ride4acure

ride4acure team visited Seaham Primary School yesterday afternoon. What a fantastic group of students and teachers. We had a lively presentation engaging with the students who when asked in the ‘wrap up’ who learnt something new today every hand inthe room shot up enthusiastically! Seaham Primary School very generously made a $200 donation to ride4acure which is awesome.

A few of the year 5 students at Seaham were a wee bit green when they were asking Joe about being on the ride with me and having some time off school to do it!  Joe is keeping a journal (at this stage it is a very, very, very  brief journal, with a total of 250 words!) However he has sent his first installment to his class and did half an hours maths online!

We’re off to do a presentation this morning at Curves Gym in Heatherbrae and a fundraising morning tea.

Have spent hours this morning unsuccessfuly trying to update the powerpoint, what has actually happened it has become a meditation in staying calm. Nothing has worked as I’m using a new little computer with a different version of powerpoint than my one at home and am unsure of my way around it, so therefore the opportunity to become increasingly frustrated has been high! 

Very thick fog this morning until 8am which is a no go for cyclists. When I was training I had a few days up on Walcha mountain, got caught out riding high and a fog came in with nil visibility. Very scary being unable to see traffic. So thick fogs and thunderstorms are my only no go zones with riding. I won’t be any good to anyone as a traffic accident cycling statistic! My cycling gear (other than the pants all black, only selection is black, black or black) is super high visibility, have been told by a few members of my family rather close to me who love me dearly – that I look like a glow in the dark freako….however at least I’m a visible freako!

We’ve had a little change of plans due to weather conditions. Which looks like more wet stuff hanging around for a few days. I had planned on camping in at Clarence Town at dear friends of ours, however with the weather (due to dirt roads) decided on riding ahead of schedule to Raymond Terrace (instead of camping at both Clarence Town and also Newcastle will be just going into visit now) and living it up at the Pacific Garden Park caravan park in Raymond Terrace for a few days. So today I am liasing with schools re visits, doing more radio interviews (ABC Radio are giving me great coverage , trying to catch up on emails and doing much needed paperwork, banking, shopping, maintenance on my bike and hopefully getting to a movie with Joe. He’s also hoping to catch up with a mate of his who holidays at Moparrabah who lives in Newcastle. My driver Yoni has gone home to Armidale til Saturday to catch up on work commitments so we’ll be simply ‘spearing’ out from Raymond Terrace to our commitments at schools in this area and also a Curves Gym tomorrow. All good. My next driver is my beautiful neice Amanda who is a vet down in Drouin Victoria who is flying in to Sydney on 3rd November for the week down to Canberra. Which will have us in Canberra for Joe’s 11th Birthday!

Joe and I had a thrill last night. We were looking for a noodle shop in Raymond Terrace and came upon a movie set and were absolutely thrilled to find it was “Tomorrow when the war began” being shot right in Raymond Terrace! So we had a good perv and will be going back today to try and get a photo or two! Joe happens to be listening to the last CD talking book of the series at the moment, Hannah, Esther and I have all read the complete series a few years ago now.

90% chance of rain today, high UV, 19 degrees.

I had an absolutely brilliant day on my bike, smooth sailing, my tube stayed inflated all day, my patch obviously worked. I was stoked. Having said that I checked it about 20 times during my ride. The conditions were almost perfect for riding. I did have a SE wind but minus the rain (a few spots but nothing compared to yesterday). I made good time with an average speed of 20.7 kms per hour 55kms. And pulled up feeling good. My arms were still aching from the day before. Fiona Murray came across to Clarence Town and very generously gave me an awesome ‘pain erasing’ massage, where I was visiting our good frinds Danny and Lee Woodland and their wonderful kids Breanna and Josh. Fiona bought her daugher Lexi who was besotted with Lee and Danny’s array of horses, dogs, chooks and took many lovely photo’s.

Fiona also bought me three high pressure tubes! Bless her!

Joe and I stayed the night here with Lee and Danny and I’m heading back into Raymond Terrace. I had planned to bring the van into Clarence Town but due to weather etc decided to simply camp at Raymond Terrace in a caravan park. Am heading back in soon as I have a radio interview at noon with Newcastle ABC. Was on the air yesterday morning with Kim Honan on local ABC and had many texts during the day from people saying they’d heard.  My goal is to get melanoma on young people’s and the communities radars and that is certainly happening.

Yoni my driver had to go back to work at Armidale University for a few days so we’ll be staying put at Raymond Terrace and going out to functions from there.  On Sunday morning  I will ride out to Ettalong/Gosford area where I have several functions on.

Thanks so much to everyone for the messages of love, support and encouragement. I think about you all, all the time, your support makes the roads smoother for sure!

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It has rained non stop all day with a very gusty South Easterly that nearly blew me back to Kempsey all day. And when I eventually left the Pacific Highway to make my way into Tea Gardens along a very ‘dead’ road I couldn’t beleive the  fierceness of it, I was right back to about 10-15 kms per hour. I had a very challenging day. Was on the road for 8 hours all up and had three flat tyres! All had to be changed in the pouring rain, had all kinds of trouble with the new tubes, I had four spares, but I blew one out straight away, then punctured the next one in less than a few kilometres from the first tyre change, then did another one late this arvo just out of Tea Gardens and decided to walk in the rain pushing my bike the last couple of kms because I just couldn’t change another one, I was wet to the bone, freezing  cold, hungry, hanging out for a two gallon bucket of hot tea, a hot shower, warm dry clothes and a huge feed! Well I finally got to the Tea Gardens Hotel at about 5.45 and finally checked my phone messages and found one from  Tea Gardens Rotary Club inviting me to come to their weekly meeting tonight at 7pm at the Tea Gardens Country Club to give a talk about ride4acure. So I had a shower, got cleaned up, actually blow dried my hair and put some make up on! Grabbed a quick coffee some garlic bread and headed off leaving the road crew tucking into a couple of juicy scotch fillets! I intended to have mine when I came back after 8pm, but ended up just having a pear slice, cuppa, and yet again changed and patched my rear tub ready for tomorrow’s stint to Clarence Town. I am out of tubes now and the ‘crew’ have to make a detour to Raymond Terrace and pick up a supply for me. Turns out the four spare tubes I had were the wrong size, they’re racing tubes and are too skinnny for my machine. I had asked for suitable tyres for my bike for this trip . This is all learning and I was certainly on a steep learning curve today. My arms are so sore tonight, keeping my bike on the road was hard work, the wind and rain was working against an easy ride today, and the trucks were ‘sucking’ me into the road. I kept a really strong focus and steer straight. The thing that kept me going in this very challenging situation was the knowledge that cancer doesn’t quit, take the easy way or sleep. It’s alway on the go, I think a lot of people living with cancer, daily facing the uncertainty, and feeel like I’m riding for them too. I’m riding also for the people who lost their lives to melanoma, who don’t have voice any longer, and when tonight I spoke at the Rotary meeting, I’m there for everyone whose in this mileau of melanoma madness. I am riding for everyone, speaking for everyone I’ve met and heard of. It is tragic that bright young people are losing their lives to this disease.  I know without a doubt that all of my professional and personal resources will be channelled into getting melanoma on young people’s radars! And it’s started big time.

Tonight Rotary made a donation from their ‘fines’ and also I sold a heap of pens, which netted $135 dollar plus Rotary have pledged a donation that  will be posted.

Joe had an hours fishing here at Tea Gardens, didn’t have much luck but had a few bites. He was just happy to be out of the ute and near some water. He’s really into this, he’s the ‘caravan man’ and knows all the bits with it.

Well am going to bed now, I have a radio interview at 6.40 am tomorrow with Kim Honan.

Tuncurry was brilliant staying with Fiona, having a wonderful presentation from Seachange Op Shop of $1000 for ride4acure! Wow how generous. Thanks to Christine for organising the fundraiser and the generous community of Seachange! And of course to Fiona for generously opening her home and heart to us. Fiona knew Hannah through horsemanship camps.  

What a fantastic ride, huge long hills and awesome big long coasts down the other side! The biggest longest hills I’ve ridden yet-65 kms in just over 3 hours of riding and averaged 20.5 kms per hour which is my best yet. But of course this ride isn’t about the speed, I think of Hannah all the time and every other young person living with the uncertainty of cancer and in particular melanoma. Every day I meet people who have lost loved ones, or are themselves living with this disease. Esther had a moment the other day where she said “Mum your riding 1500 kms for melanoma, that’s the same number almost that die each year from it!” A very sad statistic, this is the same as our national road toll. The generosity of strangers continues to stagger me. People daily generously giving donations in support of ride4acure.

Today I had Fiona Murray from Tuncurry where we’d been staying ride with me from Coolongalook to Buladelah (a 30 km stint along Pacific Highway), it was the first time I’ve ridden with someone else, and Fiona is an actual experienced long distance bike rider! She was fabulous to ride with, we yacked along side by side as the shoulder was in most parts a couple of metres wide, Fiona also could ride and take photo’s! Now that impressed me, I would’ve ended up in the table drain or under a b-double! Started to rain in the last 10 kms, so much so I sailed right past the caravan park we’re staying in tonight at Buladelah and had to turn around at the bottem of the hill and come back up hill to camp! Like I hadn’t had enough hills today! I’m stoked with how I went today and my body is really feeling fantastically strong. I’m doing plenty of stretching, Fiona gave me a great massage yesterday and I’m on fire today! Am heading to Tea Gardens Hotel tomorrow, forecast is for thunderstorms/rain and strong 43 km SE winds! aagghhh….. and 55kms to cover! Not the best conditions. Have found a fantastic weather site online that gives me all the info. I have to confess though in my naivity I didn’t know if the wind direction was  telling mewhere it was coming from or where it was going! Now that is right up there eh!  Esther made it safely with her horses to Quambone and is coming back to Kemspey to pick up her other horse then heading back to Wagga. Goodie I will hopefully get to see her. And thumbs down and  shame on Sharon McIver driving past me today and not stopping to say g’day and give me a hug from home! LOL :-))

Wow what a fantastic day. I woke up at 5am after a night of being awake every couple of hours. I’d just wake up think about what I’m doing, then talk myself back to sleep. This happened all night! We camped at Haley Barnes home with her partner Matt near Laurieton. Haley is an old friend from Moparrabah/Warbro area who is now living in the Hastings. Many years ago Haley was part of an upriver gang of kids who with my crew of kids used to get to the bus stop at McKenzies Creek just after 6am and we’d light a campfire and cook sausages for breaky on bits of wire and wrap them in fresh white bread (I know what your thinking but mmmm did they taste good??)and hook in before the bus came! The bus used to leave at 7.10am (and we had to drive 9kms from the farm to get to the bus!) and the kids loved it. The bus trip in those days was the best part of their day as they got to hang out with their mates for an hour and a half!

Back to the bike ride eh…I got going from camp at 6.30am and rode the 4 kms back out to the Pacific Highway then hooked along at great speed! I had a lovely soft tailwind, ideal temperature, light traffic and the sweetest road surface to ride on …I was flying. Made great time to Taree and met up with Esther and Joe at morning tea and had a coffee at Macca’s on the Purfleet side of Taree. Also met a lovely woman Lesley and her daughter who had heard of ride4acure in the ABCRA (rodeo and campdraft magazine article) and again were shocked that Hannah had died from melanoma. Hannah’s story highlights to people that melanoma can strike anyone and that is everyone’s business. I had heaps of ‘toots’ and waves today off truckies, who I have to say, in my limited experience, are so respectful of cyclists.

Everday I hear stories of young people dying from melanoma. A year ago I only knew of one! It is like the genie is out of the bottle.

Back to the day. I rode out of Taree to the Lakes Way turn into Tuncurry and it would have to be the ‘deadest’ rode to ride a bike on, I thought my tyres were flat, brakes on etc…the surface was terrible, rough, bumpy, some short, steep hills, no shoulder to ride on…and I had 20 kms of it. Took me an hour and a half to get into Tuncurry, then another half an hour to find the crew as they had rang earlier and told me they were by the water and  I knew Joe was off fishing and Ez was on the phone (thus I couldn’t contact her to find where they were parked!) I rode around for half an hour -thirsty, hungry looking for the ‘rig’, eventually finding them and we had lunch by the water and headed off to Tuncurry Primary to meet up with about 100 Year 1 & 2 students. What a fantastic group of students and teachers. We were very welcome and the kids really engaged with the message and asked heaps of great questions. And again Tuncurry Primary will be doing some fundraising for ride4acure. 

Staying with a ‘horse mate’ of mine, Hannah’s & Esther’s, Fiona Murray in Tuncurry (that rhymes!) and today have a morning tea function in town and am hopefully meeting the mayor of Tuncurry ‘Jan’. Then I get an afternoon off and will catch up on some other stuff like washing my bike, oiling the chain, pumping tyres. And gas bagging with Fiona as she’s a long distance cyclist with a fair bit of knowhow about bikes. I am a complete novice having a crack at a long  distance ride for the first time and learning as I’m going! Fiona has earlier this year completed a trip across Cape York on her bike!

I swap drivers today as Esther has to go back to work in Wagga Wagga (after delivering a horse and a pup to a drover out at Quambone near Warren), my eldest sister Yoni will be driving for the next week. I’m swapping drivers each week, however my main man Joe is with me for the long haul! He is the caravan whizz and has packing up and setting up down to a T and finding fishing holes! Joe’s find of the week is some spray on prawn scent he’s trying out on his ‘fake bait’ things.  Ez and Joe have had a couple of ‘trying’ moments where they wanted to ‘throttle’ each other (as only brothers and sisters can and get over it 2 minutes later), but it’s all grist for the mill.

Left the beautiful North Haven at about 8am, had intended to leave earlier but it was so lovely to be sitting with friends  Janine Taranto and Jim Bignell drinking tea and telling stories. Had a lovely early morning ride on the ferry and headed off down the Oxley Highway to head to Camden Haven near Kew for a presentationat  Camden Haven High School with all of year 7. They were really engaging, 20 of the students had entered the ‘slogo’ competition with some very clever entries that’ll be hard to beat. Every time I present I think of ways to improve what I’m delivering. sharper, more succinct ways of saying things that capture the kids attention and understanding. I am happy to say that Camden Haven is also going to have a fundraiser for ride4acure and also have some merchandise to sell too.  The ride to Camden Haven was delightful at nearly 40 kms, took me just under two hours, of course plenty of wind today but thankfully not so hot! And for the first time in ages no marauding magpies attacking me. I see lots of birds on the highway, and what is beautiful at present is all the flowering native hibiscus along the sides of the highway.

I saw two seperate brake drums today and a wide variety of engine hoses and amazingly what I see a lot of is the ‘balancing’ bits that go on tyres.   Makes me wonder how there’s not more vehicles broken down as sometimes the ‘shoulder’ looks like a Repco shop! The highlight of ‘how do they do it’ today was a big 4wd wagon towing a dual axle caravan flat out with two left hand side flat tyres down to the rim, with sparks flying off for a metre, the noise was incredible and the driver kept on roaring down the highway at about120 kms per hour oblivious to the catastrophe they were towing down the pacific highway. Roadkill today included two foxes, a turtle, a blue tongue lizard, a couple of birds and about three owls and a fox…all that in 40 kms! Thank you to the dozens of people texting me messages of support . I love to receive them, they keep me powering on. I had a radio interview today with the Taree station, and also a newspaper interview for the Camden Haven news.  Am heading to bed now for a very early start tomorrow.

Wow…what a wonderful send off from Kempsey, a big crowd gathered to say goodby at the Kempsey skin Cancer Clinic which is where this whole journey with melanoma began almost two years.  a crowd gathered to wish meack up crew, Joe and Esther,  well and also to draw the raffle. With first prize going to Kerri Scobie won first prize of the wonderful weekend farm stay at ‘Bermurrah Homestead’ at Pee Dee via Bellbrook, Jodie Cliff won the wonderful painting by Anita Humprhries, and local legend Bill Smith won the two final prizes of the chainsaw package Donated by Greg and Regina Hawkins of Hawkins Mowers and Chainsaws Kempsey and the $2oo voucher for Retravision donated by Janeelle Clarke from Greenhill General Store.Amazing with nearly two thousand tickets sold many of them out of town, that four locals won the prizes! I left town at about ten am, to lots of cheering and clapping. As I crossed the Kempsey Traffic Bridge I was surprised by a large group of my TAFE colleagues cheering and waving a few posters, gave me such a boost I hardly felt the climb up the big hill…it was so wonderful, I have felt very nurtured and supported throughout the time I’ve been planning and preparing for this. I am taking all that wonderful positive support with me as I head down the highway. 

After the raffle I left town and rode to Port Macquarie in very high temperatures. It was stinking hot, now wind, tons of traffic.

I averaged 19 kilometres an hour to port, but had a couple of 15 minute breaks en route.  I arrived at Port just before two pm, just in time to get set up for St Joseph’s Primary School, and presented to the whole school of 450 kids . Esther and Joe were great getting all the gear ready and set up for me.  The students were wonderful, engaging, curious and had some really cool questions about melanoma and skin cancer.  One of which was ‘are the uv rays stronger in an aeroplane because your closer tothe sun? StJoseph’s are going to run a fundraiser day and donate the tally to ride4racure. We stayed with friends at North Haven and caught the ferry over the Hastings River. Joe loved it and had a fish in the Hastings before we kicked off this morning. Last night we caught up with friends and well wishers at Finians Irish Tavern in Port for a beer and counter tea which was great.

Joe is the dedicated caravan set up person, and is very nifty at setting the camp up! We are so grateful to Watson’s for the wonderful sponsorship of this Jayco van, it certainly makes things easier and more comfortable.

I had a couple of interviews, the Macleay Argus and Port Express, also the TV (not sure which channell) filmed me at St Joseph’s while I was giving the presentation. I slept like a log for a good 8 hours and woke up feeling on top of the world and ready for my ride to Camden Haven high school.