Neil rides a bike

 Welcome! Here you will find updates of the more adventurous rides I have done and recaps on long distance routes. 
Apparently dotwatchers like to read these things. And, to be honest, I really enjoy reading other peoples accounts of adventure and adversity. 


My name is Neil. I am 40something and live in Adelaide, South Australia. I run my own business repairing carbon bicycle frames and I like to ride dirt trails and back roads in between work and family commitments.

I am currently in preparation for my first bike-packing race, the Karnu Rally 2022, the brainchild of Simon Eglinton, (perennial bike-packer, at the time of writing currently racing Race from the Rocks 2022)

Follow my progress and musings as I attempt to go deep into type 2 fun.

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Karnu Rally, Day 1 - Kaurna Country

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  The day finally arrives. My initial plan of riding into the city to stay with a friend the night before may not have paid off.  An unfamiliar bed, city noises and anticipation offered very little sleep. Regardless I was up at 5:20am to eat, pack and get down to the start.  6:15am I was the first there. But only a couple of minutes later the other contenders began to roll in.  Low key greetings, some chatter. Phones passed around for pre race photos. Yours Truly   I cast a little side-eye at the minimal setup on Simon and David's bikes. Clearly their list of contingencies was much shorter than mine.  April looked well prepared as well as my regular bikepacking buddy Andrew.  Ollie turned up as a late entry and along with Carly and a few day ride groupies we had a good little crew setting off at 6:30 sharp. Out of the block the pace was faster than I thought necessary. The lightly loaded were leading out. We reached the base of the Black Hill climb in ...
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Maprogress and the Karnu Rally

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You've probably landed here from the other other direction. But if you want to follow my progress you can view the event virtually, in real time, from the 1st October here:  https://karnurally2022.maprogress.com/ I'm all signed and paid up. Keen as a bean! You can follow my general weekly cycling activities here:  https://www.strava.com/athletes/4346185   (for other Strava users. Just "request to follow") How many more riders will we get? Will conditions be as atrocious as the 2022 Race from the Rocks? Or even the 2021 Kudlila Rally ? Will the Chief Instigator sub 48 hour it?
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DIY

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I like tinkering and often make gizmos for my own use. For this trip I needed a couple of solutions. My Garmin has its own battery extender but this hangs below the mount and gets in the way of the handlebar roll. Solution: make a higher mounting point. I found a short piece of carbon tube offcut, glued some ends on it, squeezed in some M6 rivnuts and mounted it up with a spare Gloworm lights bar mount. This also has enough real-estate to backwards mount a Quadlock bracket for my phone if I need it there. Because I have never before needed a dynamo hub I couldn't quite spring for one for this event. I have used battery powered lights for years but the existing batteries are all old and lacking capacity. Solution: Build my own high capacity battery packs. These are 8.4v(charged) 2 and 4 cell packs of 5ah and 10ah respectively. Using 5000mah 21700 lithium ion cells. The small packs use Tesla cells while the bigger ones use Astrolux vape/torch cells bought from...
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