Cape York to Sydney ebike ride - events along the way

voicecoils

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Sydney, NSW, Australia
I'm going on a huge ebike ride on an eZee Foeza. If you're between cape York and Sydney, come say hello and ride a few km with me on my way down.

Our webpage on the ride, itinerary and live updates feed are all at http://glowwormbicycles.com.au/cape-york-sydney-ride

Cheers, Maurice

I've pasted details from our website below:

Sydney is doing its best impression of winter and our response is to go on another classic eZee electric bicycle epic, from the tropical top end of cape york, along the East Coast and back to the spiritual home of e-bikes in Australia - Glow Worm Bicycles in Sydney's innerwest. The trip is to start at the tip in early August and finish back in Sydney mid September, roughly according to the schedule below.

The riders: Maurice hopes to ride the entire trip, sand, dirt and everything. Kaitlin and my sister Natalya plan to join in the Cairns - Rockhampton section; less crocodile, more snorkelling with tropical fish. You're also welcome to join in on sections of this ride. It would be lovely to ride in and out of some towns with locals, electric assisted or not! We hope to have a fair contingent for the last part into Marrickville.

The route: Cairns to Musgrave and back, on 800km of mountain bike and crocodile territory, through the Daintree along the infamous Bloomfield Track to Cape Tribulation, then to Cooktown and on to visit the remote community of Hope Vale to meet the school kids and show them my e-bike. Onwards it continues through lakefield national park, cape Melville and to Musgrave, where I turn around and head back to cairns. From Cairns the ride will go southward along the water, traversing the entire Great Barrier Reef at the speed of an electrified bicycle. Brisbane will be reached via the Sunshine Coast or Toowoomba (suggestions please?) for a tour of local bike shops wishing to view the motorised bicycle that went where no other has ever gone before. From Brisbane the route will head ever Marrickville-ward, along the New England or the Coast, depending on public demand...

The bikes: this ride will showcase the soon-to-be-released electric mountain bike from eZeebike, the new and improved eZee Forza MTB. The Forza MTB uses the same frame as the current model Forza but will come standard with rear wheel motor and Schwalbe Marathon Plus MTB tyres for those loose surfaced roads, L1000 lumen e-bike headlight powered by the 36V lithium e-bike battery to see everything coming, upgraded front shock for bigger bumps and 11-34T rear cassette for more gear range to pull me up those sandhills. eZeebikes now have the option of a whopping 36V 20Ah lithium battery on all models and this, of course, will be the battery used on this ride. Kaitlin and Natalya will be riding in style on eZee Sprints, the same trusty steed that took us over the Tasmanian Central Plateau.

This ride of epic distance, including sections rarely attempted on two wheels, will be done on an e-bike you can buy 'off the shelf'! We're more than a little proud of how good our e-bikes are and challenge anyone to find a bike for sale in Australia (or in the world) that is capable of doing half the trips that eZeebikes have done. If anyone thinks they've found one, we'll count you in for this ride :)

If you know of any bike shops that I should visit or bicycle/community groups along the way that would be interested to round up a few people for a casual meeting, please let them and me know!

I'll be doing info sessions, test ride days, Q&A about the e-bike revolution, meeting with cycling and environment groups and with any bike shops that would like to do a bit of cross promotion and check out what the fuss is about. If you'd like to help organise, help promote or even just attend one of these sessions, please contact us. I'm also happy for people to ride with me into or out of their towns. Here's the tentative schedule:

August 5 - first e-biker to set off into Cape York.

August 5 - 9 - ride through Daintree National Park, along The Bloomfield Track and out to Cooktown

August 9 - Meet the school kids at Hope Vale school

August 9-19 Ride through Lakefield National Park, Cape Melville and back to Cairns

August 20 - Arrive Cairns for a public event (please come!)

August 20 - Sep 1 Ride Cairns to Mackay with Kaitlin and Natalya, hope to do promo events in Townsville and Mackay.

Sep 3 - Rockhampton public test ride day and event/group ride. Contact Brian for details 0417326642

Sep 3 - Sep 6 - Ride at record breaking speed from Rockhampton to Brisbane. 

Sep 8 - Public event in Brisbane at Mt Ommaney library, hosted by Sustainable Jamboree. 1pm-3pm. Contact Garry for details 0411402982

Sep 8 - Sep 12 Ride Brisbane to Newcastle. Route will depend on interest of groups to do promo events in towns such as Byron Bay, Lismore, Armidale, Coffs, Port Macquarie, Bellingen and Tamworth

Sep 12 - Public event in Newcastle and mass ride (everyone invited!) from Newcastle to Glow Worm Bicycles in Marrickville

Sep 14 - Finishing party at Glow Worm Bicycles, all welcome
 
Maurice & I couldn't both take such a long trip, so I'm staying in Sydney and working with the rest of the 'worm crew to keep the shop running smoothly :D

Before he left, we set him up with an GrinTech DC-DC converter to charge his camera, phone and tablet. With a battery that stays within 30-42v, I found the one labeled as 18-70v in and 6v output option the best, as it actually gave 5.1-5.2v, perfect for USB. For Apple devices, they wouldn't charge unless you momentarily shorted the 2 data wires. Then charging would kick in even if you disconnected the data lines again. Fortunately that was discovered just in the nick of time on the night of his departure!

I'm looking forward to seeing him do some river crossings holding his ebike over his head and evidence that he's eaten at least 1 goanna. :lol:

He's carrying just a hair under 1.5 kWh and once we get some range and battery consumption figures, we'll start to get a feel of his rate of energy consumption and practical daily distance to travel.

Cheer, Abraham
 
Voicecoil's turn next on the Savannah trail from cairns to Broome to continue our marketing plan of riding the least populous parts of Australia.

Note inch the apple charger, you have to keep those two wires shorted or charging will stop later on. I'm loving the charger though, it's keeping my devices going which is keeping me sane. 5 hours to go!

Maurice
 
After 40+ hours on the bus from Sydney, Maurice has arrived in Cairns, Queensland. He's carrying all his stuff plus the Forza MTB and 2 other ebikes for his riding partners who will be joining him in a few weeks.

I expected he'd have someone to pick him up when he arrived, but it seems not. Looks like he's spending the night on a park bench assembling bikes with a tiny toolset!

arrival-1.jpg
arrival-2.jpg
arrival-3.jpg
arrival-4.jpg
 
Day 1 Ride Summary

Maurice road from Cairns to Port Douglas, 70 km on one 37v20Ah battery with capacity remaining.

Before he can start heading back to Sydney, he still has to make his way to the top. By my reckoning, he's got quite a way to go (4,000 km+ or 2,500mi+) :lol:

Here's a simplified map, perhaps we can get some feedback from Maurice as to which routes he'll be taking exactly.

cape-york-trip.jpg
 
Yay maurice! This is a fantastic journey. I'll ride along for a few k's when ya get MUCH closer to Sydney.

I have one question which will no doubt be referenced at some point. I thought i'd get in first.
Do you put yourself more on the "space cowboy" or the "gangsta of love" side of things?... :lol:

These mega rides you guys at glowworm do are brilliant.
 
Cool. What a fantastic ride. Hope you guys can keep us updated with photos. You should be heading through some awesome scenery.

All the best on another Epic journey by Glowworm Bicycles.
 
Thanks for the well wishing Hobbit & Adrian_SM. I'm sure Maurice appreciates the support!

Looks like he's somewhere between 166 - 210 km into the ride now on Day 3.

So far I haven't had to express post him any replacement parts, so things must be going pretty well :lol:

cape-york1.jpg
 
Go for it Maurice! Should get easier from now.... Isn't it all downhill from there?? :mrgreen:
 
Since my last update of Maurice's big ride, he's been pedalling along and joined by his girlfriend & sister who have joined him for a 750km section.

cape-york-ride.jpg

They're now at Midge Point QLD and Maurice recently ticked over 2,000 km on his bike computer, but still has quite a ways to go to get to Sydney!

If anyone wants to read back through his blog/diary of the trip or keep up to date, it can be found here:
http://glowworms.posterous.com/

An now for a few photos he's taken along the way recently:
york-trip-small.jpg
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Maurice will be giving a talk in Mt Ommaney QLD on the 8th of September.

All he needs to do is ride around 1000km in 8 days to make it on time :lol:

See the attached flyer for details and come along if you are near by!
 

Attachments

  • Maurice Talk Sat 8 Sept 2012 v2.pdf
    559.7 KB · Views: 189
Just met up with Maurice at the spit on the Gold Coast with a few other ebikers and we had a bit of a joy ride around the seaway.

Good to meet up with other ebikers and it was a great ride on a beautiful day.

I think Oldhaq got some pictures, so hopefully he could post them up later.
 
It looks like this epic journey is nearly over. Abraham / Maurice, are things still on track for your return to Sydney tomorrow ?
I'm working but hopefully can sneak off early to meet up with you for the final leg of the trip.
Any other Sydney siders heading in ?
 
Hey maurice,
this is just awesome I just found this thread .........all I can say is wow.........and amazing.........really amazing
 
Hyena said:
It looks like this epic journey is nearly over. Abraham / Maurice, are things still on track for your return to Sydney tomorrow ?
I'm working but hopefully can sneak off early to meet up with you for the final leg of the trip.
Any other Sydney siders heading in ?

He's planning to be back tomorrow (Friday) arriving at the shop at 6PM.
I'll believe it only when I see it!

BYO with a limited supply of drinks to kick things off :)

A local artist will be launching a new mural on our chalkboard outside too.
 
Another little update: If anyone would like to join Maurice riding his final leg of the trip, he'll be at the Opera House steps from 3:30PM tomorrow, departing at 4PM for our shop to welcome him home.
 
Here's some pics that Ollie and Andrae at electric crooze took on Sunday, the pics I took didn't turn out for some reason...never used the camera in my work phone before :oops:
in no particular order...
IMG_1968.JPGIMG_1969.JPGIMG_1971.JPGIMG_2747.jpgView attachment 6IMG_2754.JPGIMG_2759.JPGView attachment 3IMG_2762.JPG

Here's some aerial views of where we rode that I grabbed from the web
the spit.jpgthe spit2.jpg
It was great to talk to Maurice about his trip, I've done Cape York in a 4wd, but on an e-bike is one hell of a feat.
 
Cool pics.
I'm really hoping to attend but have been struck down by Murphys law. My fighter is currently without a crank so can't ride that, my commuter has crap hanging off it left right and centre and would be an embarrasment to ride in such esteemed company so I thought it's good motivation for finishing off my custom diamondback last night. I have an old HS3540 with a cooked hall so replaced all 3 last night, put it back together and took it for a test ride to the end of the street and back. All good, then today on the way to work it drops dead. Must have been a broken/cut wire inside the axle rather than the hall itself and when I hit the rear brakes hardish it was enough to shift it.
So the race is on to try and get off work early, get home and fix it then get back into town before 4. Considering the very earliest I could leave work is 2 I dont like my chances :(

Ironic that Maurice can ride several thousand km from the northern most tip of the continent but I can't make it 30ks into town :|
 
Woot, got my bike fixed, made it into the city 20 minutes late but Maurice is running an hr late so all good. Geez mate get your act together, if you're going to ride from the other end of the country non stop for a month you could atleast be on time :p
So far it's a welcoming party of 1, I thought there'd be a few more for this final leg
 
Im loocking at doing a comparable trip ( arond australia including cape yourk) on a solar charderd etrike leving in the next few months, can you give me any info about the best way to tackle cape yourk, from an ebike pwerspective how deep do river crossings tend to be? what route would you recomend?
thanks
 
Glow worms are out riding again, this time Maurice & myself joined by W W Ching of eZeebike. Riding from Perth to Sydney, detailed here:
http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=52355
 
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