After a wonderful night's sleep on an extremely comfortable couch at Sale Baptist Church, I was woken to a beautiful sunrise peering through the front windows into the foyer where I lay. Unfortunately the blue sky and peaceful outlook was soon replaced by blowing trees and ominous clouds while we had breakfast and packed up the car.
By the time Genevieve and I were on the road and had picked up Simon at his motel and Jo and PJ went off to buy more supplies at the supermarket - it seemed like the headwind that we had left yesterday was well and truly back, and with added strength.....never let up the whole day. At times it felt like all you could do was peddle to stop from going backwards and in what seemed like an eternity we reached the first pit stop where the support crew provided blankets to keep us warm and muesli bars and OJ to revive us. Then we were off again into the headwind, this time with the added joy of some driving rain stinging our faces.
We had arranged the previous day that WIN news would dispatch a film crew to cover our entrance into Traralgon but given the conditions, it was decided that a camera man (Peter) would meet us in Rosedale (halfway point between Sale and Traralgon) and take some footage and we would do the interview with the reporter in Traralgon. The support crew sympathised with Peter as he had to make frequent stops over about 20 kms as he braved the terrible conditions (wind, rain and cold) to take footage of us riding.....the riders weren't so sympathetic with Peter's plight...... Genevieve again did an amazing job riding through such miserable conditions, especially after she took a spill off her bike and was a fair bit sore. Simon soldiered on with a mechanical problem on his bike....and Carolyn made the fatal mistake of putting looks before safety and actually removed the tie clips (aka magpie protectors) from her helmet before the filming started in an effort to not look totally moronic (putting her hope in the premise that surely any self-respecting mapgpie would be sheltering themselves from such conditions and would not be on the look out for passing cyclists to attack) - as with so many things, she was wrong..... and so to add to the joy of the headwind and rain, she was hit in the head several times by attacking mapgpies before arriving in Traralgon (fortunately not captured on TV footage).
Once in Traralgon, everybody headed to Win News except Simon who headed off to get his bike repaired. Carolyn was interviewed by a reporter who was well rugged up in jacket and hood and then we were treated to a delicious lunch and hot drinks by our wonderful Susan Grout (happy birthday for yesterday, Susan!), who has met us everywhere in Gippsland and organised everything for us....you are a wonder!! There was some disparaging comments directed towards Carolyn after her shouts of surprise and joy at how quickly the riders had completed the 49km considering the conditions, until it was discovered that her watch had stopped over 2 hours previously! Then with a quick change into dry shirts in the car, we were off to Lavalla College, where we made a presentation to 175 Year 8 students, who were great and helped fill up our second banner of signatures as well as many postcards.
While we were being warmly welcomed at the College, poor Simon had finished at the bike shop and was riding over to join us, when caught in a hail storm...just to complete his day of riding on a high note!!
After the presentation at Lavalla was over, everybody headed over to Susan and Alan's home for much needed showers and then an hour or so rest .....which PJ spent playing the piano, Genevieve napped, Jo enjoyed playing with Tess (very cute and active cat), and Carolyn replied to pending emails and phone calls. Then we were all treated to a wonderful home cooked meal, courtesy of Susan and Alan.....while Susan and PJ discussed what appears to be many mutual relatives and Alan tortured Genevieve and Carolyn with tomorrows weather forecast.....
Tonight we held our last film night at Traralgon Uniting Church, where we are also staying overnight. Lots of good discussions followed the film and quite a few purchases of t-shirts and CDs were made.....We were also joined by our last rider for the Tour, Cameron McCormack, who will join us for the last long ride to Dandenong tomorrow. After several hours of our warped humour and tales from the road, Cameron is probably wondering what he has signed up to but we are very glad to have him on board....
Before heading off to bed we got to see the WIN News spot on the Tour.....which we were very pleased with - as it nicely got across some good points on human trafficking. We also think that the ABC radio interview must have been aired today, as we were tooted (in a friendly manner) by quite a few passing cars today as we neared Traralgon....all helping to raise awareness of the issue of human trafficking to a much wider audience than we could have hoped for.
We are now so close to Melbourne......and our own beds.......864 kms cycled.....129 kms tomorrow to Dandenong....and 174 kms in total to the Freedom Celebration Concert and the end of the Tour.....
We really hope tomorrow will be a little kinder to us in terms of wind conditions....but regardless, I guess we will get there one way or another!
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