Day 4: Traralgon to Inverloch
Hello all
Well, the day did NOT go as planned is an understatement. We were meant to crank out 120km but only managed 90km. (If you feel you’ve been short changed with this reduction in distance I can do a pro rated donation refund 🙂 ) And here’s how the day unfolded…
Dazza’s Diary – Day 4
You must watch the following short video below!!!! Big screen and volume up. It is hard to describe a lot of what happens on tour and the conditions we face enough to give it justice, but I hope this helps a little. It shows footage from Day 3 and 4. The gentleman you see wearing the Inspiration (light pink) jersey is Michael Jones. I rode with his son, Nathan, in the 2015 Tour de Cure ride from Adelaide to Melbourne. He was strong as an ox and a great guy. Sue and I sat next to him and his wife, Lisa, at the big finale dinner in Melbourne that year. When the MC asked everyone in the crowd to raise their hand if they knew of someone with cancer (to make a point about how rife this disease is) I turned to Nathan and asked “do you know anyone mate?”. He turned to me and replied “I like your sense of tumour”. This guy was meeting his challenges head on…it’s not what you face in life necessarily, it’s how you deal with it. Nathan passed away 6 months ago from widespread metastatic melanoma leaving behind Lisa and his 3 young daughters. His dad jumped on a bike determined to honour his son’s love of cycling and desire to help cure cancer.
I hope you’ve kind of got the picture from the videos as to how things panned out. After we woke to a very foggy and misty morning and had breakfast we hit the road and it didn’t take too long for things to heat up. We had to stop about 30km’s into the ride for people to refill drink bottles and I took the chance to snap this little snippet.
As the day continued things got hotter and windier. I checked at one point and it was 39 degrees. And it got seriously windy. Drew Ginn (4 time Olympic rowing gold medallist – yep, that’s a blatant name drop), was riding right behind me. He grew up in this region so whilst everyone was holding on for dear life trying to maintain control of their bikes Drew was chatting away like he was sitting in an armchair at home having a cup of tea – he was clearly used to this area. Later I asked him about this weather and he said with a big smile on his face… “yeah, it’s either really hot and windy, or really cold and windy here”. Nice to know that now.
Unfortunately our drone was grounded for the day as it could not be operated in such severe conditions.
As always, the school visits are a highlight. The kids are so excited and eager to listen to our presentations. The key thing is for them to start to think about ways they can themselves prevent certain cancers, like eating healthy food…
What’s that I hear…you want stats?!?
Donation tally update as at 27th March:
Up another $450. You incredible people have raised $30,615 and 90 cents.
Stats update:
Distance ridden: 90km (total = 557km)
Elevation climbed: 910m (total = 3,700m)
Time ridden: 3 hrs 35 min (total = 19 hrs 41 min)
Top speed today: 59 km/hr
Calories burned: 1,705 (total = 9,795 = 38 Big Macs)
Punctures: 0
That’s it for Day 4. It’s late. I’m tired.
DONATION LINK: https://bit.ly/2mm8WyQ
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