Day 4: Glen Innes to Armidale
Again, apologies all for the delayed update. What with no wifi Internet and minimal mobile coverage it has been a little challenging to get this out. Anyway, better late than never I suppose. Willie – over to you first.
All going well you’ll get a double update tomorrow for days 5 & 6.
OK – here goes folks…
Last nights dinner was at the Glen Innes Service Club. Again we had a great turnout of locals eager to support us… and to see the Celtic Rock Concert being held next door. If you’re not sure what a Celtic Rock Concert sounds like, think Braveheart meets The Rolling Stones.
Fittingly, our MC for the night was Justin Pratt, our favourite ‘ginger ninja’ and all round TdC legend. Justin reflected on his experiences with cancer and how losing his father at such a young age effected his childhood. For the many fathers on tour, it was a sobering reminder of how important it is to not only be a TdC ambassador on tour, but to lead by example in their own family life.
Breakfast was at the Glen Innes town hall and as always the locals were out in force. Unfortunately they forgot to turn on the heaters. Single digit temps meant that arm and leg warmers, coffee and hot porridge were the order of the morning.
After such a long, hilly day yesterday the relatively gentle rolling hills were a welcome change. Framed by the vivid yellow/orange/red autumn leaves, and a gentle breeze at our back, we absolutely cruised into lunch.
I’m not sure if Marco and Ella (Vittoria coffee crew) snuck a few Macchiato’s into the classrooms ahead of time, but the kids at Guyra Central School were certainly full of beans.
During the school presentation, Jens Voigt was phenomenal, taking his role as TdC superhero, Flipman, to new heights. I don’t think I’ve ever met a happier, funnier, German person in my life! He certainly adds an extra dimension to tour!
The afternoon ride was over in a flash. It’s amazing to think that I now consider 102kms a ‘short’ day.
We arrived at UNE Armidale at 2:30pm, which gave us the entire afternoon to rest, recover, re-connect with loved ones, and relish in the incredible community that is TDC.
Congratulations to last night’s Category Jersey Winners!
Green ‘Awareness’ – Marg and Gareth Williams
Orange ‘Doer’ – Graham Jarvie
White ‘Focus’ – Scott Thomson
Blue ‘Guts/Grit’ – Scott Fittler
Pink ‘Inspiring Others’ – Michael Choo
Yellow ‘Attitude’ – Jens Voigt
Until tomorrow,
I’m Willie Maykit
Good work Willie, and I do want to take the opportunity to elaborate on a couple of points made by our legendary reporter.
Firstly, Glen Innes is quite a unique little place I have to say. The town was currently in the excitement of their annual Celtic Festival so there were a lot of kilts and diddelee-dee music going on. The community had actually arranged for us to be escorted into town by horses with riders bearing large jousting poles, but the bad weather put an end to that unfortunately. Some great building in the town and probably my favourite was this one…the Glen Innes Court House.
It was indeed a cracker of a morning to head off from Glen Innes, albeit very fresh but I’ll take fine and fresh over what they dished up to us coming into town yesterday.
Now we move onto a story about Guyra Central School enroute to Armidale. Great fun. A rural school without any skerrick of a doubt, situated high in the New England tablelands and with a population of about 2,000. When we arrived went and grabbed some lunch and went and sat with a bunch of the primary kids who were on a break (around 7-8 years old). I started to chat to them about what they liked to do etc, and I asked them if they liked to ride a bike…one eager little fella couldn’t wait to give me his response, which was something like…(when reading this imagine a 7 yo busting at the seams to tell you everything exciting inhis life in 20 seconds,)
“Yeah, I’ve got my pee-wee 50 and my quad bike, and my dad said he’d buy me an gun when I turn 8 and he’s going to put a scope on it so I can go piggin and rooin with him and he stuck this pig with a knife on the weekend and it spurted blood everywhere and it went all up my arm…and I like soccer”
Highly amusing indeed. The kid next to him who said he saw a big stingray somewhere which he thought was cool seemed less likely to have a penchant for killing anything that moved so that was comforting. And off we went to Armidale – highest city in Australia as it turns out.
As we arrived in Armidale we did a school visit at The Armidale School (or TAS for short). This school was very impressive and maybe it’s just me but it was like I’d just arrived in Princeton Uni. Very nice buildings and grounds. Reminded me of the movie A Beautiful Mind.
OK. I’ll cover off the end of Day 4 (dinner, category jersey winners etc) in the blog for Day 5. Now for those who just want the numbers (and I will look to add in the calorie count stat, converted to the universal weight ‘currency’ – the Big Mac)
Donation tally update:
Up another couple of hundred to approx $16,500. Edging closer to $20k.
Some stats from today:
Distance ridden: 105km (620km in total)
Elevation climbed: 950m (5,100m in total)
Time ridden: 4 hrs 6 min (24 hrs 07 min in total)
(No punctures for me today… ? ? ? 🙂 )
Good night.
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