Sadly, I abandoned my record attempt on Tuesday, 25 August, and flew back to Sydney from Karratha. I actually abandoned the attempt several days earlier when persistent rear spoke breakages just made it impossible to maintain the schedule I needed to have any hope of breaking the record. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to maintain this website while on the road as hoped, and the only journal updates were made via the Yahoo Group. In the next few weeks I'm hoping to add those journal entries to this site as well as the remaining photographs. I'm sad and frustrated at my third successive failure to break the record. I was on schedule and confident at Katherine, one-third of the way, but the serious bike problems that occurred the next day and ultimately cost me two days, virtually scuppered the attempt. That particular problem, the fracture of an alloy nut (into which the pedal screws) inside of the carbon fibre crank arm, was not something that could have been anticipated or easily detected until after the damage was done. It was just plain bad luck. No plans for a fourth attempt. It has taken up too much time and cost me too much money, but I am left with nagging feeling that I could still break the record with a bit of luck.
My daughter, as part an under-graduate project, produced a short sound summary of my last attempt on the record which can be heard here.
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