If you have ever watched the film Snatch, you will have heard a very good description of what a nemesis is. I won’t repeat the description here, but basically Valley Yum is my nemesis tour. In the dim and distant past (February), I did my first Valley Yum. I turned up without a care in the world, fully confident of breezing round and enjoying a nice meal at the end. How wrong I was. Before we were even half way round, my appalling fitness level was on show for all to see. I was at the back, I was floundering and there was a long way to go. Small hills looked like mountains and big hills sapped what little remaining will power I had to continue. My brain was telling my feet exactly what to do, unfortunately they weren’t listening and were off doing their own thing. Salvation came in the form of Vaughan whose patience and desperately needed braking assistance somehow got me to the front door of Super Bowl where I duly crumpled into a heap on the floor. While I had technically made it, the whole experience had been a wake up call. I needed to massively improve my fitness, I badly needed to improve my skating technique and above all, I needed to do Valley Yum again to face down my nemesis.

Sunday had been a cool day, not helped by a chill wind (hopefully not an omen of things to come)! With a five o’clock start, the sun was already dipping below the horizon as we gathered at the bottom of the Goodwill Bridge. I arrived at five minutes to five and found no one around apart from Leah chatting to non other than Monte. Apparently, some sort of conduit had ripped open in the fabric of space time and sucked Monte 10 minutes into the future thus causing him to be the first to arrive (there can be no other explanation for this extortionary occurrence). A few minutes later almost everyone else arrived, having been waiting round the corner out of the wind. On seeing Monte, Ian’s theory that he was in fact some kind of time sink exchanging everyone else’s tardy appearances by osmosis was well and truly dashed.

At this point I noticed that everyone, except me, was wearing rather a lot of layers and nearly all of them were of the fleecy variety. When I had left, the option of layering up had occurred to me, but then I thought there would be no point. Once we got going, things would soon warm up and it would all be superfluous. I believe Scott of the Antarctic had a similar idea on his last expedition. With only mild hyperthermia setting in at this point, Monte made the introductions and pointed out that he would be assisted by Lyndal, Paul, Amber and Jo. Formalities over, we set off in the direction of the Coronation Drive bike path and then over to Suncorp Stadium.

By the time we arrived outside the stadium, the sun had set completely taking the last vestiges of warmth with it and the twilight element of the tour was well and truly past. Luckily the mild hyperthermia had also past; it had now been up rated to exposure with the possible onset of frostbite. Of course, being English means that years of harsh winters have honed my ability to whine about the cold to perfection, however living in Queensland for the last eighteen months has left me a little rusty in this department. This was the perfect opportunity to get some more practice in.

After a quick game of giant slalom, in which the challenge was to weave between the large grey boxes painted on the ground outside the stadium, we continued over the road and paused only briefly to check out the merchandise of the local adult emporium. We then made our way to the first major challenge of the night (other than the cold), Heartbreak Hill. This little beauty has everything. It’s steep, but gets even steeper at the top, it’s long enough that you want to stop but not so long that it seems like a good idea and to top it all off, cars venture up it at regular intervals. The climb to the top was on and within a few minutes the line of skaters had stretched from one end of the hill to the other. As each person crested the summit a brief smile passed their lips between gasps of breath. As the elastic line of skaters contracted back into a tight knot at the top, an ancient ute wheezed up the hill behind us. As it came to a stop at the junction, an excitable young man jumped out and with incredible enthusiasm gave us what can only be described as a warm Queensland hello. After exchanging a few pleasantries on the possibility of us bombing a few hills, he jumped back into his trusty steed and bid us a f***ing good night. This brief exchange seemed to have a profound effect on Anne who suddenly took on a very ‘country’ style of prose and proceeded to spend the next five minutes swearing like a trooper, much to everyone around hers great amusement.

Breath regained, we were soon off, or as Anne put it, “let’s get the f*** out of here.” After making our way along a couple of dimly lit bike paths, we crossed a main road via an overhead foot bridge. Stopping briefly for a group photo in the middle of the gently swaying structure, Leah had a vertigo moment before we continued down the other side.

The bottom of the bridge saw a choice of routes. One involved a long steep climb up Belgrave Street, the other involved the same change in elevation but spread over a greater distance. At this point, Monte invoked a democratic vote to decide the way forward. Of course, democracy being when everyone gets what no one wants, the hill won. The number of groans didn’t seem to be balanced by the number of woo hoos, but the people had spoken and the hill it was. Compared to Heartbreak Hill, this climb had a fairly even rise, there were fewer cars to worry about and while it was long, the top was in sight the whole way up. Where it did throw a spanner in the works was the quality of the surface. Where Heartbreak Hill had a nice smooth surface to run your skates over, Belgrave Street had definitely seen better days. The rough, pot hole strewn tarmac made any rolling almost impossible, leaving you to rely instead on more of a stepping action. Again, a long line of skaters formed as people approached the obstacle at their own pace.

All safely at the top, the next challenge was to get down the other side. While the drop was not particularly arduous, the main road at the bottom made the need to stop rather more of an imperative than would normally be the case. With Paul and Jo braced at the bottom to catch any runaways, a steady stream of skaters eased their way to the bottom and formed an orderly line on the pavement round the corner.

After the thrill of street skating in the dark, we switched to the even bigger thrill of unlit bike paths. Being in possession of a mini LED torch, I was volunteered to go on ahead and check for obstacles in the path. While mini LED torches are great for finding the lock on your car door in the dark or peering inside a PC case to locate a dropped screw, they don’t really cut it when it comes to finding your way down dark bike paths at anything more than a crawl. Barley lighting the ground two inches in front of me, I was effectively skating blind. Luckily the worst I came across was a small patch of gravel which was dispatched without too much drama and as the end of the path loomed into view, the torch was put away, never to be volunteered as a route finding device again.

Crossing the road, we came to the first and only drink stop of the tour courtesy of a BP garage. As the automatic doors glided open, a welcoming blast of warm air caressed my now blue arms. Like a thermal vampire, I was drawn inside where I proceeded to drain the shops heat source dry. Within a minute, I had returned to my normal translucent white colour, and clutching a large bag of forbidden fruits (they were all out of jelly dinosaurs), I reluctantly made my way back outside. As drinks and lollies were eagerly consumed, Monte emerged from the next door Burger King clutching a cheese burger and fries. He then proceeded to demonstrate the art of eating a cheeseburger in two bites. While conceptually fascinating, it is physically not the most pleasant of sites.

Food consumed and my ability to emulate a storage heater quickly ebbing away, we were once more on our way. Mere minutes later, we found ourselves out side the Super Bowl Chinese restaurant in the Valley. That was it; I had done it. Valley Yum completed without the need of a push, braking assistance or a taxi home. Demons vanquished, nemesis defeated, job done, time for dinner.

Super Bowl makes up the Yum part of the title in Valley Yum. With a 7:30pm booking, we had arrived twenty minutes early, however as a skate friendly establishment, our early arrival was not an obstacle and we were soon decamped around a couple of tables. Within a few minutes, Vaughan appeared and joined us and soon large quantities of good food began to appear and just as quickly disappear (particularly anything within arms reach of Amber). Pudding was the obligatory fried ice cream apart from Sash who eagerly tucked into a rather phallic looking banana fritter (although she didn’t quite manage to finish it off).

With dinner consumed, Jo made the fatal mistake of wandering over to our end of the table ostensibly to stretch her legs, but suddenly finding herself as volunteer taxi for almost everyone she passed, she probably regretted getting up at all. Before we could avail ourselves of her kind offer of a lift, we first had to skate back to LRT. Passing from the warm interior of Super Bowl into the icy blast of a cold winter night brought home the full stupidity of my earlier decision to ignore the option of warm clothing in favour of light weight mobility. My forlorn shivering appearance obviously elicited a modicum of sympathy as I was quickly surrounded by Jo, Suzy, Anne and Ann who formed a warming huddle as we stood waiting for everyone to exit the restaurant. Luckily by the time Ian emerged and offered to join the huddle (in a big manly bear hug kind of way), the cold didn’t seem so bad and it was time to go!

With the return skate almost complete, the final run over the Story Bridge down to the cliffs at Kangaroo Point should have been a simple matter. As the end of the bridge approached, I lifted my foot to apply the brake and …. nothing. This rather odd sensation didn’t make a lot of sense to a brain operating below its critical temperature threshold. Instead of sending the emergency tee stop signal to my right foot, it panicked and made me grab the rail at the side of the path. The sudden increase in heart rate sent a surge of warm blood towards my head and with it the ‘don’t be stupid’ emergency override kicked in and I tee stopped with the realization the plastic bake holder on my skate had snapped and left me sans brake. Luckily, this had happened before reaching the steep hill down to the steps at the end of the bridge.

While numerous offers of braking assistance were offered down the hill, I politely declined and took the cautious side stepping approach down to the steps. After coming within an inch of falling backwards down these I preceded with great caution the rest of, the thankfully flat, route back.

We were soon at LRT and after goodbyes all round, we made our various ways home after a cold but nemesis defeating night’s sk8ing.