Julian Edgar, 50, has been writing about car modification and automotive technology for nearly 25 years. He has owned cars with two, three, four, five, six and eight cylinders; single turbo, twin turbo, supercharged, diesel and hybrid electric drivelines. He lists his transport interests as turbocharging, aerodynamics, suspension design and human-powered vehicles.
A Riding Holiday
Look, to be honest, I felt certain something would go wrong.
Too many links in the chain. Too many uncertainties.
Driving from the Gold Coast to Brisbane airport. Catching a plane to Melbourne. Staying with friends for a few nights in Melbourne then catching the train to Wangaratta. Camping in a caravan park, then leisurely riding bikes the 100-odd kilometres to Bright along the bicycle-and-joggers rail trail, following the path of the old railway line.
And then back again.
Camping each night. Finally, the train and plane and car back to the Gold Coast.
Complete all the way with two folding Brompton bikes, two folding Burley bike trailers, full camping gear – and two adults and one three-and-half-year-old.
Broken spokes, collapsing tents, exhaustion, mishap and injury. Gears that wouldn’t mesh, gears that were wrong ratios. Getting lost and misjudging basics like water or matches. Trains that didn’t arrive; taxis that didn’t appear. Broken chains, fractured towbars, irritability and anarchy.
Except they didn’t happen. Occasional irritability excepted.
It was no scaling of Everest, plodding to the North Pole or even back-packing across Europe. But to us, it was a challenge in capitals.
Not, you understand, a challenge as to whether we could do it. Of course we could. But it was a challenge as to whether we’d enjoy doing it.
And we did. Enjoy it I mean.
Writing this a few days after getting back, I’m still rather surprised about that…
on June 16th, 2008 at 10:42 am
Looks like you had a fun holiday. It is good to see that there are facilities such as this trail available as the danger of riding on the road puts so many people off.
I thought you might be interested in the car that Uni SA has put together it fits your interest in trikes & fuel economy. Might make a good article.
[http://www.unisa.edu.au/solarcar/trev/
on June 17th, 2008 at 11:32 am
I remember that feeling when piling out of our friends’ car (.. here looks a good place to start..) and then you’re off, hoping all will be well. And it seems you didn’t leave your helmet on the train like I did another time, which I didn’t realise until later, after we had assembled all our gear…
on October 23rd, 2008 at 10:44 am
Julian really knows how to have a great time outdoors while being good to the environment. Really impressed with his positive attitude and sense of adventure. We took our twin daughters on their first camping trip when they were 6 weeks old. I understand the little bumps in the road and hurddles that come up while the little ones are with you.
on May 12th, 2009 at 5:02 pm
Every one to their own taste – but my idea of “roughing” it is NOT having 24hour room sevice 🙂