It's hot!

I'm sitting here typing this in a pool of sweat on another disgustingly humid night. Last night was similar -- I don't think it feel below 25 degrees C all night. Well, there was nothing for it but to head up to the mountains today. It's been a while since I visited Green Mountains/O'Reilly's. The first thing I had to do was negotiate a road block at the base of the climb.



This involves a long gradual climb up the mountain, taking about 13km to gain 500 metres. The road was built in the 1930's and some of the old road cuttings are still visible today. After cresting Mt Cainbable, the road winds around the mountains delightfully, before the final climb to the summit.





I decided to do the Treetops walk once I got to Lamington National Park, largely because I haven't done it before. It's basically a circuit on a suspension bridge positioned at a higher level in the rainforest canopy than simply walking along the ground. It offered some pleasant views through the forest, but it was too dense for any mountain views to be visible here.





Then for some reason I decided to ride back in the middle of the day. Big mistake. I could feel the heat rising up out of the valley on the descent. By the time I reached the town of Canungra, it was 36 degrees C. It would stay there for a long time. It's a shadeless 9% climb to get out of that place, followed by a shadeless 10-12% grade a little further down the road. In fact, I handled them surprisingly well (surprising given my general hatred of temperatures above 12 degrees). I had been anticipating that the temperature might drop a little as I got closer to the coast, but it just wasn't happening. It even increased to 37 at Maudsland.

In a grim kind of way, I began to enjoy it. It's that unique feeling that comes when conditions get harder, when it eventually reaches a special point that you start willing it on, wanting to test the limits of your own capabilities. At one point I was checking my thermometer, and hoping it might hit 40. That said, the humidity was relatively low by now, which generally makes the heat a lot more bearable. I made one mistake of thinking I'd gladly have the magpie season back if I could get rid of the heat. No prizes for guessing what dropped out of the next tree. This was actually a problem, my usual tactic of simply squirting magpies with water would waste a valuable resource.

As it was, I was running short by this time. I eventually decided to use that $5 that I generally carry around with me and buy a couple of drinks. That gave me enough to reach the coast -- finally things started to cool down here on the back of an impending storm. Unfortunately, the storm didn't arrive, but it did block out the sunlight for a while.

Perhaps stupidly, I actually passed through Surfers Paradise in the middle of schoolies' week on the way home. Not surprisingly, there weren't too many intelligent conversations going on around me. Fortunately, there was a bit of Sunday Afternoon gridlock going on. It gave me the boost I needed, I was really in form picking my way through that. At the southern end of Surfers, I heard a voice call out "you're only human". The form I had through that patch of gridlock, I was in serious danger of forgetting that. In anycase, I was glad to finally make a statement against the heat. I'm sure it will be back soon, however.

Right now I'm about to see if I can score some belated tickets to the Oasis show in Brisbane, the one that they told me was sold out three months ago.