Day 2: Victor Harbour to Meningie (25th April)
Hello folks
You know how I said yesterday that Day 1 was probably the hardest ride I’ve ever done, well I think today trumped it. Got absolutely smashed by mother nature again. I will explain the details shortly but first let’s listen to what Willie has to say.
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Good day everyone. A quick recap of our dinner in Victor Harbour last night before my perspective on today’s exploits. It was a full house for dinner with the Victor Harbour community. We had an interesting cancer breakthrough panel conversation with Luke Baker (leading interventional radiologist) , Dan Grant (researcher) and Dr Lynne Mann as they talked about the future of medicine and what they think the biggest breakthrough will be – Truly inspirational people doing amazing things in the space.
Then quickly onto our $10,000 community cheque, this received by Cancer Council SA, for Information and Accommodation support. This is vital to patient’s care as radiology is only available in Adelaide and patients in more rural towns need to transported to the city for periods of 6-8 weeks. The work they do to make patients’ care so much nicer is incredible.
And the night finished up with Category Jersey Winners
- Focus: (White) Trevor Morris
- Doer: (Orange) Richard Harrison
- Attitude: (Yellow) Phil Gallant
- Awareness: (Green) Peter Hing
- Guts: (blue) Shelli Whitehurst
- Inspiration (Pink) Nathan Jones
Onto Day 2, ANZAC Day.
Again backing up – the early morning starts with a 5am breakfast and we all head over to the Anzac Day dawn service. As the ocean hit the sand right next to us and the service began it was an extraordinary moment. A sea of red Tour de Cure jackets joined thousands of the local community as we remember the Servicemen that have fought for the country we have today.
Then it was time to roll! We enjoyed a beautiful sunrise as we ride off, we enjoy a morning tea stop, the sun breaks through and we continue on after about 90km we arrived in Wellington for lunch. With amazing rolling green hills and some of Australia’s beautiful countryside this ride was a special one, only another hour and a half of riding we reach our final destination for the night at the Meningie Bowling Club.
Willie Maykit
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Thanks Willie. Allow me to fill in a couple of notable gaps in the story as I can appreciate it’s hard to see what’s going on sometimes when the steam from your nice warm latte fogs up your glasses.
The dinner at Victor Harbour was indeed a great one, and we received a couple of texts during the day from Eric Bana and Ben Roberts-Smith (awarded the Victoria Cross) giving us their support and well wishes.
And as we take a lot of care looking after our bodies I wanted to show a picture of a few of us with our high protein recovery sports drinks…Jens Voigt leading by example with one in each hand. No wonder he is so strong on the bike.
Now probably the main thing missed was about the weather. Yes, I admit we had a little sunshine as we rode out on wet roads from Victor Harbour and yes we did see some nice countryside whilst the sun was out. The bit missed was how completely miserable it got for the last 50km after lunch into Meningie. The bit about the sun disappearing, the rain setting in and 50 km/hr winds straight into our faces is probably worth mentioning to give a balanced riders perspective. We were literally hardly moving. Even with our strongest riders at the front we could not go faster than 20 km/hr. Good marathon runners can run this fast for 42km! Drenched, freezing and completely windswept we FINALLY reached Meningie. What a great little town with such friendly people. They even had bicycles set up along the way into town, done up like they do in the Tour de France with streamers and tassles and signs for us. Very thoughtful.
It’s been nice to chat but will call it a night now. Stay tuned for Day 3 with a summary of our Day 2 dinner in Meningie.
Donation tally update:
Thanks to youall I have been able to raise nearly $25,000, which is just incredible. My goal now is to beat my fundraising total from last year which was a massive $30,100. I think I can do it.
Some stats from today:
Distance ridden: 144km (256km running total)
Elevation climbed: 490m (1,620m running total)
Time ridden: 5 hrs 44 min (10 hrs 17 min running total)
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