This isn't supposed to happen

We seem to have had a return of "winter" in these parts lately. I knew it was going to be cool when I grabbed the bike and headed out for a quick 45km before work this morning. In fact, it was 11 degrees C when I left my apartment. Granted, it was 4.45am or something, but in Queensland that generally doesn't matter. At this time of year, I'm usually glad if it's anything below 30. I set off for the ride regardless, and completely forgot about the temperature as I realised that a gear cable was going to break any minute now.

It got colder. At Little Nerang Dam this morning, it had dropped to just 6 degrees C (around 41.6 F on the scale that Americans use). Six??? Even "winter" rarely gets that cold, and consequently I hadn't bothered with a jacket of any kind. Strangely, it actually felt quite refreshing and not at all unpleasant. It was almost as if I'd been in a prison with all the heat and humidity that were around earlier in the week under the northerly winds. Now that they were gone, I felt alive again, and ready to conquer the world. I've felt that way all day, really. Maybe it's the energy suddenly generated at being jolted out of a comfort zone. Or maybe my expectations of riding in that temperature were just skewed by the driving rain and 90km/h winds that greeted me in Invercargill in those temperatures earlier in the year. Either way, I wish I could do it more often.

Incidentally, I'm going to replace the gear cable before it breaks this time. So far this year I've already had to deal with similar failures at Mt Jerusalem and Springbrook, and I don't want to have to deal with it again. While it is possible to complete a ride with a snapped gear cable (in fact, I've never failed to do so), it's not always as much fun. Incidentally, yesterday marks two years to the day since my most famous gear-cable failure -- at Wilson's Promontory at the other end of the country. I rode out of that one, too.