"Wow, how did you qualify for a Nationals mountain bike competition?"
That was a question posed to me about a month away from the Singlespeeds event, and was a fairly simple one to answer; "Well I had $60 and I own a singlespeed".
And yes, that's pretty much it. But there's something else that draws people from all around the country to make the pilgrimage to the annual Singlespeed Nationals event. The decision to enter a competition that involves a full weekend surrounded by beer-drinking, bearded, tattooed, singlespeeding hippies, is not one to be made lightly, though when the idea was floated around the walls at My Mountain between the few deviant singlespeeders that lurk amongst us, a weekend with some mates riding some of the best singletrack in Australia did sound very tempting.
The action-mobile, ready for the big drive. Kudos to Troy for packing the car, years of Tetris have obviously paid off.
Whilst I was already up in Canberra swanning around for Trek World, the three stooges packed all their bike gear, spare undies, stubbie holders and camping gear into the back of a very squashed Subaru for the 8 hour drive. Troy, Tim and Mat split the drive, stopping off at some key destination spots to liven up the road trip, including a visit to the "Dog on the Tuckerbox". Apparently I was incredibly un-Australian for having no idea what that was, though Troy ensured that Tim acquired evidence of this incredible landmark so I would be able to see what I had missed out on. Given that they made the effort to stop there in the first place, it confirmed to me that the Hume Highway had claimed another 3 victims, destroying their very souls and reducing their brains to new levels of boredom.
That's Mat on the left, Troy on the right, and the God-like Dog on the Tuckerbox in the middle.
Arriving in Canberra around Friday lunchtime, the lads set up camp at the scouts ground just at the foot of Marjura Pines forrest. I caught up with Dave at Canberra airport, and we shared a taxi over to the campground, both babbling with chatter about the weekends activities ahead.
Making our rendezvous at the camp ground with the lads, we set out to acquire supplies to last us the next 4 days, primarily some cases of beer and then some cases of other beer that tasted slightly different.
Our first taste of the Singlespeeds event was a meeting at a local pub that was just a short "10 minute" ride over the hill to Dickson, though we quickly found out that the time estimate provided may not have been for singlespeed mountain bikes, but perhaps for some kind of teleportation device. A gut-busting climb and a generous 40 minutes later, we were sipping beers and munching on pub food as we began to mingle and chat with all the other crazies that had decided to participate in the event. Although clearly outnumbered by locals, us Melbournians put in a good show, and we made up a significant portion of those riders who could be bothered to participate in the Friday night Alley Cat around Canberra.
Mat, being a seasoned Alley Cat racer in his hometown, shot off ahead of the pack before we could put our pint glasses back on the bar and we quickly realised that the "team" idea had kind of been abandoned. Nonetheless, we set off to find various tidbits of information around the city as it gave us a chance to see the sights and sounds of Canberra on a starry Friday night.
Being a singlespeed event, of course the last clue for the Alley Cat had something to do with a pub, and a damn fine one at that. The Wig & Pen then played host to a collection of dirty, hairy, lycra-clad cyclists who spent the night sampling the many fine beers on tap and discussing important issues like gear ratios, tubeless tyres and the advantages of modern carbon fibre frames for singlespeeding.
Whilst absorbing much of what Canberra had to offer into our livers, Tim was busy punching away on his iPhone, apparently "Twittering" Gary Fisher, who had been in town for Trek World that week and was out for dinner for his last night before heading back home to San Francisco. After various "Tweets" back and forth, Tim recommended we head to a nearby pub to see where the big man was, and low-and-behold, there he was, all 6'4" of him with a huge Akubra hat in the middle of a tacky Irish pub in Canberra.
Looking back at this photo, I'm not sure that Dave would have believed you if you had told him a month ago that he would be in Canberra taking a photo with his mates with his head just inches away from Gary Fisher's crotch.
After the lads had fanned themselves down, we managed to string together a few sentences to make conversation with Gary, discussing various things like beer, his newly acquired Akubra, Peak Oil, S&M clubs, how good 29ers are and politics, he was then kind enough to take a couple of photos with us. Standing out like a sore thumb, the man is incredibly charismatic and poses quite the profile - I'm sure that even if you had no idea what mountain biking was, you would be able to tell from a distance that this guy was some sort of famous character. More beers were consumed, we muttered our "goodbyes", "thanks" and "oh my god I love you!" to Gary and the decision to head to a different bar was made, so we headed back to our bikes to ride to the next destination.
Upon reaching our bikes however, a startling discovery was made - two of the three locks had been cut through, and instead of 5 bikes, there were now 4. You may recall an earlier blog entry about 5 weeks ago detailing a custom paint job that both Mark and I had done to our bikes, painting them green and detailing them with custom white My Mountain graphics. Well, my green bike was no longer attached to the others and was nowhere to be seen.
Recalling this part of the weekend still makes me feel sick in the stomach, and if you've ever had a bike stolen, you will know what I mean. Where a bike had been about 40 minutes ago, there was now just an empty space, with a hacked up lock being the only evidence that there may have been a bike there previously. Well, it was like having my heart ripped out of my chest, I was, for lack of a better word, completely devastated. Not only had I just built the bike up the week before after having it custom painted, this bike was also donned with the custom wheels I had built up myself earlier that year, and every part of it was a carefully planned-out specification that I had spent many hours agonizing over. For me, losing that bike was like losing a family member.
Combine that feeling with the realisation that I now had no way of getting back to the campsite, and I had no bike to actually ride in the singlespeed race that weekend, and you have some idea of what went through my head in the following 10 minutes as I stared blankly at the pole we had locked our bikes to.
Luckily, one of our friends who was hanging out with us that night was a Canberra local, and was able to hook me up with a lift back to the campsite (thanks Tucker!) so I didn't have to walk back. Although the lads offered to buy me some strong beverages to numb the pain, after the incredible high of drinking with Gary Fisher, and then the incredible low of having my bike stolen, there was not much energy left in my body to do so.
So, what a way start to the weekend! Believe it or not, there is a happy end to this story, though you'll have to wait for Part 2 to hear about that. In the mean time, here's one of the other photos we managed to get with Fisher, partly for your enjoyment, and partly to cheer me up!
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