October 17, 2010
Greetings from Mexico!
What an enjoyable and scenic ride today. Truly a great day at the office. At one point as we negotiated our way up a climb I turned to Fred and said "Could be worse brother, you could be stuck in the office." Made that climb so much easier armed with that thought. You may recall that I posted a Twitter video a couple days ago showing the canola fields south of Goulburn As scenic as that was it had nothing on what we experienced today.
The day started bright and early in Cooma for Charles, Craig, Fred and myself as we set off for Cann River at 6.20am. As I departed Ian stepped to the threshold of his room and called out "Have a good day at the office Honey." I replied, "Will do Darling, see you tonight." You can see we all must be really missing our wives hey? Well I certainly am. (Miss you sweetheart, looking forward to being home with you on Sunday night.) Gotta tell you one aside story here. At one point Craig's iPod was stuck on repeat for 40km. The song? Addicted to Love by Robert Palmer. Too funny! Hahaha. We rode out to a magnificent sunrise following a quick breakfast of jam sandwiches. The other boys enjoyed hot bacon and egg rolls. No real complaints though because Phil and Mark caught up to us in Support Car 1 just past Nimmatabel and furnished us with two cold bacon and egg rolls each. You might say that sounds disgusting but when when you're cycling long distances any kind of food is welcomed. One thing I've learned this week is that food takes on a whole new meaning when you have to use it as a source of fuel and not just for the sake of filling your stomach and satisfying your palate. In fact even soft drink is good for you if you need an instant hit of energy before taking on a big hill.
Back to the scenery. As we rode along at a gentle pace we were able to enjoy sights that you simply don't get to see careering along at 100 km/hr. During the course of the day we passed massive sheep farms, a free range chook farm, majestic pine trees in the Bondi State Forest, views of the snow capped Snowy Mountains, mountain creeks, towering mountains and canyons and well, you get the picture.
Today's Bear Grylls award goes to Pastor Fred Peacock. Despite trying to survive the entire morning on a single jam sandwich when most of the guys had consumed multiple bananas, muesli bars, and a plethora of energy supplements (Kenny is really big on these, I think he keeps the health food shop in Narellan in business on his own) Pastor Fred continued to ride on. By the time we came to the 120km mark Fred's energy tank was pretty much depleted. Many would have quit at that point and refused to ride another metre. But not our Fred. Oh no, this man was determined to continue on. It may have taken us a long time but let me tell you there was spirit in that man today. When the going got tough Fred kept going. I enjoyed my ride with him and towards the end the two of us had a great chance to chat. After departing at 6.20am the two of us rode into Cann River to huge cheers from the boys at 6.00pm. Well the cheers were for Fred anyway, no one seemed to care about the fact that I too had spent about 9 1/2 hours actually seated riding a bike today! No seriously you should have been there - his effort was inspiring. I know what it's like to crack (a cycling term where you've got nothing left) and I can't imagine myself mustering the will power to ride a further 55 km after that.
Other notable events of the day include me being abused by the road worker at Bombala who clearly got out on the wrong side of his tractor this morning for proceeding 3 metres past the red light trailer as I slowed and de-cleated my pedals. At the time I was chasing up to Fred, Charles and Craig who'd left me stranded in Bombala and gone on without me. I figured they must have done something to upset him but it appears that he just didn't like me for some reason as they said it was all fine when they went through. Knowing Craig he probably put him up to it and pleaded ignorant.
Tomorrow we face another mammoth ride of 169km from Cann River to Bairnsdale. It's sure to be an up and down day with 10 categorised hills, two of them roughly on a par with riding up the Razorback from Camden to Picton. We'll be stopping mid-afternoon in Lakes Entrance, arguably one of the prettiest towns in Victoria and may even enjoy feeding some hot chips to the sea gulls if we have time.
Well that's about it for now folks. Apologies for the lateness of this post but as you can imagine there's a lot to do once we arrive. I had to consume three large bowls of Mario's Alfredo Spaghetti, take a 20 minute hot shower to stretch out every muscle in my body, take all my nutritional supplements and prepare my clothes for the morning ride. Phew, no wonder I feel tired. Doing all that's nearly as exhausting as riding 175 km.
Oh yeah one last thing. Today's Road Kill report.
- Wallabies (many)
- Wombats (3)
- Kangaroos (many)
- Hare (1)
- Rabbit (1)
- Black crow (1)
- Red belly black snakes (3) (Including one I got to watch first hand as the lady driving the white Commodore station wagon cleaned it up as she overtook Graeme and Sam in the bus. Sounded awesome too - thuck, thuck, thuck. Loved it!)
Rohan
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