Did you ever ask yourself why you always have to ride into the blowing headwind on Trans-Oceania and there is never a day without wind?
Take a closer look at the road signs and you will find the answer:
TdA runs his own Wind Farm. However, instead of ‘harvesting’ wind to generate electricity, their great Chief Wind Engineer (CWE) Cristiano W. reverse-engineered the turbines and turned them into big blowers. The proof of concept phase is now finished and the system can go into full deployment around the globe to ‘enrich’ any TdA tour.
iWind
The new iSomething application. With a little extra technical effort the CWE can now turn the blades (from any place in the world) into the perfect direction to ensure you will always face the wind, no matter in which direction you turn your bicycle.
Cristiano demonstrating the tool to Andreas, the tour director in Australia. They both seem to really enjoy this new torturing tool!
The 7epics promotion video, featuring Brett has been published on YouTube.
7epics promotion
A nice introduction to the 7epics. the idea behind it, his motivation, by fellow Trans-Oceania cyclist Brett Lanham combined with an assembly of video footage and photos from the current Trans-Oceania tour, past Tour d’Afrique and other TdA epic tours.
The first 20 km were quite nice to ride, although it contained most of todays elevation gains. It was again quite cold and since riding through pine tree forests it stayed cool for a while. However, the forest had a big benefit; it sheltered us from wind. This changed soon, when the ‘French TGV’ past us in high speed and stirred up the air. From that time on we cycled all day in wild turbulences. The ‘fasten seatbelt’ sign was permanently illuminated at my handlebar dashboard. I formed again a peloton together with Lydia. Shirley and Dan joined us for the last 40 km to lunch. Chelsea and Doug managed to find a nice, sunny and almost fully wind protected spot. Good to warm up a bit in the sun. The ride through the forest felt as if riding through a Canadian or Scandinavian forest, except there were no moos crossing the road. I started solo again after lunch as we were now officially riding along the Great Ocean Road, which started right after Portland. However not yet very spectacular or scenic, thus I rejoined Lydia for sharing to break the wind until the camp in Port Fairy, a nice little town with a special flair.
Hurrah! Another rest day! A well deserved, after a 670 km ride into the wind.
