2022-04-24 -37 144

Location

On a street in Wyndham Vale

Participants

Expedition

A nice straightforward one. On a street less than a kay from Wyndham Vale station, which itself is only 25mins from Footscray station by train.

I had neither the time nor the inclination to ride the whole way out there, feeling the effects of having attended a big 30th birthday the night before, but I still wanted to knock this one off, so I enlisted the services of the rail network.

I checked the train timetable a bit after 4 and saw that if I caught the 4:38 from Footscray, I would leave a perfect 18 minute window in which to visit the hash between arriving at Wyndham Vale and the next train leaving back to Footscray. All in all I should be home in under 90mins. Given the trains were a whole 40mins apart this could have been far less convenient.

It all went to plan, I headed off on my bike towards the station at 4:31, caught my train and arrived on time at 5:03. As I rolled towards the hash I wondered if there was something I could do more exciting than just reach the point. Since it seemed to be on the road itself I contemplated the speedracer achievement.

I got to the street itself, quiet and residential, and there was no speed limit advertised, so I assumed the limit was 50kph. I found the hash itself, as expected, right in the middle of the road.

I had no easy way of monitoring my speed, so I just decided to record a little section on Strava having a couple of passes at it as fast as I could manage, then see what it could tell me afterwards. I thought 50kph was likely going to be tough to reach though.

My first attempt I had the benefit of a slight downhill, but I didn't manage to get up into an ideal gear. On the way back I got the gearing better, but now I was battling the slight slope. According to Strava for both of them I peaked at a bit over 40kph, so the speedracer achievement will have to wait for another day, because by this time I needed to head back towards to station and not do any more faffing about.

I caught my train back, fairly full with Richmond supporters heading in to the game against Melbourne, and got back smoothly, arriving home at 5:56, an 85min trip in total