Ripper.....

A few days ago Tropical Cyclone Oma introduced itself to the Sunshine Coast. It had been building up out at sea but was forecast to hit land before the weekend. At this point I had returned to Deception Bay and was looking at where to spend my final week. Of course I had already been North of Deception Bay but with winds of almost 60kmph now coming from the South I had only one realistic and enjoyable option available and that would be to cycle North again. With winds of this speed the cycling would be easy and after 8 weeks of non-stop headwind I would be a fool not to make the most of it. I worked out a route first to Bribie Island then Nambour for the final Park run of my trip, back to Coolum, up to Noosa again then loop to Cooroy to catch the train back. The road to Bribie Island was flat and easy to cycle on. A decent bicycle lane was good to use as the road was pretty busy with early morning traffic. As it was only a short ride to Bribie I set up on the beach just before lunchtime, layed out my towel, went for a paddle then put on some sun tan lotion. I had been looking at possible wild camp spots as I had cycled onto the island and had seen some good ones that I thought would work. Just out of curiosity though I checked on warmshowers to see if there were any hosts around. It turned out there was one on the island not far from were I was. I decided it may be worth sending a message as I would prefer a bed to the tent so I sent one asking if it would be okay to stay over for a night. I had a reply an hour later from Sylvia confirming I would be more than welcome to stay. I replied to let her know I would be arriving later and thanked her for the quick reply. I hung around the beach working on my tan, swimming and people watching. I thought I may as well take the chance to chill as much as possible which is made easier when you know you have a place to sleep. I had a fantastic evening with Sylvia and Keith. They had a beautiful house and a really friendly and playful dog. We had a good talk about Slyvia's upcoming trip to Europe to complete Eurovelo 15, the route I had taken a couple of years earlier. The following morning Keith took me to the beach for a spot of body boarding on the cyclone affected coastline. The waves were really big and the sea was really warm but there were no life guards out as officially the beach was closed. I managed to hit a few good waves and felt like I was getting quite good. The wind was blowing hard and the currents were moving us sideways a lot but we were still able to keep in control of the boards. I had just caught an amazing wave that took me all the way to the shore. I stood up and walked back out to around waist deep then lay stomach down on the board and paddled out a bit further. I lost a bit of control and slide sideways of the board and tried to put my feet on the sand. After a couple of seconds I realised I was above a channel in the sand and couldn't touch the bottom. I very quickly realised I was also in a rip. The feeling of being pulled away from the beach very quickly is unbelievably scary. The urge was to try and swim back towards the beach but everyone who had spoken about rips had advised this would be the worst thing to do. Even though, the feeling that swimming back was the best option felt correct. I tried for a few seconds and found it is almost impossible. In between every stroke you are pulled further out and with trying to stay a float and running out of energy it's really easy to see why being caught in a rip is so dangerous and potentially fatal. It seemed like minutes but in reality only around 20 seconds and I just stopped swimming and let the rip take me out far enoug where it would run out of momentum and I would be at the back of it and able to swim further down the shoreline to a safer spot. This was definitely the right idea. Once I was clear then able to get back to shore I thought it best to call it quits for the day and get off the board and on the bike.