The belly of the beast

After the fishing trip I went for a bit of a ride down to Surfers Paradise, probably 5km or so away from where I was parked.

The ride down is beautiful - cruising along next to a golden beach and a torqouise sea - but the destination is very built up - my friend Miff would call it the heart of the matrix, I think of it more as the belly of the beast.

 The skyscrapers are so large and so close to the beach that in the afternoons they cast an ever-moving shadow, designed to irritate even the most laid back of sunbathers

 The real irony of Surfers is that it's not even a good surfing beach - it's all beach breaks & sandbanks. In the very far distance you can see a headland and that is where Snapper Rocks is, one of the best points in the world. But no, at 'Surfers Paradise' you fight your way out through the break.

Surfers is an odd place for me. I always feel that I should spend more time there, but every time I do I just want to get out. Fortunately the ride back was just as nice as the ride in

and as an added extra I found a previously unknown (to me  at least) gravelly sandy access path that undulated it's way through the sand dunes and continued along the side of the beach down to the end of 'the Spit'

 You can see the city in the distance. And no, that bike is not comfortable over long distances.

By chance I bumped into some friends who were skating in the same area. I'd been fishing with a couple of them earlier that morning so it wasn't a total coincidence that we were all down there, but we hadn't arranged to meet up. Obviously the skating had taken it out of them because a few decided to grab hold and get a tow - apparently I ended up towing 6 of them. It's great resistance training.

Another bonus of the trip was that the Gold Coast seems to have a more leniant take on the nanny-state mandatory bike helmet laws which are in place across Australia. Although obviously all photos above were staged - I realise that even sitting on a stationary bike without a helmet will almost certainly lead to brain damage, death AND psoriasis of your private parts, and so appropriate helmetry was worn for all genuine riding...