Originally Posted by
Machka
So then ... my walking speed of 3 km/h + Rowan's cycling speed of 7 km/h ... means that we should be climbing hills at 10 km/h. Huh. It's never worked like that for some reason.
It is difficult to find a route in the south (where we live) that is under a 1. I mentioned two in my previous post, and I can think of one other. There's another one which might be just on a 1 ... we could probably manage it on a tandem. But all 4 of those routes are quite short and do get a bit repetitive. Most routes here run around 1.2 and up, and 10%+ grades are not uncommon.
Again, the north is different ... flatter. And we have ridden our tandem there.
And as for motor vehicles giving us more room and courtesy ... Tasmania is a complicated state filled with tourists from all over the world (but especially Asia) who are not at all comfortable driving the roads here (they can be really scary whether we're on bicycles or in a car), and forestry people who somehow equate people on bicycles as being a threat to the forestry industry. Southern Tasmania, in particular, is trying desperately to "find itself" as the population grows with one group wanting the place to become a bustling Melbourne and another group wanting to maintain the small-town atmosphere. And it's all happening on narrow, twisty, hilly, forest-lined roads.
The result is that very few people give each other room, no matter what you're riding or driving or whatever.
Northern Tasmania is much better ... we prefer cycling up there. So much so that we've opted to run all the Audax Tasmania rides we organise in the north.
I'll add that there are roads here in the south that we simply will not ride for a good 6 months of the year because of the heavy tourist traffic. They keep talking about giving tourists "T-Plates" (like how learners have "L-Plates" and probationary drivers have "P-Plates) so that we can easily identify them and avoid them.
All that said, Tasmania does have a 1 metre or 1.5 metre bicycle passing rule, which is great ... but as far as we've seen it is not enforced. Some drivers are really good, but some will not give you that room, and some (the tourists) just seem really confused.
I understand. There are some major roads here with heavy logging traffic and some with heavy dump truck + pup trailer traffic. We avoid those at all costs.
Average of 3 and 7 is 5 km/hr. The whole deal is gearing, as I said. You can go down to a 24T ring on a 130/74 BCD triple crankset, and up to a 36T 10 speed cassette. You can definitely climb steep stuff with that. We can climb short grades of 15+ with our rig, but maybe only 1/4 mile before we blow. We don't do long climbs of over 10%. We never walk, we just practice turning the cranks slowly, sometimes stopping briefly every mile. The hardest ride we completed was ~250k, 1.2, in 15 hours, including a 45' unplanned stop to fix a brake. We did that a couple years ago and Nancy said, "Never again." It was 104° at the bottom of the last long climb. We are a 140 y.o. relatively untalented team.