Sunset Skies

It was one of those afternoons that felt like you were burning hundred dollar notes if you were wasting time sitting around at home. Shadows were long in the late spring sun and I had a hankering for wide, flat views and horizon lines. Speed was the last thing on my mind. Instead, I wanted to wash away the previous week’s frustrations and start afresh.

I packed a small towel and a few odds and ends into the pannier bags of my Cannondale mountain bike conversion (a bike that has now been supplanted as my cargo bike by the recent purchase of my Yuba Boda Boda) and headed off to the shores of Moreton Bay at Redcliffe. Flat pedals, shorts, tee shirt, me and the bike.

I headed out via the new Bracken Ridge underpass, out to the waterfront at Sandgate and sailed downwind toward the Redcliffe Bridge. The wind was less forgiving as I changed directions and started the three and half kilometre chug over the bridge. The metal railings on the side of the bridge hummed and pinged in the wind as I gobbled up the concrete ribbon to the Redcliffe side.

Once on the peninsula, I floated around the southern end at Woody Point checking out beaches and kiteboarders at the falling tide before ending up at the Gayundah Marine Park. I stopped to ponder the ship wreck of the Gayundah recalling days of my childhood decades earlier when the wreck was in much better condition and we climbed on its deck and inside its hull at the low tide collecting small crabs and shells. Shorncliffe was outlined in the hazy sunset across Bramble Bay as I looked.

The wind as I crossed the bridge on the return journey seemed just as unforgiving in the opposite direction but, by now, the setting sun created a new ambience that made every pedal stroke worth while.

On the other side, I decided to make the ride a loop instead of retracing my steps and so I headed back along the Deagon Deviation bikeway all the way to Bracken Ridge. By now, the day’s last rays disappeared behind the horizon and the temperature dropped noticeably. I stopped for a quick snack at a service station, fished a jumper out of my panniers, turned my lights on and headed home.

Ride safe and see you out there sometime.