Indian Pacific Wheel Race - IndyPac - IPWR

First rider came home, Raymond Friedrich, 20 days and some change:

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Starts later today: https://ipwr24.maprogress.com/

Omar di felice listed to race.

It's come round quick! Hard to know who else is riding as they all give themselves nicknames.

I have such mixed feelings about this ride. It was a hell of an adventure, and it's fun to go over the route again and try and remember the towns and the bits between. But it was such a slog, about 6 solid days into a headwind.

I was mentally really struggling after about 10 days. I found it harder than the Transcontinental from that point of view - maybe the remoteness, and the cuntish drivers. Then it all fell apart when Mike was killed. I just wanted to get home then.

I hope it goes well this year!

Omar is indeed out front, will be interesting to watch his progress. Yes @frank9755, I wonder if the nicknames are to do with it being unofficial now.

I know Lloyd since TCR. Looks to be going well. Been putting in some miles and seems in good shape from his Strava.

nicknames

No I think it's just an Aussie thing! There were lots of nicknames in the official version.

No I think it's just an Aussie thing!

hippy agrees

He's still going well. He's just finished the 90-mile straight.

In 2017 I did that overnight, so I would have been on it now, I guess. It was the only time all week when there wasn't going to be a headwind so I didn't want to waste it sleeping. And I was jet lagged anyway, the night was a good temperature for riding, so not an entirely crazy idea.

When a truck overtook me I timed how long it took for the red lights to disappear in the distance and it was something like 20 minutes.

Then I spotted a bike light behind me. So I put in a spurt, and the light disappeared, then it appeared again, and disappeared again. This went on for a few hours. I thought I was going mad. Then I heard the dingos howling.

Eventually this guy - Joe Donnelly - caught up and we rode together for another hour or two to the roadhouse at the end of the straight - where Lloyd is now. He was a Brit doing gap year work in Australia and had entered on an old bike which pinged a few spokes from the back wheel - so he'd put his luggage on the front, and he was turning his light off most of the time to save battery. He was jet lagged too and was trying to sleep but decided to ride when he saw me coming down the straight on the tracker.

He stopped at the roadhouse but I carried on. I then realised that he was the person I knew best in Australia. He packed at Nullarbor as his knee went. I then met him at a servo in the middle of the night somewhere in South Australia - he'd got a lift from a couple of hippys in a campervan.

Then he went up to the top of Mount Lofty, after Adelaide, with his girlfriend, to welcome me there again in the middle of the night and gave me a bottle of coke and a bar of chocolate. Good guy!

Omar approaching the Mundrabilla roadhouse now.

I found that stretch of road, from Madura to Eucla, the hardest of the whole event. Completely flat, hardly any corners and constant headwind.

You ride for half an hour and the scenery doesn't change, the trees on the horizon look no nearer. It feels like it will never come to an end. The truck drivers I spoke to said it was harder / more boring than the 90-mile.

Completely flat, hardly any corners and constant headwind.

You're describing my favourite riding. :)

To really appreciate it you have to have spent the previous night riding down the 90-mile straight so you go off your head with weird hallucinations when it gets dark.

At one point the next day I met a guy on a touring bike going the other way. He was flying in the tail wind, with hardly any effort. He gave me a friendly wave. I hated him.

The only consolation was I did see my first kangaroo along that bit. It was quite small so maybe a wallaby.

Omar now into SA. That bit is more pleasant as the road undulates slightly.

But there's no hard shoulder any more so it is important to be lucky when being overtaken. But not much traffic until you get closer to Ceduna so the odds are still good.

Yeah, it's a lot easier when you're just doing loops of it and you get to choose your start direction, so I'd always try and head out into the headwind so I'd finish the ride with a tailwind.

I still want to ride across Oz I just have to retire or something first to find the time :)

I guess having learned to cycle in that kind of territory makes turbos quite interesting!

I mean, we've both spent 24hrs riding up and down A-roads. I'm not sure you got to the point of 8hr turbo sessions with no music staring at brick walls though for "boredom training" :D

You really should write a training book!

I did. It was published a while ago. Quite well received. I called it 'The Pit and the Pendulum' :)

a couple of hippys

Wait, what?

.

Why do you think I left in such a hurry?

Omar now in the Land of the March Fly.

Those fuckers can travel at the same speed as a (tired) rider on the uphills - which suddenly appear at this point - and bite through lycra. The only respite is when the air displaced by a passing truck washes them off for a minute or so, until they regroup and come back.

I never found out if they are called march flies because they come out in March or what

March or Horse flies? I don't know the difference but I go caned by those big, fast bastards in TransAm. I still wonder if their bites didn't somehow contribute to my ankle/shin tendon dramas.

Someone told me they were called March flies.
Maybe there was even a sign to say watch out for them.

https://australian.museum/learn/animals/insects/march-flies/

Looks like they get called horse flies too. There's probably a map somewhere where they show which name gets used where.

Yeah, I dunno, I've heard and probably used both. Proper dickheads they are.

Omar has made Ceduna. I had a mini party at the BP servo there, with about 5 other riders who were all there at the same time.

It gets slightly more populated after there; it's still pretty sparse but there are some fields rather than just all scrubby desert.

Lloyd is on the shitty stretch near Nundroo where I got what were then my three closest ever passes, all within an hour (I hadn't been to Romania at that point)