Rach and Anto asked me to join them on a bike ride over the Easter long weekend. I hadn't seen them in ages, so I was excited to go & also try out a bit of bicycle touring.
We met the night before to pore over maps, plan food and make last minute preparations. Rach ended up being the source of most of our food, much to our delight... She brought dinners, sorrel, eggplant dip, biscotti, and even chocolate easter eggs to hunt for on Sunday morning. I always had a few jelly snakes in my pocket to keep me going!
On Friday, Anto's parents were good sports and drove us down to the Eucumbene dam, with all three bikes balanced on a rack on the back of the vehicle.
You can see the route we followed here:
We ended up doing almost 200km in the end, most of that in the last two days. The first two days were a tough ride, none of us has had the proper bike setup for the rough terrain, but we pushed through. Have I mentioned the magic qualities of jelly snakes for morale?
It was great to reach Adaminaby & get some treats from the bakery, eaten by "The big trout"! We also met Kieran & Matt, two other cyclotourists making their way back to Canberra on pretty well the same route. We ran into each other a few times in the last two days.
There were no major problems - Rach's pannier broke a bit but was fixed with zip ties. On the last day, my derailler cable slipped out of its spot but Rach and Anto managed to fix it. None of us got flats!
We took it nice and easy, and there were frequent stops to give me time to catch up (I'm neither a fan of uphill nor steep downhill... especially on dirt/corrugated/sandy surfaces) and we always found a nice place to camp with plenty of sunlight left.
If you'd like to see some photos of the trip, check out the following two albums:
