallaby corpses en route to a town so small there’s only one place to buy things.

I’m sitting there now, the Bronte Park General Store—“now” being a while ago, but I dictated this to my phone then because according to the proprietor (a friendly, grizzled guy called Shane) there’s not a single place in town I can go to get wifi to post this through my normal app.

From where I’m sitting, I can see for sale: deer pelts, doorknobs, Christmas cards, lighters, fishing maps, potato chips, motor oil, jackets, children’s school backpacks, candy bars, vinegar, handmade fly fishing lures, a breathtaking supply of all the feathers and thread and hooks you could ever need to tie lures of your own, cake mix, pure local honey, microwave popcorn, secondhand luggage, crossword puzzle books, a Nick Fury coloring book, a large assembled and framed puzzle of an African savanna, and a badass telescope that looks like something Charles Bronson would slot onto a rifle in the 1980s to assassinate somebody from 2,000 yards away. Oh, and if you want a fresh-caught flounder Shane will cook one up for you on the spot.

He keeps the store hot, which is wonderful because I haven’t been warm in three days. Sweaty, yes, but always cold, even in the occasional sun beam. I think I’ll stay until closing time.

OK, fast forward to the future again. Shane is one of the many Australian men who could be a six foot tall talking wombat and it would change nothing of your impression of the country. Furry, a little guarded, and then suddenly and nonchalantly kind—a kindness expressed in a way that makes it seem easy for everybody to be that kind all the time. He asked where I was camping that night, I told him the caravan park, and he said, “Why don’t you just camp around the back, mate? Lot less noise back here than over there.“ Behind his store he’s got plenty of space to pitch tents, plus a fire pit, giant piles of firewood (which he would not accept money for; just a pile of rubbish, he said), a water spigot (no need to filter! yay!), flush toilets, and an electric grill. He won’t allow me to pay him to camp, but he does sell me a $22 pair of gloves made of, I shit you not, a blend of merino wool and possum fur.

They are far warmer than the gloves I brought with me, which also happen to be beat to hell at this point. (I use them as oven mitts too.) Never in my life have I heard of a possum farm, but they are worth farming, because these gloves kick ass.

#

One of the many idiosyncrasies of the Tasmanian Trail is that it crosses both private land and federally protected preserves. So you run across gates like this sometimes, which explicitly keep everyone out, but TT folks get a pass.

It was here in the nature preserve that I finally started seeing wildlife in real numbers, including my first real live wombat. No idea what this little fella was doing up in the middle of the day; pretty much everything that evolved on Tasmania is nocturnal. But there he was, and he was chubby and huggable.

I also saw my first pademelon, which despite its melony name is like a much smaller wallaby. The way to tell the difference between a juvenile wallaby and a pademelon is wallabies are found in the wild while pademelons are found in the produce section.

#

This crude log bridge was built by whatever twisted, mutilated species of elf escaped Sauron before he could mutate them into orcs. As you can see, these Tasmanian cousins are not nearly as elegant as the high elves and wood elves that live in New Zealand.

Seriously, though, look at this weird-ass forest of skeleton trees and tell me there’s no elvish necromancer living in there. I mean, there has to be.

#

Last thing before I sign off:

Knock knock.

Who’s there?

Derwent.

Derwent who?

Derwent Booster through the Derwent Valley.

TT Day 10: Choose Luck!

There has been a lot of riding and camping since my last post, and no serious drama but also no wi-fi. I will try to catch up at least a little bit in a couple of posts tonight.

Five days ago I arrived in Hobart in police custody, with a badly limping Booster strapped to the roof of the squad car (read: kickass 4x4). Bent derailleur, bent brake rotor, sidewall tear, and after much deliberation I converted to tubeless so I don’t have to keep worrying about pinch flats on single track. But because of the sidewall tear (big enough to rule out tubelessness) and because they didn’t want to sell me a new tire (these ones are only a few weeks old), Booster is running one tube tire and one tubeless. That gives her a kind of Millennium Falcon vibe, which is all to the good.

I spent most of my time in Hobart trying to figure out how to get away from Hobart. The Tassie Trail is remote by design, so public transport doesn’t go there. Or even anywhere near there, really. (Plus you already know about the puzzle-solving required to get Booster on an intercity bus.) So I didn’t do any of the typical Hobart tourist things. I didn’t get up to Mount Wellington, didn’t do the Derwent River cruise, yadda yadda yadda. But I did get to walk around town a little bit, so I might as well post some pics.

I also went out to the Hobart Rivulet in hopes of seeing a platypus in the wild. It was a long shot. They’re nocturnal, so they’re only really visible at dawn and dusk, and I don’t really do dawn. Plus, we’re talking a small brown creature in a large brown pond, and it spends most of its time underwater. everyone I spoke to said the rivulet was my best chance of seeing a platypus and my chances were slim.

But I have recently stumbled across a rule that seems like a pretty good way to live your life: choose luck.

You’ll never get to a point where you get good luck on demand, but you do get to pick whether to spend your time doing things where luck can strike. It can’t happen watching television. Something lucky can happen for your favorite player or favorite team, but never to you.

Choosing luck is usually more work, and it never promises results. But it’s up to you: you can choose predictable or you can choose to grab your camp chair and go down to the water an hour before sundown and sit there and see if any platypeese swim by.

And one did! Close encounters with wildlife are my very favorite thing when traveling. Preferably big powerful critters that can kill me, but anything I haven’t seen before is a thrill. (This is part of why I’m such a slow bicyclist. If I’m not going to stop and watch a wombat, why did I fly all the way down here in the first place?) The platypus isn’t likely to kill me, except by being adorable enough to die for (which it is), but the male does have venomous spurs in his hind feet, which has got to count for something. And the female is one of just two creatures on earth that can make her own custard. (Echidnas are the other one. Nothing else produces both milk and eggs.)

I couldn’t get a decent photo myself (low light, no super duper lens) but this captures what I saw. So lucky! On top of that, at the backpackers I was staying at, I was talking to the person at the front desk—a lovely Brazilian woman named Joyce—about The logistical challenges of getting back to the TT. I told her I wasn’t above just paying somebody $100 to drive me out there. And she said, “Sure. I’ll take you.” Turns out Joyce has got a lot of hustle. She’s working two jobs, aspiring to start her own business, and doesn’t turn down an easy hundred bucks. Plus—get this—she loves talking philosophy! The drive to the trail was the best conversation I’ve had since I’ve been down here.

Choose luck!

TT Report, Day 6: So-So SOS

This has got to be the least safe campsite I've ever chosen.

Everyone who hears you're going to bike Tasmania says "look out for the logging trucks." They're heavy, they can't brake for shit, and that makes the drivers reckless. So the edge of a logging road is world-class stupid.

But look at that picture and tell me where else I’m supposed to pitch my tent. Apart from the road, there is no level ground. The edge of the road is the best I could find on short notice. And by short I mean right fucking now. I know the symptoms of hypothermia, and they're tapping me on the shoulder saying go ahead, take your time, see what happens.

The safest I can make this site is to clip my headlight and taillight on the tent and put them on flashing mode. At least the logging trucks will see something weird before they hit it.

But luck is with me: the dry bag stayed dry. The sleeping bag will do its job, and so will my winter clothes. So soon enough I'm dried off, bundled up, and out of the wind, and that means life is good.

Life is okay.

Life is.

Yeah, that’s about the best I can say for it in the moment. Life continues. I'm not going to freeze to death. Life is continuing not to freeze to death.

Which pretty much means I have to hit that SOS button. It’s a tough decision. On the one hand, I don’t feel threatened by anything. On the other, this is a textbook rescue situation. In ten minutes I will have eaten every scrap of food I have. I’ve got about 200 mL of water left, minus whatever evaporated off when I was boiling it to pour into a Nalgene bottle to restore sensation to my frozen feet. This is super gross but I’ve been pissing into the bladder of my water filter, hoping like hell that I’ll never have to drink it. I think as a general rule of thumb, anybody who is contemplating drinking their own urine is in need of assistance.

So I hit the button.

Take a wild guess how well the technology works.

After an hour of no response I hit the cancel button. I don’t think I’ll need help until morning, and it’s safer for the rescue workers to operate by daylight. The next morning, coming down off the mountain and into cell range, my phone blows up. Four texts on the PLB’s app, asking the nature of my emergency. Then a missed call from the global “rescue” company, whose voicemail message really should have said “we don’t know why we’re calling, because if you had cell service you wouldn’t need us at all.”

Apparently the device works just fine behind the scenes. The same operator called my sister, who is my emergency contact, to ask if she’d heard from me. Who, I ask you, who hits the SOS button and then calls their sister?!?

But all’s well that ends well. Sometime around sunrise the clouds cleared enough that my phone got just enough signal to call 000, which is 911 down here. Also, down here you have to write zeros in the opposite direction. In a couple of hours there was a police helicopter hovering over my tent, guiding a 4x4 up the hairiest stretch of the Jefferys Track. Booster went on the roof, I went in the back, and we only got stuck once on the way down.

Then, and I swear this is true, the “rescue” company called my sister to tell her I was in police custody.

(ETA: I’ve done a little research. First, my SOS beacon did work, it’s just the app that didn’t. Which on my end is basically the same thing, but on their end they did know where I was and that I was in a tight spot. Second, don’t try to filter your own pee. It doesn’t work. I looked it up. All the stuff your body wanted to get rid of is too small for the filter to screen out.)

TT Report, Day 5: Fail While Daring Greatly

Up until now, I've had no doubt about which was the hardest day of my life. It was my first black belt test. Three hours of getting beat on, closing with a one-hour sparring session with no rest and a fresh opponent every five minutes. It's murder. It's supposed to be.

I gotta be honest: day five of this ride was worse. Because my sensei doesn't test you until you're ready. Mountains aren't so forgiving.

I know, I know. Worst Bikepacker in Australia. It's my fault I'm not ready. I didn't train nearly hard enough for this ride. I honestly believed there was no amount of prep I could do--that the ride itself was the only thing that could really prepare me for it. I still think that's true, but it would have been better going into this ride with stronger legs and stronger lungs.

I'm not taking on serious mileage here. Judbury to New Norfolk is just 41 km. On flat roads I know people who breeze through that in an hour. But I'm not one of those people. I'm a draft horse. I slog along at the same pace pretty much regardless of how much weight is on the bike, but I'm slow. And the first half of this particular 41 km stretch is straight uphill, no respite.

The riding was gorgeous. Finally a sunny day! Tasmanian plant life is the oldest in the world--Gondwanic flora, they call it, as in Gondwana, the supercontinent the dinosaurs lived on. That's right, I'm riding through a brontosaurus's bento box. The eucalyptus trees here are the tallest flowering plant on the planet. There are birds unlike any I've seen, and some even the Tasmanians say they've never seen. The lyre bird, for example, which looks a bit like the Road Runner and sounds like anything it wants to sound like.

Unrelenting ascents are always a slog. This one was worse than most. I would find out later that my dropper post was losing pressure. That means my saddle was gradually sinking, slowly enough that I didn't notice in between rests. If you've ever ridden a bike that's too small for you, you know how brutal that is on your thighs. It doesn't matter what kind of shape you're in: if the bike doesn't fit, you get tired faster.

And yes, that’s yet another episode of equipment failure. GPS, backup GPS, tire levers, seat post, and I haven't yet mentioned the constant drizzle that's been seeping in under my big cushy rubber grips. (Which I love.) I slide them off now and again, dry the handlebars, and slide them back, but they really aren't as grippy as they need to be for the best handling. This was a day I needed the best handling.

I made the mountaineer’s classic mistake: I spent more than half my energy on the climb. A lot more. Over half of climbing accidents happen on the descent because the climbers are exhausted. But because yesterday's descent was silky smooth, I made what turned out to be a colossal error in judgment: I assumed today's would be just as easy. Though I'll say this: never before have I seen a ride where down was so much harder than up.

The south side of this mountain was mostly gray and gravelly under a light blanket of snow. This was beautiful, and also expected; I saw it before I even left camp. There was plenty of fresh clear water along the way, but I didn't stop to top off my bottles because why bother? Water is heavy. Why shlep it uphill when you can just take a break at the first stream you find on the opposite side?

Well, the opposite side was a totally different landscape. I saw no clean, flowing water on the northern slope. If I understand it right, here's why: it makes a big difference what people are doing with the land. The north side is mostly forestry, the south not so much. Removing and replanting trees changes the way water runs off, which changes the face of the mountain. Now, instead of gray, gravelly stuff, I was riding through brown muck. What water I saw was a milky, murky mess, some of it flowing in shallow rivulets through the mud, most of it in ice-cold pools dug by truck tires. I would learn later that this is one of the most renowned four-by-four tracks in Tasmania.

Skirting the pools requires technique and balance. When you fail at that, or when there's just no way around, you can try biking straight through. Oh, do I wish I had video of me doing that! Knee-deep even while standing on the pedals, kicking up what I hope was a giant rooster tail. (Probably not so giant. I'm a draft horse.) But at least it felt like it looked cool.

When the pools get too deep, your last option is to hike-a-bike through. The mud pulls at your tires like it wants to keep them and ice water fills your shoes. Mine were so filthy that the next day the only way I could think to clean them was to wear them into the shower. Booster was so thoroughly caked in mud that once I got to a bike shop, the owner rushed to the door to say I couldn't bring her in.

The upshot is, mud is exhausting. The ride down was so much harder than the ride up, I'd expended too much energy, and I didn't have enough water. I was also out of peanut M&Ms, which, I mean, come on. That makes everything harder. When you're tired and under-M&Med, you start making worse choices.

In hindsight I should have quit earlier. I wanted to, but part of getting that black belt is a bunch of other black belts beating the quit out of you, so that's not an appealing choice for me. Maybe that's grit, maybe it's macho bullshit. Either way, I wanted to quit a bunch of times already that day, and the default response beaten into me is when you want to quit, that's when you don't quit. Usually it makes your life better, but not always.

Booster and I failed while daring greatly. The dare that cost us the most was charging through what turned out to be the deepest pool yet. Shin deep, then knee, then hip, then down we went. Booster bent a brake rotor and I had to switch my thinking about hypothermia from theoretical risk to genuine threat.

The best $200 I spent preparing for this adventure was a wilderness first aid course. I graduated the weekend before I left, so hyopthermia protocols were still fresh in my mind. Getting wet clothes off and dry clothes on, erecting a shelter, putting insulation between you and the ground, drinking something hot, eating something sugary to fire up your metabolism, all of those things should happen in the right order. First on the list, though, is quit doing whatever it is you're doing that's making this situation worse.

I found a middle ground between the black belt and the first responder: I almost quit. I kinda sorta quit. What I really did was change my goal: instead of getting to town, I just wanted to get below the snow line. That would earn me a (slightly) warmer place to set camp before nightfall. Most riders are so much faster than me that they'd have had hours more daylight to press on, but they're not in the running for Worst Bikepacker in Australia. Plus, as I would learn the next morning, the road from this point got much, much worse. Others could have ridden it, but not me. Not with Booster in the shape she was in, not with her in prime condition, and certainly not in the dark.

At this point I have only a vague idea of where I am: some way down from the summit, not sure how far, not willing to go further to try to find out. GPS is still no help. No phone signal. I'm kicking myself for not filtering water on the way up the mountain, and for not stopping to melt snow before getting lower down. Or at least I think I'm kicking myself, though my feet have been frozen senseless for over an hour.

But I've got a couple of things working in my favor too. First, my puffy coat, which had been strapped to my handlebars when Booster and I went down, didn't soak all the way through. Second, the dry bag it's supposed to live in (also home to my sleeping bag and everything else I need to ward off hypothermia) popped off shortly after the fall, but I saw I'd lost it (no guarantee in this sport) and found no sharp rocks had cut it open. Third, I've been carrying way too much food.

I've run out of food in the wild before, and it sucks. I came pretty close to dying of hypothermia once too, and that really sucks. One defense against that is to eat something. So I routinely travel with too much food, which in this case was exactly the right amount. There wasn't a grocery store in Judbury, so I'd planned to resupply in New Norfolk. But I still had half a pack of black beans and rice, plus a little tub of peanut butter as an emergency cache.

I still don't know how that dry bag managed to slip out of three Voile straps. I'm a little surprised it floats. And since it floats, I worried when I open it I'd find muddy ice water had seeped in. When I pack it, I push most of the air out--just about all, or so I'd thought--so if the counterpressure is enough to draw air in, it's probably enough to drink some water too. So the whole time I'm pitching the tent, I'm thinking please don't be wet please don't be wet please don't be wet. Because if it is, hypothermia is all but certain. Peanut butter and a damp puffy coat won't be enough.

Then I remember my personal locator beacon. Hitting the SOS button on that little guy is the ultimate admission of defeat. But I tell myself if the sleeping bag is wet, that's it, you're tapping out. Hit the button.