ride4acure

I find it hard to beleive that I’m 25 days into this ride! I have visited so many schools en route, spoken to thousands of kids in dozens of towns. My aim is to ‘spread the word’ that melanoma is everyone’s  business, especially young people, and I feel satisfied that I’m achieving this.

I was again on the ABC radio live this morning, pulled up on the side of the Hume Highway at 6.30 in the morning near Woomargarma (old stomping ground when I was droving in the late 70’s as a spritely 18 year old!)  That’s younger than Esther now but feels like a ‘blip’ ago in time.

My ride today was great, fantastic country to be riding through, farmers harvesting crops everywhere, which feels ‘metaphorically significant’, that ride4acure may also harvest resources to support advancements in melanoma research through fundraising ! 

Am heading to Wangaratta tomorrow (80KMS) and will cross the NSW/VIC border before 6.30am – I’m camped at Laverton on the North Side of Albury, again with a generous donation to ride4acure of a caravan site at the Albury Top Tourist Caravan Park. Big thanks.   Am heading off at first light, I have 12 kms to the border, then down the Hume.

Had lots of ‘toot’s off motorists after the radio interview.  I reckon after this ride I’m seriously gonna think about a ‘road’ bike as I’d like a little more speed! I am ‘hooked’ on riding bikes, I love the freedom and the fact that it’s travel under my own steam. Will definatley be doing more bike rides down the track.

Will be staying with my sister in law Sandy Anderson (Hannah & Esther’s Dad Lindsay’s sister)  in Wangaratta and her hubby Mick (both bike riders and triatheletes) and am really looking forward to that. Sam my nephew has settled into the ‘driver’ role here and is currently kicked back watcing a will Ferrell DVD. It’s been so hot here, we enjoyed a swim this arvo, slept for a couple of hours and been playing cards. Caught up on a little bike maintenance, and did a load of washing. Joe has gone for the weekend at Veronica’s on the Murrumbidgee at ‘Brewarinna Station’ Narranderra and will come back over on Monday with his cousin Lizzie. 

I had an industrial accident on the road this morning, what I’ve now considered one of the most uncomfortable experiences to date on the road since I left Kempsey. After about half an hour of riding this morning I was desperate for ‘a comfort stop’! So I spied a beautiful big redgum and ducked behind it in long grass, problem was my lycra bike pants got absolutely covered inside and out in both wild oat seeds and barley grass seeds- a gazillion of them. then I had to get out of the long grass and pick them out, which by now there was a couple of trucks parked watching…I thought very entertaining for them. I wasn’t very successful in removing the seeds and had to ride a further 5kms  ooching and ahhing til I found a truck stop where I could strip off and remove the seeds. Still not very successfully, however Sam came along after about an hour and I could change my pants! Still itching from it all….the trials of a bike rider eh! Definately found out first hand lycra and grass seeds are a very uncomfortable combo!

Cycling through the riverina is a delight. Most of this country I have ridden on horses droving cattle so it is awesome to be going slowly over it again. Am in Holbrook tonight, arriving about 1pm after a very early start from Wagga riding 82kms… as the temperature was creeping up to 40 today it is very hot. I thought I absolutely wanted to get here before the ‘extreme’ part of the day. (However that’s relative, it was stinking hot from about 9.30 am but I just keep peddling and putting aside the discomfort , for e.g. being hot enought to melt, flies by the million,

'fashion of the road'

 stinking rotten roadkill that smells for 250 m either side of it’s ‘resting place’ everywhere, rough roads that shake the  life out of my spine! head winds thumping into me, good thing aobut the head wind is it keep the flies out of my face! but slows me down heaps, and of course constantly feeling thirsty-I have a drink but could just drink again straight away. Am drinking Gatorade and water but am thirsty, thirsty, thirsty! . Any way all the above are ‘grist for the mill’ for this budding long distance cyclist….I have now ridden over 1100kms..one turn of the pedal at a time….and I love it…..I”m constantly assessing what I’d do different next time in relation to both the riding, fundraising and awareness raising. I love visiting the schools and in particular primary schools where the kids are so ungaurded and enthusiastic.   yesterdayJoe and  I went to both Wagga Wagga High school to whole of Year 9, the group were terrific, a bit shy of asking questions but very attentive. Terry Willis the Year 10 coofdinator did a great job of  organising things for me.  This  followed by Curves Gym in Wagga  where I met Jodie, Analise and Kim who are thinking up creative ways to do some fundraising and also selling some ride4acure merchandise.  After this I then drove out to Narrandera public school.  Joe does a great job operating the power point, and passing out ‘freebies’ to kids who ask interesting questions.

Today is Veronica’s last day driving, tonight at 8pm Sam (my nephew,Veronica’s son a ged 22) is taking over the ute wheel for the week. Sam is driving up from Taradale in Western Victoria.  Then unbeleivably next Sunday Esther will be back and I’ll be riding my final week. It so feels like just the other day I started out from Kempsey and here I am 13 days off completing the ride!

Veronica going for a spin!

Esther is riding this weekend at Yass Rodeo, barrel racing on  Lena (Hannah’s mare). They’re going really well as a team and great things are afoot! Esther also has her good eventing mare Diva with her at Wagga and is getting involved in the jumping scene locally now. She’s only a stone’s throw from the 3* course at the university.

Am gonna have a ‘chillax’ for a couple of hours. Already just had a dip in the pool here at the Top Tourist Caravan Park at Holbrook where Trevor and Sharon have generously donated a nights site fee to ride4acure, also gave us a well received cold bottle of lemon, lime and bitters on arrival! Ahh how tasty that was.

I’m continually heartened by the great people I’m meeting on the road. Very Blessed.

I left Gundagai Tourist Park at 6.30 am but had only barely rode out the front gate when my phone rang and it was Canberra ABC and we did an interview there and then for 15 minutes,then chatted for a further 15 minutes! The ABC have been brilliant giving me plenty of coverage along the way. 

finger board on backroad to Wagga

 I took the backroad to Wagga through Nangus, following the beautiful Murrumbidgee along for the first 20  minutes.  It was very pleasant to be off the main road. Rode through some beautiful farming country, wineries, oat crops, plenty of cattle and sheep.   The roads like long peices of  ‘licorice strap’, but unlike licorice came with plenty of steep hills which  broke up the day. The bike  highlight of the day was getting my record top speed of 69.4 kilometres per hour! yes  69.4. That is very fast for this little bike rider! Gotta say I did have a moment as I’m whirling down the monster of a hill what the gravel rash would look like if I came a gutsa! Caused me to increase my focus on the road, lighten the hold on the handlbars and enjoy the run down.

Top Speed!

Had lunch break on the river at Wantabadgery, and had a dip in the Bidgee, just walked in in all my bike gear. The water was freezing, literally, quite a current and obviously water temperature was relative to snow melt! Coldest I’ve ever felt it. Was alsmost dry though by the time I walked 100 metres back to the van it was so hot.  I reckon, it was 39 the day before and as still as a statue. This gave the flies permission to increase their activity around my face for the day!

 I’m not gonna go near how many gazzillion flies there were, but preface to say I am now the owner of a ‘fly veil’, Veronica bought it for me, apparently now I fall into the category of looking like a Maltese fruit picker! I say why pick on the Maltese?

Am staying with Esther where she’s now working 20 minutes out  of Wagga for Vicki Schiller. was so good to be together last night. Vicki cooked us a lovely dinner, but I was in bed by 10pm. I had gone into Wagga at 7pm for a massage. ‘Scott’ from Wagga Sports Injury Massage clinic kindly donated a great massage! I feel the better for it this morning. I’ve covered a lot of kilometres, hills and heat this week and my body has been doing a great job, but I tell you what when I swung onto my bike yesterday morning I was ‘a little tight’! I do heaps of stretching, but I couldn’t quite ‘stretch’ all those Yass and Gundagai hills out of my legs! I’ve got to say I feel quite a sense of achievement to think I’ve ridden this far now under my own steam.

Every day of riding has it’s challenges, but none that come anywhere near the challenge of the journey with Hannah and melanoma. I always think of this when I feel things are getting a bit hard. Nothing compares to what Hannah went through, and what too many others are facing right now. This is such a small thing compared to that. Yesterday at Wantabadgery another farmer pulled up to leave a donation and shared a story not only of his wife’s journey with breast cancer, but also of a young woman who died recently from melanoma. Then not a few hours later when we arrived in Wagga and I was talking to a guy at the local caravan business and he told me of a mate of his who has just been told he has a few weeks to live due to a very aggressive spread of melanoma in his body.

Stories like this are heartbreaking, however they serve to energise me to continue to get creative around ways to fundraise, because I absolutely know the only way out of the morass of melanoma tragedy is through research. We need new ways to treat and live with this disease, and the guys who are doing the foot work looking for answers need help through research dollars. Rideacure is a small peice of that support.And every person who donates becomes a part of the future, knowing that they’re helping find answers to stem the tragic loss of life that so frequently goes hand in hand with having melanoma as Hannah’s story demonstrates and so many others I now know about. A year ago I bearly knew a person with melanoma, I say it’s like buying a yellow car, once you have one they’re everywhere! Same.

Am off to Wagga High School this morning to talk   withYear 9 students at 9.15, then off the Curves Gym at 11, then driving out to Narranderra Public School to visit Years 4, 5 & 6. Joe has a mate in year 5 there so that’ll be good.

Am on the road in the morning to head to Holbrook via Mangoplah.

Today there were three things in plentiful supply. Trucks, flies and hills.  I would love a dollar for each truck I saw today! I’d have reached the ride4acure target of $150 000 easily today I reckon. Tuesday is obviously truck day on the Hume, the later in the day there were even more trucks. The flies nearly pulled me backwards to Kempsey. I had several thousand freeloaders on my back and haunting my head all day. I used ‘Rid’, but a few times forgot to apply and suffered the consequences! Millions of the blighters crawling in every facial oriface! I ended up with my hi vis orange  ‘sunsmart attacha flap’ from my helmet over my face….looked like the bike burkah woman! Veronica nearly wet herself when I pedalled into the last arvo pull up 30kms from Gundagai…she called me a few politically incorrect names I can’t really put here LOL!

The hills today were gigantic, endless and slow. I averaged 16.7 km ph, and ended up riding for 6 1/4 hours (not including breaks) and travelled 103kms in very hot, slow conditions.  But as I do, simply kept turning the pedals, slowly but with focus. I’d pull up at the top of some of the sets of hills and look back down at the miles of meandering road and was blown away that I’d ridden up such a steep, long stretches all day.  There were a couple of freakishly weird things happened today. I was riding DOWNHILL but couldn’t get my bike over 11kms per hour! I thought I’d be flying down at 35kms plus, but I couldn’t get it going, and when I’d stop pedalling the bike would stop! I thought if Amanda was here she’d say it was magnetic forces in the earth. This happened twice today to me…and I’m starting to agree with her. The reverse also happened a couple of times where I was pedalling up a hill and got ‘pulled’ up to the top with very little effort.

I pulled up at Bookham for a cuppa and met some lovely people. Lissa and her little Jack Russell dog Goodie, and her cook made me lovely coffee and toast. they asked me about my ride and ended up making a $10 donation and also no charge on my morning tea. I left with loads of well wishes for my journey.

We pulled up at 12.30 for lunch on the Gundy side of Jugiong (another massive climb past that town!) and low and behold a truck pulls up behind the van and it’s Mick Batchelor from Grong Grong had been delivering a load of cattle further along the Hume and had heard me on the Riverina ABC radio this morning. I did a live interview on the roadside about 9.30! Literally hopped off my bike and straight on air!.   Trucks wizzing by, flies choking me etc! But apparently it all came over okay. I’d given my location on the radio and Mick was on the look out for us, joined us for a cuppa tea and a yarn which was just brilliant. After Mick left at 1pm I thought I’d have a 10 minute ‘power nap’, well that worked but I woke up at 3.09pm! It was still stinking hot so I waited til 5pm which was really still too hot but I was worried I’d run out of daylight to get to Gundy( I was still 35kms from night camp) and depending on hills could take me 2.5 hours riding. Just before I set off a farmer called Ian pulled up and gave a $20 donation and we had a chat about what we were doing and sun safe hats! Rolled into Gundagai to the Tourist Caravan Park where Margie had donated a nights site fee to ride4acure which is so generous and what a fantastic caravan park! right onthe Murrumbidgee River (not that I got to see mucha as it was right on dark when I arrived.) Esther is living only 60 kms away and had come across to pick up Joe and take him to her place for the night. I’m off at day break and will be staying with Esther at Vicki Schillers for two nights while I attend functions in Waggand  Wagga at the High School and also Curves Gymn and then out to  Narranderra Public School for Years 4, 5 & 6. Tomorrow night I have a massage booked in town and an interview with the local paper. All good. Have put out a challenge on fac ebook to get 1500 people to join up the ride4acure group, 1500 represents the lives lost each year in Australia to melanoma, and also the kilometres I’m riding to Melbourne! So spread the word guys and get your mates to join up!

And now I’m off to bed for a well earned sleep!

Stinking hot today, lots of long steep hills, ACT roads brilliant, NSW roads a lot to be desired! the difference is remarkable. Left Canberra about 9am and was thrilled to be able to keep up with the caravan (being driven by my sister Veronica with Joe riding ‘shotgun’) yelling encouragement to me out the window! We left at the same time and because of the traffic lights I could keep up for the first 4 or so kms, but then lost them on Northbourne Av heading out to the Barton Highway. Because of the heat  Ron and Joe stopped every 10kms for water stops for me, I certainly consumed a lot today.   I landed at  (30kms along) about 12 and we pulled up the camp in a beautiful shady spot at Murrumbatman and had a long lunch and a  ‘chillax’ through the heat of the day. At about 3pm got underway again and then landed here in Yass about 5ish. It was hot, airless and fly infested! I swalloweded a good few today (upped  my protein intake for sure). 

Road Kill today included three turtles! Two massive kangaroo’s, a magpie, a couple of blue tongue lizards. Also again there was a trailer hitch on the highway, d shackles, wheel nuts! Anyone who tows please check your towing gear out and all your wheel nuts! I am stunned with the amount of towing/trailer bits I see on the roadside! I’ve picked up a couple of very nifty Stanley shifters in the last few days ride including a spring loaded lock on plier/shifter still with a nut in the ‘grip’. I did also  find but it was too big and heavy to carry a massive 75-80cm screw driver! it was the biggest thing I’ve ever seen and obviously was the prize of some truckies toolbox . I was sorely tempted to carry it (but it was massive and would stick a mile out of my pannier), but I did a reality check I was 20kms from the back up vehicle, was in hilly country, it was hot and decided that I’ d got through life this far without one and left it there for another soul to find so I left it.

We’ve pulled the camp up at a Rotary members home here in Yass, Touie and Denise, who have very generously hosted us for the evening, had a lovely dinner and am now just about ready for beddo!

I am definatley going to be on the road very early in the morning as soon as visibility is good. I so want to get as many k’s behind me early in the day.  Have a big ride from Yass to Gundagai (99kms) Gundagai Tourist Park have donated a nights accommodation for us which is very generous right on the Murrumbidgee and with a pool!

I really enjoyed the ride across from Goulburn down the Hume then Federal Highway. We were camped at Governer’s Hill which is on the Sydney side, it was a 10km ride back out to the Hume. Was so beautiful riding through town and the residential areas out near the Big Merino, so many fantastic gardens chocka block full of roses! Made me want to put my hands in soil…. had a coffee stop on the edge of town and then hit the hume. I felt like I was flying, great conditions for cycling, good road most of the way, wind helpful, cloudy and gently raining for the first hour or so but eased off. I did plan on leaving earlier but visibility was poor til 8ish. Imade really good time and had ticked off 30kms by the time Amanda and Joe caught me up for my first tea break.

It was spectacular crusing along the edge of Lake George, paddocks of incredible feed, magnificent mobs of cattle, birds everywhere. Also as I was coming out of Goulburn there were so many wild flowers and ‘escaped’ domestic flowers. I saw freesias  and roses happily growing along the side of the road!

I arrived in Canberra about 3.30ish to my nieces home in Campbell right near the War Memorial. We had a lovely roast chook dinner, followed by half of Joe’s birthday cake because Amanda flew back to Melbourne 6am Sunday morning.

It’s Joe’s 11th birthday today 8th November and we’ve just opened presents and am up to cooking him a yummy breaky; scrambled eggs and bacon- in bed. 

I took Joe to the Go Kart track at Hume at lunch time and he and I had a ‘petrol head’ blast hooning around madly in two go karts for half an hour! It was ‘mad’…except I’ve got one thing to say to the builders of go karts, “Power Steering“! it’s like driving a brick! I have to say with every turn I made in the Kart I’m thinking I was gonna dislocate an elbow and how was I gonna ride my bike the rest of the way with one arm! Oops — but did that stop me! hhmm.

I bought Joe the new ‘electronic Australian version of Monopoly’ and I’ve already been thoroughly cleaned up by Joe on the first game over breaky. Hannah’s good friend Garnie Fuller introduced Joe to this game a few months ago and he’s been raving about it ever since. No paper money it’s all eftpost! The tokens are things like a gold pair of thongs, a ute, a koala etc.  Later in the day we played with both Kate and Adam and after a couple of hours of consumer driven activity Kate absolutely flogged us by inheriting 12 million from free parking! We decided making lasagne for dinner was higher on the needs agenda than playing on so we all retired!

Veronica arrived late last night and we’re all about to swing into action and head off to Yass where we’ll be camping with one of the Yass Rotary Club members who has very generously offered us some space at his place.

Last night on 60 minutes Hannah’s Doctor Ass. Professor Grant MacCarthur was featured with a new break through clinical trial drug that is working really well with some patients.”  It was called by the reporter “hope in a pill!  This is very exciting and both heart breaking. For me and my family this has come too late to save Hannah.   Only a few minutes after the show I received a text  from a friend informing me of yet another young  person who has died of melanoma.  At the time that Hannah was at Peter Mac there was absolutely no clinical trial available that was suitable. The chemotheraphy she was receiving was our hope of slowing down the disease long enough for a ‘breakthrough’.  The startling fact that Grant spoke about and that I’ve been shouting from the roof tops for four months is that every year in Australia 1500 people just like Hannah lose their lives to melanoma. This is the equivalant to our national road toll. We need more money and resources going into melanoma research to stem the loss of life. Esther in the first week of the ride said to me, “Mum do you realise that every kilometre your riding is one life lost to melanoma!” I think about this every day, every k, 1500 a year is 1500 to many.

A long but good day of riding the big long climbs but completely unlike yesterday I had some down hill runs too! One of which I wound my bike out up to 58.9kms per hour! I hadn’t gone over 45 since my scarey incident coming down onto Mooni Mooni bridge on Tuesday and my bike got the speed wobbles at about 50kms per hour! It was pretty hair raising, at the same time I got speed wobbles, i ran out of shoulder, the road got rough and I had to merge into the traffic on the bridge because on my ‘reconoitre’ back in ! August I failed to notice that important fact

Anyway it was all pretty scarey. I ended up getting new tyres on my bike as they were’nt seating right in the rims. I had been a little ‘reticent’ to take it up to a high speed again, but today I just ‘went wild’, there I was coming down a huge hill 30kms from Goulburn, sweet wide shoulder smooth as a baby’s butt and I thought what the hell, now or never and wound her right out! It was exilerating, I nearly hit 60kms per hour! And enjoyed every second of the descent. Good to feel like i’ve ridden through fear after my ‘near death experience’ on Mooni Mooni.

My crew came into Goulburn when I was about 35kms from town to set up camp and do a few jobs. I pulled up at Marulen for a hamburger with the lot and a coffee. I’d been visualising the hamburger for 20kms! It tasted pretty good.

Was very happy to pull into camp here (after I overshot the caravan park because again I was going flat out down a hilll after an extremely steep long climb into goulburn at Governer’s Hill! The van park was just before the bottem ofthe hill, there was no way I was pulling up! The Govern’ers Hill Caravan Park has generously donated a nights site fee to ride4acure! Which I am very grateful for.

Am riding into Canberra tomorrow to Campbell whihc is very close to Capitol Hill. My niece Kate and her husband Adam are generously letting us ‘camp’ in their front yard with the caravan! Amanda will be flying back to Melbourne and my sister Veronica will be taking over the ‘ute wheel’ for a week. It’s Joe’s birthday on Sunday, the big 11! He’s pretty keen that he’ll be spending it with some family and it’s a day off the bike for me!

Thanks to all the people who are sending me lovely messages of support! I absolutely appreciate them.

I especially appreciated a photo Fiona Murray sent me yesterday, she’s droving a mob of cattle with another crew from Wingham to Nabiac for a campdraft this weekend. The future of ride4acure eh?

Yes I beleive it is!

 Now I absolutely know why they call it the Southern Highlands, I never knew that from Cambelltown to Mittagong is practically all up hill for 50 kms then last few kms really steep to Hill Top! Then a very pleasant ride of about 6 or 7 kms into Mittagong.  Add showers, poor road condition, the shoulder was mostly ‘as dead as a door nail’. The shining light on the day was having my neice Amanda with me, she’s flown up from Victoria (Drouin a couple of hours east of Melbourne where she’s working as a busy country vet). She arrived at Narrallen Vale last night just after midnight. And then of course we sat around talking for an hour and went to bed after 1am ish! And I was up and at it at 6am. We languished over a yummy breakky of scrambled eggs and bacon and copious amounts of tea! Then headed off about 8.30amafter packing up the camp,  (me thinking it would be an easy ride of about 3 hours into Mittagong. We called into St Mary’s Towers at Douglas Park at about 10.30ish  to see my very dear friend Chris Chaplin for morning tea. Joe enjoyed having a good look around the buildings (160 years old, was built by Sir/Major Thomas Mitchell in 1841) Joe enjoyed going up into the tower and took some great photo’s. Was lovely seeing Chris. We were back on road after a good 90 minute break. Climbing, climbing, climbing…..I was flat out getting over about 12 – 14 kms per hour! Very few breaks from climbing. This afternoon at about 2ish I was very happy to see the wonderful Dennis Fitzgerald pull his car up on the side of the road and greet me with a warm hug and friendly smile! He’d driven from Woolongong to see how I was going! He was full of sympathy for my day of climbing and plied me with many words of encouragement.

 I feel so grateful to have people with his level of expertise for advice, de briefing and no question of mine as the very novice cyclist is ever considered ‘dumb’. There’s a couple of other very experienced cyclist who are part of Dennis’s crew who check in with me. One of which is Reg who also drove from Woolongong last night to give me an awesome massage of which I am so grateful! Ifeel so priveleged and very well looked after.

Even with all the climbing I stayed relaxed and all day had a metaphor of Reg’s going through my mind, “Ride Soft, Ride Well’, which for me as a horsewoman epitomises good horsemanship and now good bikemanship (I keep finding so many parrallels between the two).

I rode into the Mittagong caravan park (who have very kindly donated tonights caravan site fee for ride4acure) this arvo at about 2.45pm and found Amanda and Joe had set up the camp, found a great Pizza shop that would deliver gourmet pizzas for an early dinner. We all had very long, very hot showers, Joe then went off picking up rubbish around the shower block area while he waited for me and Amanda to finish our  extra long hot showers and the manager of the caravan park came along and gave him 3 free icecream vouchers for picking up the rubbish. So  Joe provided dessert for us after pizza. We’ve just had a great game of scrabble (Amanda won) Now in our happy little camp at 9pm, Amanda’s kicking back engrossed in a novel, Joe is curled up in bed watching “The Excellent Adventures of Bill and Ted” (an 80’s classic comedy) and of course I’m sipping a pot of tea and wrapping my day up here on the blog.

Tomorrow is a big day of 85 kms very similar to today, lots of climbing to Goulburn. We’ll be staying at the Governer’s Hill  Caravan park where the owners have donated the site fee for ride4acure which is very generous.

YESTERDAYS NEWS FROM BLAIRMOUNT PUBLIC SCHOOL

Joe and I visited Blairmount Public School at 9.15 and presented the ride4acure presentation, and I spoke about skin cancer awareness, told stories and engaged the students with questions etc. The students were all year 5 & 6 and Micheal Newcombe the Principal purchased each student their own ride4acur wristband making a donation of $400. The students put in entries in the slogo competion with some very exciting entries. I  couldn’t narrow it down to two winners so had to select three. The winners are Brock Larkin, Evangeles Kaillis & Erica Revere. We had over 100 students present yesterday and they all entered the ‘slogo’ competiton. The winning entries form each school go into a ‘grand finale’ draw in Melbourne where we’ll have to narrow it down to two finalists who’ll win a digital camera and a digital photo frame for their efforts. But most importantly will create resources for school kids with their work. The students at Blairmount were so incredibly well behaved and respectful. It was again a real privelege to be invited there and meet everyone.

CAMBELLTOWN CURVES GYM 11.30 ride4acure presentation and lunch.

The wonderful Maureen from Cambelltown Gym organised an event yesterday with about 10 women present. We had a lively presentation and discussion followed by a light healthy lunch. What a great bunch of Ladies, so warm and friendly. I said I felt right at home with them. Everywhere I go people are so kind and inclusive. Cambelltown Curves had collected $209 in donations. Which is a fantastic effort. Big thanks to Maureen and her crew for their organising for me to come.

Am perched in the caravan tossing up going to bed early, or do this ? Either way have just made a pot of tea and am going to enjoy a well earned moment.

I have now officially ridden my bike to Sydney! Woo Hoo….I feel chuffed with this achievement, and in small stages was great. Today was a stinker, got up to 38.9 in Liverpool, hot Westerly wind.  I run into trouble with my bike and had tyre trouble, Ended up taking my bike to a bike shop in Liverpool and met a great guy there Mark who sorted it out. The tyres weren’t ‘true’ and were off balance which was causing ‘extreme’ wobbling coming down hills when I went over 40kms per hour. I nearly lost the bike coming down Mooni Mooni, but was able to recover myself, but it continued to happen each time I went fast. consequently much slower, no speed thrills, kept things contained.

Am staying at Narralen Vale with Michael Newcombe and his daughter Maddie. I am presenting at Michaels school where he is Prinicpal. We’ve just pulled the van up on his front lawn and plugged in! Happy campers. Tomorrow have a presentation at Blairmont Priimary School at 9.15am then onto Cambelltown Curves Gym for an 11.30 presentation. Then some R  & R. My neice Amanda is flying into /Sydney tomorow night to drive for this week til Canberra.

Today is day 14 of the ride- 24 to go! I am enjoying every minute of this advenure. I think about Hannah heaps (situation normal!) The long hours while I’m riding I think about all the other young people out there living with melanoma and it’s associated uncertainties and pray that through ride4acure  good will come…and I know it already is on many levels. Raising the profile of melanoma generally but in particular as a young person’s disease, creating awareness of this disease amongst young people, highlighting prevantative strategies that save lives-joining the dots on the sunsmart message by building an udnerstanding of the UV index and creating barriers between us and it! And most importantly encouraging kids to take resonsibility, sharing Hannah’s story helps kids put melanoma on their radar. So far has been well received everywhere by students and teachers.

Joe has been sick today, had the vomits and a headache. Its his birthday this Sunday and he’ll be the big 11 we will be staying with my neice Kate Luxford and her husband Adam in Campbell in the heart of Canberra I think. Again taking up residence on the street! Good night:)

Then tomorrow arvo a well deserved rest.

Have had a long day riding 112 kms (bonus as it was 16 shorter than Google maps said I’d be riding!) Rode from Raymond Terrace to Ettalong Beach. Had a lovely hot epsom salts bath, a stretch and a power nap now am rearing to go. Am having a BBQ tongiht with friends. Am staying with Joe’s Godmother (Patricia Nolan)’s brother Maurice and MaryAnne Carrol at Ettalong Beach. I made great time this morning, riding 70kms in 3 1/2 hours! I was stoked. However the rest of the ride was much slower, once I hit that massive hill set outside of Gosford on the highway, went on for nearly 20kms up, up , up! Then down into Gosford wow that was scarily awesome! I have to say my butt was feeling it by the time I arrived here at Ettalong and I was happy to hop off.

Roadkill count was high today, saw numerous dead rats! probably about 6, 3 bandicoots, a dead green tree snake, several small sweet looking birds, a wallaby and a freshly mown  down fox.  I then saw two large water dragons and two baby ones all alive.

The highway ‘Repco’ shop was in full swing too, I saw hoses of all descriptions, fan belts, a haymen reece tow bar pin! several ‘d’ shackles and a few spark plugs!

My trusty ute has to go to a mechanic in the morning for a little ‘tweek’….started to ‘choke’ a little today. Not sure what’s happening as it had a thorough going over before we left Kempsey! Probably something simple.

Am giving two presentations in the morning at St Edwards then on to the ABC studio’s in Erina for a live interview. Then home here and prepare for an early start on Tuesday as I’ll be going to Liverpool.

I have been so fortunate with the people who are supporting me, my friend Fiona Murray(also a cyclist and her mates who are cyclists too)  from Tuncurry has teed up a mate of hers ‘Reg’ to come to Liverpool to give me a massage, and also Dennis her partner is teeing up a mate of his who has a few bike shops to check my bike over in Canberra! Having said that my bike is brilliant and is a dream to ride-I do stuff like wash off the chain every couple of days and keep the chain lubed and it’s going well.

Please read through the comments page, a wonderful little story from Katie re Hallaween collection where they raised $250 trick and treating for ride4acure. Well done Katie and Friends.

From little things big things grow……