10pm on a Thursday night, it’s not real late and most people are up watching telly or something along those lines.  At 10pm on this particular Thursday night all I wanted to do was curl up in a table drain and die.  For about the last 4 hours riding a CT110 postie bike at near zero temperatures with a cracked out filling had finally gotten to me.  Not it was starting to get to me, it had gotten to me. It had finally done my head in.

why was I on a postie bike riding in the middle of the night?  That’s easy, I reckoned a postie bike could do a FarRide,  successfully ride 1000km in less than 24hrs unassisted.  This wasn’t just any old FarRide, this was the FarNat, the national meet, and I had also taken the hard option, the hard option was do the 1000km and do essentially a treasure hunt, where I had to go to certain places and take photos of the bike to get points.

My treasure hunt involved me going to towns and taking a photo of the town sign to build a word chosen from a list given to me a few wks before hand.  I wasn’t allowed to start getting photos before a certain time, and I had a single 24 hour period to collect all the photos I needed to, accomplish  1000km in that same time frame and be at a certain address before a certain time on the sunshine coast.  If I arrived even one minute late, all of my efforts would have been in vain.

So a few minutes after the earliest time I was allowed to start my run 3:31pm, I fuel the bike up, got a time dated docket and set forth along the roads of regional qld in the middle of winter. I soon arrived at the first photo location, the entrance to Rockhampton.

With that easy one out of the way, it was into town and to the nearest bike shop.  I could get more points if I had a photo taken with the bike parked in front of a bike shop with an employee of that shop in the photo.  There are 4 shops in Rockhampton plus any that I could in other towns.  I only ended up getting 2 shops, things were a little busy, and it was taking too long to get the photos done.

My next stop would see me head to the coast and yepoon, but I wasn’t after yepoon I was after another place.  Traffic was light and the postie was singing along at around 75km/hr according to the gps I had hard wired to the bike for this event only.

After stopping to take the photo at Farnborough, I turned south back through Yeppoon stopping to take a beach front photo for fun and to regain my composure after bird watching along the beach front….

This was when things went downhill for the night. I dug out my little bag of scroggin and hooked right in.  until that sharp pain…  it didn’t take me long to figure out the problem, dig into my med kit and out with the pain killers, which I figured would sort things out enough for me to get it looked at by a dentist when I could get a booking.

A painful short trip down to Emu Park for another photo, refuel the bike, and back to Rockhampton and further west for my next photo destination.

My next town stop was Dululu, for which I had to go past my home and that comfy warm bed and out into the hills behind Mount Morgan.  Nice twisty hilly roads that made for slow going on a postie bike. I had made my 2nd mistake going past my place, I should have stopped at the servo and refuelled,  but those painkillers still weren’t doing much of a job and I overlooked the fuel stop.

By now it was well and truly dark and well and truly cold.  Single figure’s cold.  Frost cold in fact.  I now had on all my thermals and an overcoat to keep warm.  Everything bar my toes were doing allright.

I arrived at Dululu without mishap, took the photo and it was here that I realized my error.  My plan was to continue down to Biloela, across to Calliope, down throught Many Peaks and across to Miriam Vale and onto Agnes Waters for my next photo stop.  Because I hadn’t fuelled up at Bouldercombe like I had intended, even with the extra 5 litre jerry can in the milk crate, I couldn’t make my next fuel stop.

So it was turn around and work hard all the way back through those hills back to Rockhampton for fuel.

I didn’t want to turn bak around and face those hills again so I was faced with running down the Bruce Highway to Miram Vale, around 170odd km.  A prospect I didn’t like either with all the traffic that would be on it.  My fuel stop lasted 20 mins in rocky.  The toothache was really getting to me by that time and there was a sharp pain fro the tooth right up to the eye socket.

The Bruce highway won out,  so I set forth like a rocket and made it about 35km before stopping.  the constant cold blasting into the helmet, the hot/cold air from breathing and the tears was really distracting me from riding almost to the point of making me a liability on the road, an accident waiting to happen.

After a few minutes of getting myself back together I decided that I was closer to Marmor than anywhere else and there was a 24hr servo there, so I pushed on to there, parking around the side and curling up in a ball.  At 10pm I was beaten.

I called Davo expecting to leave a message on his phone, but ended up talking to him, and I explained what was happening and that I was beat.  After a short talk it was decided that I’d let him know how I was at around sunup and if I could get it together enough, I’d get back home and make the run down just for the meet itself on the FJR.

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