I've just added some more photos to the 'track my tour' link on the home page. More to come after the event.
We've had a couple of days riding in the rain, fog and cloud with temperatures in the single digits. Despite the frozen fingers and extremely wet roads, Alex, Nick and Christian still cut lose and were cracking speeds over 50kph including overtaking two police officers on bike as well! In a 60 zone of course. They went on to complete the distance of two 80km ride days. Gutsy effort. Hypothermia was claiming a few riders who ignored the warnings of poor conditions and set out in short Knicks and t-shirts. It got that bad that extra coaches were chartered and even shipping containers used to ferry riders who were electing to sag before the rides. One teacher that I spoke to stated that 70% of her year 8 group elected not to ride these days. Now I'm back on line here are a couple of the recent photos. I have some more but they are on the other camera, which is flat as well. Wow! It seems that I can survive without my iPhone for a couple of days without power. Who knew? The solar cell died and I couldn't get a charge so my gadget life support died.... After gong cold turkey it turns our I don't really miss it. Perhaps I should ditch the phone, now that's a bit rash! I got bailed up by a group of serious riders today. After yesterday's lunch stop, about 60km into the 110km day, Christian asked if he could ride ahead, sure, why not. I expected to regroup shortly as we're all running at roughly the same pace. It turned out that he latched onto this train of riders traveling at 30kph into a strong headwind, they thought that was pretty cool but were astounded to see him still there a good 10km later after knocking over a few hills.....go Cadel! We eventually regrouped with him at the 95km mark. He clearly had his wheatbix that day. IPhone charger anyone ? The official charging post. Don't forget to click on the link on the home page to see where we are now! And thanks for following the blog :) We thought that the green water truck was pretty cool although it was hard not to laugh at the slogan on the waste truck - "Yesterday's meals in wheels!" A really gutsy couple of days of riding (95km followed by 110km) were rewarded with a well earned rest break today Even though we live at the beach it still hadn't list it's novelty. There are families everywhere with kids calling out 'dad' everywhere....it's getting confusing for me ... A bit short of power today, the rain and cloud haven't been kind to the solar pack and I'm running low on power again. Hopefully tonight I can write a bit more. We're off now for the second longest ride, 95 km. Get those legs spinning! We had the first ride today, still very wet and cold but the boys were bristling with bristling with enthusiasm. Pushing on through the rain and headwind absolutely no grumbles were heard - well done guys. The text from a mate telling me to get in my bike gave us a chuckle. Arriving at the camp we were surprised to find that we had beaten the truck with our gear, that headwind must have been stronger than we realized. Camps were setup in some unusual places. Live was still in the air however I did hear Mrs Green Jacket (check the photos) say that she wanted to know when the pleasant ride in the country was going to start ! Dinner was a treat in itself , not just for the meal but especially for the company. We asked if we could use the edge of a table to sit at to get out of the rain. The group of blokes insisted that the kids sat well inside and shuffled around. For the rest of the night they joked with the boys and really made them feel part of the group. They were a bit reluctant to speak about what they did but I managed to work out that one of then is a very senior army officer and the whole group were some special mates he had served with. I have never been made feel more welcome buy a group of guys I had just met. |