10/06/2018
As we were heading north towards Rockhampton, Mia started making a bit of a fan belt noise, so we called the Isuzu Dealer at North Rocky and they were happy to have a look at it for us. As it turned out it was a bit of a tricky job to adjust the belt, there were two mechanics inside Mia working from the top of the engine and one underneath. Job done all fixed, no charge as it had recently been services by another Isuzu dealer and they were going to sort it out between themselves.
We stayed the next two nights at a free council supported RV stop over area, it was good it gave us a chance to explore Rocky. We jumped on our bikes (Rachel has a brand new $100 bike from Kmart) and off we went.
Mmmm lets focus on the new bike for a bit, we couldn’t get a normal lady’s bike as there were some faults with all their lady’s bikes that resulted in the distance between the seat and the peddles being to far, so we had to get a girl’s bike, this suited much better. However, as we were riding Rachel was puffing and huffing a lot more than Col, we figured that this was probably because it has smaller wheels, which means you need to peddle more, and that is why it took more effort.
We had a good time exploring the Rocky river precinct that has recently been completely redeveloped but has been done in a way that complements all the original heritage buildings that line the bank of the Fitzroy river, we rode on to the Botanical Gardens and visited the free zoo. Unfortunately, the gardens were a bit of a disappointment as they do not seem to be maintained any more. Apparently, Cyclone Marcia that devastated the region in 2015 did that much damage that they are still trying to get things back up to scratch. It was sort of weird to be riding our bikes around such a big city with wide streets that were completely empty, virtually no shops open, no pedestrians very few cars, it was like a ghost town at 10.30 on a Saturday morning.
On our return ride we discovered that Rachels bike couldn’t even roll down gradual slopes as well as Cols. We decided to stop and take a bit of a closer look. Col is not much of a bike mechanic and is not competent in adjusting the brakes on bicycles. After disengaging the Front Brakes on Rachels bike, everything became a lot easier. We probably should have done that 12km’s ago.