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| where I'm walking |
During the recent cycling I was doing a lot of thinking. I'm going to try a change; and not cycle to Cairns next year to see family. I'll travel there some other way- bus, train, or plane. I've cycled the route enough times now that the trip is becoming a drudge. Especially the section between Clermont and Charters Towers. It's worse when I leave it too late to head south and it's hot. Also, I want to go some places I can't take the bike. A fair amount of my gear needs replacing at the moment. Since I need to replace stuff, the plan is to lighten and shrink up my gear load to fit in a backpack. I'd like to try walking for a bit. It will take a while to do this, as I haven't walked much in years. Why walk when I can cycle? The most I have walked is inside Woolies or Coles shopping; my walking muscles have wasted away. I need to build them up again.
Each day I do some walking exercise. At first my feet, ankles and calves ached terribly. I needed days of rest to recover. But it's improving. Soon as I can travel a reasonable distance repeatedly, I'll start adding weight to my pack. Then it will be short trips to check how it goes.
Lightening the load will have benefits even if I end up not walking. My current bike gear weight is over 30kg and it all "seems essential". Even after taking out the bicycle specific items, what's left is heavier than I want to backpack. My aim is to get the weight down to less than 15kg, preferably less than 10kg. That is the base weight: the pack and everything in it, except food, water and fuel.
Obviously some hard choices will have to be made to achieve that.
