An Adventure to OZ for the World Cup XC

Always looking for BIG Trees… This hardwood Penda Tree was as inspiring as they come!

The opening round of the world cup XC was held in the far off from just about everywhere resort city of Cairns, Australia. In the region of North Queensland, Cairns draws tourists from around the world for it's incredible outdoor recreation opportunities, climate, beauty and stunning outdoors. To experience Any one of the number of it's attractions including exotic wildlife, great barrier reef, extensive wet tropical rainforest, palm lined beaches, would be reason enough to see this place, and all together it gave Mary and I the feeling that we would not even be able to scratch the surface on the opportunities just at arms reach on our 10 days here.

Building up the bikes, fueled on Vegemite.

Having our bikes along with solid training ambitions helped a good deal to make sure we saw as much as possible in our limited time here as we combined intervals with stops to take pictures and just stand in awe of this incredible exotic place.

To make sure we saw something outside the race course, on our rest day we took a little field trip 100km up the coast to Cape Tribulation. We were stunned with the beauty we saw here - where the rainforest meets the reef. Even scored a lucky sighting of a Cassowary and it's young!!!

Mangroves on Cape Tribulation

Getting out for a spin at Cape Tribulation

Low tide ride at Cape Tribulation

Adventure at is best

Cassowarry and young… Found out the males care solely for the young 18month after they hatch. These two were spotted on our drive to Cape Tribulation.

This is a Cassowary at the airport...

Our accommodations on a tropical fruit farm within the stunning wet rain forest and within ear shot of the tremendous Barron Falls allowed us a special window into the natural environment that surrounds the small town of Kuranda, itself tucked into a thick forest canopy along the banks of the Barron river, a tricky 15 k drive and worlds away from the city of Cairns and the World Cup action.

The Bush Turkey Bungalow :-)

Mary loved her outdoor kitchen and kept us well fed

The 24 hours plus spent getting here included a crossing of the international date line effectively eliminating a day from our year and adding a good bit to the confusion and fatigue from the long travel. Not much nice about being helpless to fall asleep with the sun still out and waking up at 2 am for the day except that we got a good look at the crisp southern hemisphere stars and an introduction to the sounds of the jungle that all but overwhelmed the humid night air.

Rainy Rainforest

The business of the world cup weekend soon took hold, starting with changing tires from Kendas Small Block Eight (our preferred DRY tires that we put to great use throughout our time in Chile) to Kenda's Karma a much more all around performer that would better accommodate the rocky bike park that changed drastically from hard pack ultra slick mud depending on the amount of rain that had fallen in the past hour.

Our Intense Cycles race machines - Mary's Hard Eddie and my Spider Comp 29

As we made our laps on the superb course we found refreshingly that bike handling would play a big role in the outcome of the racing here as the climbs were stocked with tight turns and demanding technical options and the descending also included opportunities for those with skill to shine.

Mary heading to the start boxes.

Huge thanks to ALL our Backers!!

Race day came after the blessing of the first good nights sleep that we both enjoyed since arriving in Australia and Mary and I were excited to get down to business. The forecast rains held off and we were treated to overcast skies that took the sting out of what would be typically hot and humid weather. Mary was up first and as stoked as she was to get it done right was immediately caught behind some crashes and decisive traffic eventually entering into the single track almost at the end of the 60 strong women's field... She rode with a lot of heart battling her way up to 33 by the end of the day.

I dealt myself a bad hand on this one, completing just the start loop before getting pinched into a terrible line that resulted in me launching my bike several meters down into a rocky crevasse. Somehow I managed to take the blow mostly unharmed, likely cause I landed on my bike, unfortunately I did manage to do some serious damage to my equipment. The worse part was that I was just 100 meters past the technical zone so I was forced to limp on alone for almost an entire lap before I was able to make repairs. It was a long way to come for a short day of racing but put some perspective on how lucky we actually are when things go to plan.

Fantastic Technical track in Cairns!

Seeing just a fraction of Australia with our time here and our previous visit to the capitol city of Canberra, for World Championships in 2009, gave us an idea of the fantastic diversity across this huge country. There are so many amazing things Down Under including some of the nicest people we have met on our travels. Life seems to be good for the majority of the people here and those we came across were happy to take a moment to share their stoke about their amazing place with us.

We took a short ride the following Monday get the legs back to some sense of normal just before the rains filled in tropical style. We tucked back under cover of our bungalow just as the skies opened, felling branches and filling the back roads with a slurry of muddy sludge. Being pinned in made it a bit easier to focus on packing up and coming to terms with the big hours of travel ahead that would take to get on to our next adventures continents away in Europe…

It was far too short, but the impressions we were left with are LARGE and sweet! Glad we could make the most of our time here!!!

Ride on,

Mike and Mary