pinch flat

Australia 0 Japan 1. The Socceroos do not win the Asian Cup. I go back to bed at 4:30 after the game but sleep doesn’t really happen: I’m all anticipation and back on my feet at six and in the car at half past.

I park under a tree at the Castlemaine Botanical Gardens and at 7:04 I’m pedalling up Richards Road past the bacon factory, through Muckleford to Walmer and down Maldon’s empty main street at 8:04.

By 9:04 I am past Perkins Reef, Welshmans Reef, Newstead, Strangways, Yapeen, and into Guildford, where I know the suffering begins.

10:04 is a different story.

Maps. Wonderful things, maps. My time in France is based around maps. Tired of riding Bendigo, I consider the maps, and plan this morning’s Castlemaine loop. I’ve done sections on other rides, but the purgatory of Fryerstown is new to me.

Riding along the old Castlemaine–Dunolly Railway in the Loddon River valley from Newstead to Guildford is like being in France; Strangways (it rhymes with gangways, unfortunately) is Gallicly bucolic early on this perfect, warm, sunny morning.

Then it’s up to Vaughan Springs, up to Irishtown, up to Fryerstown. Up yours, the road says. I climb out of the saddle and out of the valley on lumpy bitumen that arcs up close to double figure gradients. These are not sprinter hills: these pinches are for gritting the teeth and grinding.

This is the Castlemaine Diggings National Heritage Park: scrubby, gravelly, miner-blighted country. Irishtown—this is no doubt where the poorer miners who couldn’t get a toe-hold in the outrageously gold-silted creeks below came to scrabble a living.

After Fryerstown I struggle up more cussed pinches, thighs punctured, before the final hallelujah descent into Chewton. My firm grasp of the handlebars is wrenched free halfway down: the front wheel thumps into a hole hidden in shadow and the machine bucks and judders. I pull up fast and check the pressure. It’s OK, but 500 metres on I pancake to a halt.

No problem. I’m outside a pleasant house with shade along the front fence. I whip off the wheel and rip out the snake-bitten tube. But the spare has waited so long to do its job that the patch on it has peeled off.

I double patch the pinch flat to no avail, then lean my broken machine against a post and stick out the thumb. Twenty seconds later I have a lift. Enter James the Postie and his empty van.   

Both James and his spluttering vehicle leak smoke. James is possibly my age but could be ten years younger. Lank, straggly hair, soggy rollie. He’s done it tough, I’d say. Drugs. Says he might have to move soon: the outskirts of Chewton are getting too built-up. I ask him how he makes a living.

“Postie,” is his one-word answer. “Doesn’t pay much, but I scale my life down and get by all right.” Says he worked in a detox house in Bendigo once.

He drops me at the Botanical Gardens.

I ride 69kms at 26.5kph before the pinch flat. But that’s OK: I was already pinch-flat.