Smell-a-rat

So this was another of my brilliant ideas.. A mate had a party in Ballarat, I figured it was a good way to get some k's in as always. So with an absolute gale blowing (great...) I toddled out the door about 1pm, figuring about 4 hours would be plenty to get up there. As always, the western suburbs were a pleasure to depart, they just smell!!! What is it about that way. Nevermind, it only lasted an hour, so that wasn't too bad.

Sunny Caroline springs... With a gale blowing.

Straight up the Western Highway was the go, via Bacchus Marsh. I was alone on the journey today, with nothing by the MP3 and the b-Doubles whistling past my shoulder as they struggled up the hills as much as I did!


With plenty of large hills between home and Ballarat, there was a fair bit of cursing but that was nothing until the temperature. Its one thing to sit in front front of the chrystal bucket and read this, and think yeah it must be cold. But when you are trollin along and trying to sing to your music and you can't get anywhere close to the words as your face is so cold it doesn't move, and you can see you breath rolling down the hills, and you can't produce enough heat to pedal AND stay warm, you know that you are having a rough day...

Looking particularly unimpressed with the situation, and pancake flat background did nothing to shelter from the wind

Anyway, watching the k's tick off the big green signs was comforting, as was the constant traffic and interrmittant abuse and objects hurled from cars, and running out of water on a large hill and having the next service centre 8km down the road with another big hill in between started to take its toll. 30km from Ballarat was a servo stop, then straight back on the bike to beat the dark and hypothermia! When I got to the 'Welcome to' sign, I got the 'ol 6th wind, and rolled in to town to the party.

Yay!!

With Tasmanias finest brewry supporting my recovery effort all night, we did a great job in creating lots of recycling for the locals, and I didn't even wake up with a furry head. So with the skins doing their job on the legs, we barrelled back to Melbs for a ride with Jason and Jack and had a pedal around Warrandyte/kinglake area with them for a few hours, before heading for home and falling in a large heap, after a pretty heavy weekend. This week is dedicated to the rest, and then its action for the 12 hour next weekend, so we'll see you out there.