10 Jan 2023
At the Melbourne airport I was nervous as usual that something would go wrong with getting my bike checked in, but it all went pretty smoothly. Then I was nervous again about possibly getting travel sick, but I think any nausea I felt was just because of anxiety, not physical sickness.
Ah and then we landed and I got my bike box from the oversize baggage pickup and it all began. I had to put my bike together, which largely involved pumping up my fat tyres fully. I had forgotten to fully deflate one of them, and that one was fine. It was so much effort to pump up my fully flattened tyre with my pocket rocket that I definitely won't be doing that again! I think that is really just an urban myth, perhaps tyres should be partly deflated so they don't get popped by pressure changes on the plane, but no one actually checks. So if you feel happy that your tubes won't pop, keep them as inflated as you like.
It took probably a good two hours for me to get my bike all sorted, including putting my handlebars on three times because I thought I put it on wrong the first time, but then realised nope NOW it is definitely wrong. The airport also decided to have a fire warning blasting for half an hour telling us to stand by, but never actually asked us to evacuate.
I finally left with my fully loaded fatty, which I had not ridden in probably a year and slowly made my way to the anaconda in Cambridge, where I got a jetboil fuel cannister, sunscreen and Bushman's. They only had the medium size fuels so I got that one even though I'm pretty sure I would only be able to get through a small. So unfortunately, more weight (and probably a waste of fuel since I can't take it back home).
I saw a cafe as I walked out of Anaconda so decided, I've already done a fair bit of work today with all that bike pumping, I'm going to treat myself. I had a beautiful avo and poached eggs on toast and a soy latte. My favourite things about holidays are travelling, cycling, and good food, so I'll probably burn through my money I've set aside for this trip fairly quickly in cafes.
I made my way to Rosny Park to get some food at coles for the next few days. I found myself wishing I got a taxi or even a bus if there was one available, as this road had no shoulder and was a bit winding in places. After the coles it was time to make my way into Hobart by crossing the Tasman Bridge. That was also pretty terrible, the pedestrian and bike section is only slightly wider than my bike, and the crosswind is STRONG. I didn't feel comfortable enough with my bike handling on this brand new setup to ride so I walked the 1.5km across the bridge. Every time someone overtook me or passed me from the opposite direction, we had to play a mini game of tetris to get our handlebars past each other, which also meant the other person would have to get off their bike.
I finally made it into Hobart at around 5pm and was feeling very tired and a bit scattered. I decided I would make it to the western edge of Hobart before calling an uber to get up to The Lea campsite. I was still recovering from a cold so I already knew there was a pretty good chance I would need to catch a ride on my first day before having a few days rest to start my trip. I got to a Hungry Jack's, feeling too tired to cook dinner that night so I got dinner there while finding a ride that could fit my bike. There was no XL option on Uber in Hobart for some reason, so I picked comfort, hoping that meant a bigger than usual car, and got my bike ready to chuck into a boot.
The Uber showed up and he told me it was good that he got my request, as some other comfort cars aren't as big and would have had trouble fitting my bike. Oop, guess I got lucky with this one. He took me up to The Lea, asking me what had happened, presumably thinking I had been hurt or something! I explained I just wasn't quite fit enough to get to my first campsite, but I would be good from there. I rode a total of 25kms today.
Arriving at the first campsite, it looked beautiful and definitely looked like a great place to spend a few days. It was only $10 a night and had a bunch of amenities, I would definitely recommend! It is also close to Kingston so makes for a 12km round trip to stock up if needed.
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