I wouldn't say we're consistent with riding conditions ... when we head out for a ride, it's anybody's guess what will happen out there.

Strong headwinds are almost always a given, of course ... but there are usually tailwinds too. It's not at all unusual to have winds gusting up around 50 or 60 km/h here and because of the terrain and the fact that we're on an island so we're surrounded by a large body of water, the wind could come from 15 different directions throughout a ride. I only give wind direction on the weather sites a passing glance now because that's just a rough guideline.

These days we could get pouring rain, hail, a touch of snow, sunshine, temps as low as about 0C or as high as about 16C ... all on one ride! All of that all on one ride doesn't usually happen, but there is often quite a variety and we go prepared for anything.

Then there is the terrain. Tasmania is hilly.

And the roads ... sometimes we're on smooth pavement, often we're on quite rough pavement. They don't maintain the roads particularly well here ... doesn't seem to be a priority. We've done many rides where we've felt pretty beat up by the end just simply because the roads have been that rough. And several of our routes are a combination of pavement and gravel. One of the ways they keep the traffic volume down on country roads (and probably keep the maintenance costs down) is to leave several km somewhere in the middle as gravel.

The 100K we do as part of the Audax Tasmania calendar at the beginning of the season (early November), for example, starts with a lovely quiet scenic loop on a rather rough road, with two patches of gravel that total about 7 km. Then there's another lovely quiet scenic loop with a gravel stretch about 3 km long, up a fairly steep hill.



And of course we plan our weekends to do different routes and go different places, so we encounter all sorts of stuff.