There, Aido, Matt Xman, Ungra and myself met for a bit of a ride. There was four of us, and three singlespeed 9r's.
(Aiden take note: it is the way of the future.)
Up through Bunya, across to Ironbark and then the long and gruelling ascent up the Camp Mountain firetrail network.
I was hurting from the start (perhaps 5 1/2 hours on the road bike had something to do with it...) and it occurred to me that maybe there were some other contributing factors to this extreme pain. Aside from my softness, that is!
I asked Ungra, upon stopping to tighten a headset at the top of Ironbark, what gear he was running on his Voodoo beast. "oh...a 20".
"A 20 what?" I say.
"You know...a 20" he replies.
"Like....a 32–20?" I ask.
"Yeah...what are you running?"
"18."
"Holy crap."
And holy crap it was, as I bike-fucked up the road, at a near standstill, before climbing for several k's up the dirt. I was maxing out on the not-so-steep stuff, let alone the nasty dirt bergs of doom! Yikes!
It would have made me an absolute hero, if I could have pushed that gear up to the top of camp Mountain. Alas, I am an imposter superwoman—despite my best whole-body pec-tearing, leg-burning, lung-busting effort, I had to walk the top part (and that wasn't the steep way!).
After about 2 1/2 hours of riding with these small-gear bandits, I decided to do the right thing and ride home, thus avoiding spontaneous combustion or mushroom-could type of blow-up activity.
On the way home, however, I finally found the little Camp Mountain rail disaster monument.
Camp Mountain rail disaster monument
I read it, and amazingly creepily enough the disaster happened on Labour Day in 1947 (5 May 1947). That makes it tomorrow, 62 years ago.
The train was and old steam training, mostly full of day-trippers and picnic'ers on their way for a good Labour day public holiday picnic. 16 people died in the accident (including the driver and the fire-man that was a fixture on all old steam-trains), 38 were injured. The disaster happened when the train was taking a left-hander at about 20mph, and lost it.
The line was closed in 1955, and now lives on as the rail trail that mountain-bikers use to link up Camp Mountain, Samford and Ironbark trails.
History is a pretty amazing thing.