Farewell Darb!

Darb is moving permanently to Tasmania.  Today was our last chance to ride with him before the move.  He suggested we ride some local trails, because that’s “where it all began” for many of us.

We’ve been to some amazing places, and done some bat-shit crazy things – but that’s what good riding buddies do.  Today was tame by comparison, but it was still fun.

We met at the “Jurassic” car park at Bunyaville.

We set off down the twists and bumps of “Jurassic”. Some on dual-suspension bikes, some on hard tails…

Justin took the prize for craziness, riding on his drop-bar CX bike.

Very impressive.

Then we took a quick climb back up the fire trail on our way to the next track.

“Waynes World”…

…then “Zig Zag”.

The back way out of Bunyaville is a bit steep in places.  We dropped down to the creek, and up the other side.

The good thing about this route is that you can get from Bunyaville to Ironbark without having to ride on much road at all.  It’s almost all bush except for the last couple of hundred metres.

I’m going to miss trying to keep up with Darb and those fat tyres.

We rode through the plantation at Surrey Farm Park…

…then took a quick break to let everyone catch up.

Darb led us up the hill to Ironbark.

After grinding up the hill for half an hour, we had a lot of fun riding down Kombi,

When we ride our bikes, lots of things go through our heads.  But when we ride down tracks like this, we are usually focused on only one thing – the track ahead.

Riding single tracks is one of the best ways I know to “be in the moment”.

Repeat and rinse.  We climbed another fire trail, then came down another fun single track – “Sunset Ridge”.

I was amazed at how well Justin handled it on his rigid bike.

Jason was running late and eventually caught up with us mid way through our loop at Ironbark.  He mentioned something about sleeping in because he had “brown bottle fever”.  It took me a while to figure out what he meant – I think it had something to do with what was inside the bottles, rather than the actual bottles them.

At the top of the hill, we took another break at “Three Ways”.

Rebecca and John had fun on the dirt mound while the rest of us caught our breath.

Last week Drew told me about how he spends a lot of time flying between Brisbane and Sydney.

Today he spent a lot time flying over the dirt.

We were all amazed at how much “air” he got. 

The last track at Ironbark was “Pipeline”.  We followed it out to the water tank and back…

…then pedaled hard up the hill.

I wondered to myself if Darb was ticking these tracks off in his head.

“Well that’s the last time I’ll be riding this track for a while…”

Who knows what goes on in another mountain bikers head?

Back at Bunyaville, we completed the ride by going down “Creek Track”.

I love this trail.  It’s the first single track I ever rode.  I think I went over the handlebars a few times on my first attempt.

Lots of rocks and tree roots.  It’s another one of those “in the moment” tracks where you are totally absorbed by the vision of dirt and rocks ahead of your front tyre.

One more steep grind up a fire trail.  Some walked.  Some rode.

Then down “Carnage” with its awesome little rock garden at the bottom.

Af the end of the ride we all made our way down to the local pub to have lunch with our guest of honor.

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This was a reasonably short ride. Thirty-two kilometres with about 900 metres of climbing.

It took us about four and a half hours, and I burned about 2,000 kcal.

I’ll rate it 7.5 out of 10 on the tough-o-meter.

Thanks everyone for a great ride….

…and good-bye, my friend. Thanks for being part of some amazing adventures. I’m sad to see you go, and hope to see you soon.