ride4acure

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!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 at 11:55 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.