Conclusion/Reflections

So there it is. That's what we did with Jan-April 2023.

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This really was a tremendous ride. I was grateful for every single day. Even when I was push-pulling the bike up super-steep grades with my feet sliding everywhere and the bike trying to slide and fall sideways, I was so happy to be there. After being sick for 4.5 years and never being sure if I would ever get well again, to achieve 100% recovery was just beyond amazing. My doctor said not to ever expect more than 80%.

Toward the end of March, I could feel some of the fatigue creeping back and my guts weren't as happy. For the next big ride, I'll need to figure out how to get more protein on a day-to-day basis. I ate rice, lentils and nuts every single day, and I ate salmon, chicken and occasionally beef and kangaroo when I got to towns. But I just don't think it was enough. I also need to not slack off on certain supplements and my bile/stomach acid pills. So I've got some more thinking to do about nutrition before I take off again.

Things I loved

I just loved, loved, loved being out there and doing tough forest roads where the occasional 4WD guy could not fathom a middle-aged chick on a bike in the middle of nowhere, alone and riding tough stuff. I improved my bike handling skills, bike-pushing skills and general riding skills immensely. I loved nothing better than bombing down rough, rocky tracks and learning to pick better and better lines. I scared the crap out of myself weekly - so I know I was pushing my boundaries and building capability.

Bomb down the steep road to a river. Camp next to the river. Then climb out that super steep gash in the trees over there first thing the next morning. Repeat almost daily for three months. Bliss.

I loved being able to plop my tent just anywhere. I literally slept right next to the road on many occasions. I loved getting to camp, filtering water, setting my guys out for a float, and then cooking dinner while setting up the tent and doing the daily drivetrain cleaning. I loved wallowing in the water at camp after a hot day. I loved cuddling down in my sleeping bag and sleeping the sleep you get when you've put in a hard day. What I loved even more was waking up refreshed… after all those years of sickness where I woke up feeling as exhausted as I did when I went to bed.

Last water source for another 20 kms and a couple thousand metres of descending and climbing. Storms are coming. Looks like we'll plop here for the night. So awesome to just plop down anywhere I pleased and to be totally self-sufficient.

I loved the simplicity of my gear and the simplicity of the ride. I loved not having a planned route. I would look at maps in a town to figure out what I might do and how many days of food I'd need, and then just take off and ride day-by-day, never quite knowing where I'd sleep that night or what the track might be like, or what detour I might need to make. It was 'living in the now' taken to a very satisfying extreme. I cannot imagine actually plotting out a route and following it turn-by-turn like some riders do. I'm way beyond that sort of need for security now.

Now where are we going to go amongst all that?

I loved the trangia paired with the Firebox Nano. So tiny, light and simple. It's heaps more environmentally responsible than the butane canisters and infinitely less fiddly than other gas stoves. Definitely onto a winner there. I also had plenty of time to figure out what veggies don't travel well and those that can go for 5 or so days (zukes, bottoms of baby buk choy, red capscicum, cauliflower). It was nice to have a hot meal every night. I got very good at knowing how much fuel any type of meal might take, so I could ration if needed and know how much to buy in town for the next stint.

Campsite for the night. Have a nap on the rocks. Put the guys out to float. Filter water. Clean drivetrain (has to be done daily on gravel tracks). Get dinner cooking using that awesome, bombproof trangia/firebox set-up while the tent is set-up. Revel in having the forest to myself. Only saw one vehicle early in the day on this track and none the next.

Rejoice in the few times you actually have a picnic table to cook on/eat at.

And, of course, I loved the geology. It was a joy to ride up onto the basalt-capped plateaus and look down into the maze of complicated drainages and across to ridges 10-deep in the distance. It was very satisfying to be in pretty remote locations and pondering the geology in 360 degrees. I never got tired of the winding forest roads and the views from the top.

Basalt-capped plateaus with a maze of steep, inaccessible valleys full of Ordovician, Devonian and sometimes Silurian sediments (all of which ride differently and have different chunkiness of rocks).

Riding a section of road called the Bastards Neck. The topo lines on the More to Explore app last night looked intimidating, but I rode it all. I get VERY distracted by the outcrops when I ride past them!

Things I disliked

Old white guys with unsolicited advice

I'm not sure why the old white guys thought they knew everything and needed to tell me the right way to do things. Particularly when I was the one out there doing the hard ride and their last adventure of such a scale took place last century, or maybe even 40 years ago, or maybe not at all!!

I was told I needed a gravel bike (usually by some rich old dude with five bikes). Nup. I could not have had a better bike than Atlas. I loved, loved, loved the way it rode. A touring bike would have been okay on about 30 percent of the roads I rode. A gravel bike would have been comfy on about 85 percent… but my hardtail mtn bike was just so awesome. I would not have chosen a different ride… even if I could afford more than two bikes.

Salsa Timberjack - just such an awesome bike. Loved every minute on this bike - I've been a cyclist since age 5 and never had a period in my life where I didn't ride. Never been more in love with a bike than this one. Got 10 days of food onboard in this pic, and a very wet tent, but Atlas still rode like a dream.

I was told I needed a GPS. Nup. My set-up was all about simplicity. Those are expensive and eat battery if you do the sort of unplanned ride I did. They might be ok if you are plotting out a route to follow, but no good if you need to see the big picture and the small picture at the same time and decide which way to go as you ride. No thanks. I used the free More To Explore topo maps that I could save offline to my phone. I would look at those in the evening to get an idea of elevation gain, and then just use a paper Rooftop map through the day. I also had a HEMA regional map. I never once got lost. So this set-up worked great and was so simple and very lightweight. Foolproof. Which is what you want in the backcountry.

A couple old blokes (who had both migrated to e-bikes) told me that I needed a big-arse powerbank. Nup. I had a 10,000 mah powerbank and a solar panel. I never went below 50 percent battery on my phone, even after 12 days of travel. It helped that I only turned it on on ridgetops to send an 'I'm okay' text and try to download a weather forecast. The only other use was to look at the topo maps for 15-20 min each night. My blinkie light was always charged. The powerbank never went below 25 percent. I wore a PLB instead of carrying a spot tracker, so it didn't need charged either. I charged my point-shoot camera once every three weeks approx. So it was a very light and simple but extremely effective set-up for my minimal tech needs. I'm pretty sure I could have stayed off-grid indefinitely with that set-up, if I didn't need to go into town for supplies.

I was also told I needed clipless pedals. Hahahahahaha! Nup. I'd love to see one of those know-it-all old blokes push the bike up those super-steep bits that I struggled up in hiking shoes. Maybe doing it once in a tour would be okay, but not day-after-day. Again, simplicity. No way was I taking two pairs of shoes or having a cleat fall apart on me on those rough hike-a-bikes in the middle of nowhere.

Again… I was the one out there actually doing that sort of ride, so shut up already. Your time is up. You are no longer relevant, stop pretending to be. Lol. I actually rolled my eyes at one old bloke and just rode away.

and steep bits like this where there's no way you are pedaling up and may not be able to push up either (without making two trips - one with the gear and one with the bike). Besides, if you have BMX skills, as I do, you can bunnyhop a bike on flat pedals.... so I don't think you'd ever sell me on cleats on remote, steep and rough roads. (Oh, and this pic is at the top of a section over 20% grade - took me an hour to go 1.5 kms and I was grateful for every bit of traction my hiking shoes had)!

Impacts of the 19/20 fires

There were a lot of closed roads, unmaintained roads and roads that just weren't rideable after the 19/20 fires. Three years later and some places showed little signs of recovery. The scale and severity of those fires was just mind-blowing. The salvage logging afterward was so absolutely brutal, also, that I spent some days just totally disgusted with what the state-owned forestry corporation had gotten away with both before and after those fires. If I was a greenie before the ride, I came out even more of one after. The devastation was shocking.

Near Mt Pinnibar. This should be a tall alpine ash forest at about 1100 metres. But they salvage logged every last bit of it after the fires. I met a guy who drove a dozer on this job, and he said they didn't even separate out the 150-year-old trees for saw logs. It all went for pulp.

Many times, the brutality of the post-fire logging was even more shocking than the severity and extent of the fire.

Impacts of climate change

East Gippsland needs more time to recover. I ran into heaps of closed roads and very thick regrowth overtaking tracks I'd hoped to ride. Bridges are yet to be replaced in many spots. The landscape just felt incredibly flogged everywhere. Some places I rode had burned at least 3 times in the past 20 years whose natural fire interval would be 75-100 years. Some sections of rainforest that burnt will take 300-400 years to recover… which won't happen because of increasing fire frequency and severity with climate change. It was sad to see the end of an ecosystem in some places.

This area has burnt three times in the past 20 years (near the Snowy River).

Martin's Creek Flora Reserve - a rainforest of national significance before the fires. It will take this 300-400 years with no or only very light fire for this to recover to what it was like before the fires. With climate change, that won't happen. The pre-fire ecosystem is toast.

Regrowth burnt again before it will have had a chance to mature enough to set seed. Have we already reached the tipping point?

All along this road I rode through areas burnt in the 2006/07 fires that have now burnt again. The normal fire interval for this veg type is around 75 years. They generally need to be 20-years-old to set seed - though some hope may exist as they've seen some set seed around 10 years.

At times, grief for the loss was almost overwhelming - the future is grim. It made me think of the Ed Abbey quote that propels me, which is the basis for the name of my blog (Ramble Out Yonder), on an almost daily basis.

It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space.

What's next?

The 2023 ride got cut short by about 4-6 weeks when I had to return to Albury to help my ex get to/from/recover from surgery. However, I probably needed to finish up the ride then anyway, so I could ensure I could get the creeping fatigue sorted with some rest and good nutrition. I also wanted to rebuild my emergency fund which got depleted in the 4.5 years of all those docs, meds, specialists and tests. So after 11 months of travel, it was probably time to get some work again anyway.

I was fortunate to land a nice-paying job that I find interesting and challenging just a couple weeks after starting to look for work in May. I've already rebuilt my emergency fund, put $10,00 away so far for the next ride (I budget $1000 per month for a ride - this past trip I spent less per month Jan-Apr). So the savings and investment is going well - I aim to save 60 percent of net income per week.

Haha - after all that time in the mountains, my work coverage area in this contract includes the third flattest place on earth :-)

The contract ends 30 June 2024. There is a chance it could be extended a couple months and a chance it could go for another year. I'm not fussed. If there is another year on offer, I'd probably take it. The money is too good to pass up, and I could probably go five years on the road if I had another year to save on this salary. Who knows? Either way, we'll hit the road again once this opportunity dries up.

My plan then is to hit the bits of the VIC High Country I didn't get to on this trip, and a couple places I wanted to explore a bit more. Much of the ride will concentrate on areas west of the Jamieson-Licola Rd. Then it's off to Tassie for backcountry riding there. And after that… who knows? I'm all about the Unscripted life these days. All that illness and not knowing if I would ever get better has certainly taught me a few things about priorities. See ya down the road!

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Kathleen JonesOh Em, so so good. After the hard road you had, it’s great to see you bucketing about unrestrained.
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6 months ago

Gregory GarceauGreat conclusion, Emily. There is so much to admire about your tour, which, as you know, I've read about before. But now I have something else to strive for: Improving my bike-pushing skills. I've got the bike-handling skills down (thanks to my "excellent kinesthetic sense"), but I haven't ridden enough in areas where bike-pushing is required. Sure, I've done it, but always with a certain degree of embarrassment. It's time for me to ride in some areas where I can take pride in walking my bike up a ridiculously steep, gravelly, nobody-there-to-save-me mountain road.

One more thing. As an old white guy myself, I assure you that I've never tried to tell any cyclist what to do or how to do it--not even if he or she is pedaling wildly in the easiest gear on flat terrain, or struggling uphill with severely overloaded panniers, or crying because they're riding in a thunderstorm without rain gear. (Who knows, maybe I would have gotten an eye roll from them.) I can't imagine anyone trying to tell YOU what to do.

Edward Abbey is one of my favorite authors. I had a feeling that "Ramble Out Yonder" came from your admiration as well.
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6 months ago

Emily SharpTo Kathleen JonesThank you, Kathleen. Yes, there was never a moment that I didn't feel grateful to have my life back again. I never ever took it for granted that I felt well and healthy. There was a teeny bit of restraint in that I paid careful attention to how I was feeling, followed up big days with rest days, never felt guilty for taking a rest day, and tried to keep total climbing each day to 1000 metres or less (which some days came in just 20 kays; other days it might be 50 or 70). But I'm fine with that level of restraint if it means I stay healthy and full of energy :-)
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6 months ago

Emily SharpTo Gregory GarceauThanks, Greg. I,too, still get embarrassed to have to push the bike if it's my fitness or lack of strength that results in the pushing! I'd only recommend the 'pushing cause you have to' steep, gravel roads if you really enjoy self-punishment, and gritting it out is something that makes you happy. For me, I just decided where I wanted to go... and went. And that sometimes involved grades too steep and/or surfaces too rocky or slippery to ride. If I had looked at percent grades or route profiles before many of those days, I would have probably psyched myself out and not done it. So I never looked at anything more than the squishiness of topo lines, and that was just to give me an idea of what might be hard and require walking. I definitely did get really good at knowing the best way to get me and the bike up really steep stuff by the end of this trip though.

Yes, I fell in love with Abbey's writing in high school - along with Wallace Stegner and a few others. I loved his attitude toward authority, and I still totally plan on being an activist granny between ages 70 and 76 (since I'm done at 76) and doing some monkey wrenching of my own. These days I do feel a bit conflicted about Abbey, though, as he was pretty terrible toward women, so it takes away some of my respect. His writing, however, got me hooked on nature writing and western landscapes for sure, though. I could always see a bit of me in some of his writing.

I did meet plenty of old blokes that were lovely. And I had lots of good conversations with guys my age about bike stuff. I only met one bikepacker on my whole trip, and we did not stop to chat. He had momentum on a steep uphill and I was bombing that downhill - so we just waved high as we passed. So there really wasn't anyone doing what I was doing to compare notes. So it was a bit irksome to be told how to do stuff over and over by old white guys who hadn't done a backcountry ride in a very long time, if ever. I don't actually care about gear all that much - I do the research, buy the best quality I can afford, and then just use it. I'm not a gear junkie, though it seems like a lot of old guys are! Just get out there and ride! I'm sure you could have even done the whole thing on a touring bike (Syd Winer probably has done all those routes on his over the years), it would have just been much slower, harder and much less comfortable. But you could do it any way you chose, really.

The guy I rode away from had insisted I should get a bivy sack to save on weight and use a self-inflating pad (haha! - I know you are with me on closed cell). Then he told me I needed a larger powerbank so I could get some sort of taillight with a radar (? - who needs that on the kind of roads I ride!!?) and charge that and then I could get rid of the solar panel. What? Reduce tent weight and get rid of the solar panel, so I could carry a bigger powerbank (that would require me to go into town to charge - when I don't need mains power at all with the solar panel)? I finally rode away when he started in on using a bikepacking set-up so I could move faster between towns - duh, I'm trying to stay out of them, why would I want to get to them quicker!!? He'd also told me about various adventures like he'd just done them yesterday... and none of it had been done this century! What middle-aged chick cyclist wouldn't roll her eyes after ten minutes of that!

But I wouldn't worry about you and advice... you don't have the ego that any of those guys did. You're just a humble, down-to-earth MN guy. And, by the way, I'm happy to be told what to do when it comes to Microsoft Word, anything to do with cars, anything that involves heavy lifting and anything that involves internal combustion, power tools or building stuff :-)
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6 months ago