Forked

After Saturday's attempted century I will be forced to fork out once again, as my front forks are now totally destroyed. The problem seems to have resulted from wear and tear rather than any specific incident. I now have three weeks to have it ready in time for the Midnight Century -- which I am planning to turn into a 300km ride by riding to the start in Ipswich.

The shame of it all was that I had started Saturday's ride in brilliant form in the patchy rain. I had slaughtered the Tomewin climb, and done something similar to the hills en route to Tyalgum. Along the way there had been a few showers, but the temperature was largely cooperating, and I had the pleasure of watching clouds hovering around the surrounding ranges.

Even after leaving Tyalgum everything seemed to be falling into place. This is the start of the 420 metre climb on dirt roads into Wollumbin National Park. The mud patches made things tricky at times, but generally it was still very negotiable. The forests here take on a whole new quality in the rain, as the lower level eucalypt forests lose some of their hardness, while the rainforest is master when there is moisure in the air.

I descended the mountain and decided to loop around through Byrill Creek and on to Uki for lunch. This was again, a very pretty ride, but these days is subject to this stupid Tweed Shire Council habit of watering dirt roads when it's already raining. Sections of this stretch were like quicksand. These days, however, the dirt doesn't go as far as it used to, and I was back on the sealed roads before the heavier rain started. It was on the seal that I realised the forks were just about history.
I considered my options, at first figuring that if I stayed on sealed roads all the way home, they might hold together. A cross-plank bridge across the Tweed River put paid to that idea, and left me with a 7km walk to Uki to find a telephone. Many times I have sung the praises of the Uki Cafe on various cycling fora over the years, this day was payback time. They were all very friendly while I waited for a ride home. It wasn't really a fitting way to end what had promised to be an epic ride, but it just wasn't to be.
I spent most of last night moping around, and concluded that a mechanical failure like this is even worse than a crash. I'll probably feel differently if I ever crash again (I don't plan on doing so), but either way, abandoned rides don't sit pretty with me. Today I did some minor work on the brakes of The Black Magic, the bike that will probably serve me for the next week or so. I haven't even thought about what the new forks will cost, but I'll likely go for something a little more robust this time around. I also need to use the MTB more often for the dirt. While the hybrid copes more than adequately, perhaps it's not quite up to riding to hell and back.