stats. Today 79.81km Trip total 270km
Dark at 5.45 am, we are woken by Debbie’s loud hailer again. The stars are still out and there are bats flying around the floodlights catching the insects. I’m convinced that we really don’t need to be woken so early…
At least today’s breakfast was better than yesterday’s — pikelets go down a lot easier than the greasy, cheap, sausages did.
Once again I rode out with Jeff and Alan, and again we headed out at around 8 am. It doesn’t really seem to matter when I get up, all the packing and eating seems to be adjusted so that we’re leaving at the same time each day. The riding today was fantastic, with magnificent scenery and a fun section where we got the breakdown lane of the Hume highway for a couple of kilometres. It was quite a fast run at times, but much the same average speed as yesterday. The last twenty kilometres down into Goulburn were an absolute hoot. We picked the pace up to the mid-thirties, then high-thirties, before suddenly having to back down when we came across a large herd of cattle on the road. Hitting half a tonne of cow with a ten kilogram bicycle would not have been a good idea!
Ronnie in his purple finery, all dressed up for the Lilac City's lilac party
Since tomorrow is the rest day, tonight is traditionally the night of the big party — unfortunately a message from a depressed Jo sitting at home put rather a damper on my enjoyment of the events.
The theme of the party was lilac — for Goulburn, the Lilac City — so most people dressed up somehow. A startlingly large number of guys just seemed to take it as an opportunity to wear women’s clothing — there were some fairly diabolical sights to be seen. A quick trip to Dimmey’s saw Ron armed with a shirt and tie of appropriate hue, and me with a small, purple, stuffed dinosaur. I had intended to just wear a purple tee-shirt, but the dinosaur was just to good to resist, so it was pinned to my shoulder — parrot fashion.
The dinosaur proved a big hit, for some reason it was quickly named Lillian by a number of the girls, then seemed to invoke any number of pats and comments on how cute it was — seems that wearing a stuffed purple dinosaur works wonders for meeting women! Unfortunately the cover band was yet another drab country-town two-piece cover band, playing yet-another cover of Brown-Eyed Girl and Copperhead Road, and they quickly managed to get under my skin and up my nose. Eventually I gave up, left my last beer untouched on the table, and headed back to my tent around eleven. Others in a more festive mood kicked on until 3 am.
Where?
Bundanoon(-34.65,150.3), Goulburn(-34.75,149.7166667)
