ride4acure

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.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 at 7:42 pm 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.