stats. Today ??km Trip km
Not just the fourth day of the bike ride — today was our first wedding anniversary! Woohoo, what fun. One year and no divorce, we must be better than all those Hollywood people or international sporting stars…
A couple of friends snuck breakfast-in-bed, the paper, and a bottle of bubbly under the edge of the tent this morning, luckily we opened the door before packing up the sleeping bags, letting us have a somewhat amusing romantic breakfast-in-bed of muesli while sitting in the tent!
Room service failed to appear so we had to get up to get up for toast and orange juice, then back to pack up the tent for the last time.
Cool leaving Poowong, I almost wished I had long sleeves on. Jo was quite comfortable with me providing the wind shield on the front! Twelve kilometers of gentle rolling down-hill through the farms and trees was a beautiful start to the day, then the same again along flatter ground to Lang Lang. The rodeo was in town today, with cowboys and girls strutting around, and a dozen or more members of the “Hoop Shooter” ute club cruising through town, each outdoing the other with size of bull-bars and number of spotlights.
We thought about trying to get a coffee in the bakery, but thirty cyclists had piled in ahead and it didn’t seem worth the wait. Two sausage rolls definitely were though, the first one disappeared too quickly, a second had to be purchased to get the full benefit.
From Lang Lang onwards the riding was a monotonous bore. Once past the rodeo ground — $15 admission, $2 for children — we turned onto the South Gippsland highway for 25km of straight, flat, multi-lane road into a headwind, made less enjoyable by a constant stream of noisy, high-speed traffic, half of whom couldn’t be bothered to pull over as they shot past towing caravans. Its a typical problem at the end of every Easter break, motorists who hardly ever tow their vans, cruising along the roads forgetting that the damn things stick out a foot wider than their cars on either side. An hour of this and we took a break in Tooradin, standing by the creek and watching the local lunatic walk past screaming and ranting and waving his arms at invisible demons.
Back onto the bike and off the highway, the road to Baxter only slightly more enjoyable with less traffic, but a much reduced width. I knew we were nearing Frankston when a petrol-head came screaming up behind us at a roundabout, blasting on the horn, before screeching around the roundabout and off up the hill in front of us.
By the time we reached Frankston train station we’d had enough for the day, two hours of constant slog in an unchanging position was enough for two bums, two necks and four arms and wrists. Riding on the tandem does seem to be more susceptible to pains like these, I think we both tend to sit in the same position for longer — there’s less inclination to move around on the bike. We did manage a slick piece of maneuvering though — down the ramps to cross under the rail lines, a right-angle turn to go underneath, another right-angle and then back up the steep ramp on the other side with Jo standing on the pedals! A pity that Rod wasn’t there, he’d spent half the weekend telling us he wanted to see us standing to climb a hill!
The train was sitting at the platform, $7 for a ticket into the city, then an hour of trying to stay awake as the sun shone through the windows and the train rocked us along. Stumbling out at Richmond for the last ride home we were both cold and tired and our legs wanted nothing more than a warm relaxing shower, but we climbed on board and made it back.
Where?
Poowong, Lang Lang, Tooradin, Baxter, Melbourne
