Today Jeremy and I went to Bribie Island for a bike ride. This was good.
I actually drove us out there because I hadn’t been out for a while and was feeling a bit ill, and Jeremy had a new bike and wanted to give it a try. We were originally going to go from Sandstone Point to Beachmere and back, but that plan took a bit of a dive after a few kilometres when I was feeling a bit under the weather and Jeremy wasn’t in peak condition either.
Since we’d basically gone in a big circle, we decided to double back and cross the bridge to Bribie itself and have lunch somewhere along the waterfront. Jeremy was hesitant toward the bridge but I assured him it would all be fine.
The bridge itself is a terrible thing. The bikeway sort of turns into an uncomfortably narrow pedestrian lane, and the wind tends to knock you around a bit because it’s such an exposed path. About halfway across I was distracted by a boatful of shirtless bogans and in doing so swerved into the railing at about twenty kilometres per hour. My handlebar grip almost fell off, and my right shoe busted open, but thankfully there wasn’t any serious damage.
Jeremy was right behind me at this point, and as I understand, panicked.
Lunch was lovely though, we found a bunch of take away stores to the south of the bridge and got fish and chips (neither of us actually got fish, but we did get $2.50 worth of chips in chicken salt between us, so I guess that sentiment partially counts.)
As we finished lunch, we remarked amongst each other how black and ominous the storm clouds looked o’er yonder. The consensus was that we should hurry back to the car lest we be wet upon, but it started spitting as we got to the bridge.
I led the way, and after the last unfortunate incident, wasn’t confident enough to look over my shoulder to make sure Jeremy was following. He somewhat wasn’t. The rain started pouring down, and Jeremy was nowhere at all to be seen. I tried to call him but Three is mostly useless if you’re not within three kilometres of your nearest Starbucks and the call wouldn’t place.
Fretting, I turned myself around and headed back across the bridge. I was almost to the other side when I saw the unhappy outline of a mostly bedraggled Jeremy pushing his bike along the footway; his handlebars had fallen off, a great maiden voyage for his new set of wheels.
We made it back to the car in record time and loaded up the bikes in the wet. It wasn’t too bad rain, and considering I’m still wearing the same shirt now, we neither worked up much of a sweat nor got too wet during our adventures.
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