[AUS] Canberra ebike ride - 24th or 26th of March

Well I've just arrived and everything here is properly soaked! I doubt the trails will dry out by tomorrow afternoon...
I guess we can play it by ear.
 
Hyena said:
Well I've just arrived and everything here is properly soaked! I doubt the trails will dry out by tomorrow afternoon...
I guess we can play it by ear.
I got totally soaked riding home at 5.00 pm. I am going to put a diy fender on the rear of the alpha tonight and balance the pack so the bike will be ready. So CD do you reckon the tracks on the planned route will be rideable? I guess it depends how much rain we get tonight and tomorrow.
 
I reckon the trails will be dry enough to ride, but we will still get muddy. A fender is definitely a good idea.
That dump this afternoon was the last of it so I still think we are still good to go.


The first off-road part of the planned route has very few 'wet' sections so it will be a good gauge for whether we want to do the second half which has a few more muddy/poorly drained sections.

Jay if you need us to bring you any gear to cope with the mud let us know. I have a spare rear fender floating around I think.

Cheers
 
Cool, my bike is now sort of mud resistant and pack is topped up and balanced.
Just to confirm are we meeting at 1.30 or 2 and at the bbq area on the NW side of commonwealth ave. bridge?
CD could you pm your phone number in case there's any change of plan?
 
IanM said:
Cool, my bike is now sort of mud resistant and pack is topped up and balanced.
Just to confirm are we meeting at 1.30 or 2 and at the bbq area on the NW side of commonwealth ave. bridge?
CD could you pm your phone number in case there's any change of plan?
Yep, that's the plan. Meet at 1:30 for a 2PM departure.

I'll flick a PM around now.

Cheers
 
Great ride today guy's! I had a blast and it was great to meet up with some fellow enthusiasts.
Here's a few GoPro snaps I took, but I would say Jay's phone photo's will turn out far better.

GOPR0030.jpg

GOPR0037_Large.jpg


I would like to make a video, but we didn't have time for me to get Jay's GoPro footage. Does anyone know of a free large file transfer platform we could use to transfer roughly 30GB?

Cheers
 
Thanks for having me guys and showing me your sweet trails! I'll upload some pics and vids when I get back.
In the mean time you can see the facebook live vid I shot from the top of the mountain on my FB page (link in my dog below)

On the off chance anyone wants to skip work tomorrow I'll be headed back out for another ride in the morning before heading back to Sydney
 
Hyena said:
Thanks for having me guys and showing me your sweet trails! I'll upload some pics and vids when I get back.
In the mean time you can see the facebook live vid I shot from the top of the mountain on my FB page (link in my dog below)
I'm keen to take a stab at making the video if you wanna upload your footage for me to work with. Sent you a PM with a place that should work.

Cheers
 
Hyena said:
facebook live vid I shot from the top of the mountain on my FB page (link in my dog below)
dog - thanks autocorrect. :lol:
Here's the vid for those that couldn't work that out!

https://www.facebook.com/hyenaelectricbikes/videos/1294793750607904/

I ended up getting in a few more rides while down there - most of the way around the lake to the base of black mountain (but ran out of time before I could find an entrance to the trail) , got some good shots along the way and then retraced our steps from Friday. I actually wasn't paying a heap of attention to all the twist and turns we took but managed to find my way back to the same places + a few others. I noticed some huge houses and thought it must have been a rich area but then noticed the flags and guards with guns and realised they were embassies. The guard on the gate of the Iranian embassy gave me a good looking up and down as I cruised past. :lol:

I had another few runs through that sweet single track in the pine forest and then ended up coming back off-course. There was a big aquaduct stretching for miles so I thought it'd be fun to get away from the bicycle and pedestrian traffic and go for a blast through there. And blast I did, winding it out to about 95km/hr like I there was a T-1000 in a truck on my tail :p That was all fun and games until I spotted ahead what looked to be a difference in ground level. I started to brake then skidded to a stop just a few inches from the edge of a sudden drop. Damn, that would have been nasty :shock:
 
Glad you got a chance to explore more of the area Jay.
Canberra really has a lot to offer. I've been here nearly 5 years and still discovering new stuff all the time.
That single track through the pine forest is one such example. I did know of it vaguely, but had never gone the full length till our ride on Friday. That is a sweet little nugget that's for sure.

When I first moved down here I had visions of making a Terminator style chase scene using my Fighter as those open storm water channels are everywhere. I never got around to it, but still keen if you want to next time your down this way.

The area we rode through with those big houses is actually where most of the diplomats live, not the embassy's themselves. Unless you mean back over closer to Parliament house. That's where most of the embassy's and consulates are.

Some of the better rides around Canberra involve trekking out into the mountains to the south-west. I've only down a handful, but they've all been epic rides. :)

Cheers
 
Cowardlyduck said:
I had visions of making a Terminator style chase scene using my Fighter as those open storm water channels are everywhere. I never got around to it, but still keen if you want to next time your down this way.
haha sounds good. I'll bring a chopper style ebike and a shotgun. Not sure what we'll do for a truck giving chase. It'd be funny to do it with a toy RC truck :lol:

The area we rode through with those big houses is actually where most of the diplomats live, not the embassy's themselves. Unless you mean back over closer to Parliament house. That's where most of the embassy's and consulates are.
I think I went a slightly different way than we did initially. I crossed the highway at the same point but ended up coming up a steeping road to the big concrete water tank where we entered the reserve. The embassies were on that uphill street from memory.

Some of the better rides around Canberra involve trekking out into the mountains to the south-west. I've only down a handful, but they've all been epic rides
Yeah as much as my alpha is a bit big and heavy for general riding the 32ah battery makes it great for exploring like this. I got lost a few times (tempted to be naughty and short cut through a golf course :p ) but even taking some big detours I barely went past 50% capacity and racked up 65km.
The extra top end was handy too on the way home when I decided to take the bike lanes on the main roads, which in many places require you to merge with onramps. A few times I went from pedaling sensibly at ~40km/hr to rapidly boost to 80 odd to out accelerate the approaching traffic to get across to the new bike lane, then casually dropped back to 40. :lol:
 
Yeah, dam you make me wanna finish my Alpha build and cram 40 odd AH in there and go bush.

Those on/off ramp bike lanes are nasty. I think I heard somewhere that Adelaide ave (major artery to the south full of those things) has Australia's highest incidence of major cycling injury's/deaths and I would guess it's because of all those stupid green bike lanes the traffic has to cross.

Cheers
 
Cowardlyduck said:
Yeah, dam you make me wanna finish my Alpha build and cram 40 odd AH in there and go bush.

Those on/off ramp bike lanes are nasty. I think I heard somewhere that Adelaide ave (major artery to the south full of those things) has Australia's highest incidence of major cycling injury's/deaths and I would guess it's because of all those stupid green bike lanes the traffic has to cross.

Cheers
Yeah it would've been nice to have some more AH on board on Friday, with my heavy throttle hand I burned through my 18s 20AH multi star pack too quickly :pancake: Thanks to Jason for the push back to the car park for the last couple of ks :D
I use those green bike lane areas a lot on my daily commute with pedal only bike mostly and it can be really sketchy, so many bad drivers it's scary.
 
Wow, you weren't kidding, that was a close one!

That being said, if you had kept some pace up I reckon you could have sailed over the drop and survived ok. Maybe it was the video, but it didn't look like a huge drop.

I know exactly where that is too...chances are if you stacked it, no one would have found you for quite some time...and you would have been swept away in the next down pour.

The fun part of those storm drains is riding up/down the sides. I've found some of them have annoyingly large drops between the concrete sections also, but it looked like that one was mostly smooth.

Cheers
 
Yeah the problem is I have my suspension set soft because of my bad back - it was only a ~ 2 foot drop but onto flat concrete at that speed it probably would have bottomed out pretty bad. I got caught off guard on my old raptor belting up a hill at around 80ks, launched off a surprise new water bar the council had dug in since I last rode there and landed hard, bottoming out and plowing the pedals into the ground. It threw my feet off, I ended up forward on the bars but somehow managed to stay on, so that was a bonus. haha.
The alphas do have more ground clearance so maybe I would have been OK, but given how bad my bones are these days, and according to my doctors I shouldn't be riding at all, I always err on the side of caution now.

BTW your usb arrived today, I'll send it back tomorrow with my footage :)
 
I was trying to edit and cut down some of my footage to make this video a succinct reflection of the ride, but I kept getting stuck trying to edit the single track section as it was just so awesome. So instead I just uploaded that footage on it's own as a separate thing.
Enjoy:
[youtube]S8TAxw43pRI[/youtube]

Cheers
 
Hey guy's, I finally finished making the video. Spent ages putting it together, so hopefully it doesn't disappoint.

Be sure to flick it into 1080HD.
[youtube]k7wqxH1B5Gc[/youtube]

I enjoyed that trail (the Spine) so much I went back recently with my Dad using my Fighter and a crappy 250W mid drive. Had a blast...again. I reckon that trail is one of my local favourites now. :D

Cheers
 
Awesome vid, great job on the editing. I still havent gotten around to doing my version yet :(
I like the outtakes at the end. I suspect Brian was completely unaware of my little 'emergency brake test' until he sees that! haha

PS: You spelled Hyena wrong :p
 
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