Day Two: Bundanoon to Canberra
Day two produced an amazing day of riding, the complete antithesis to the previous day. The scenery was magic, only one puncture meant the peloton was able to maintain a good speed all day, and the weather fairy provided us with perfect conditions. That’s not to say the day wasn’t challenging – we covered over 170 kilometres today and climbed just shy of 1,800 metres, chipping away at the 19,000 metres total we will be climbing over the ten days of the tour.
After leaving Bundanoon, we continued cycling through the gorgeous southern tablelands of NSW, passing through towns like Penrose, Wingello, Tallong and Bungonia. We stopped for lunch at Tarago, where the lovely and hospitable locals arranged for the children of this small town to attend the local primary school on a Saturday for a Tour de Cure school visit. They are always a special part of the tour, and this year we will be touching over 5,000 children with the “Be Fit, Be Healthy, Be Happy” cancer prevention message. Special mentions must go to young Oscar from Tarago, who showed up some of the Tour de Cure riders in a push up competition!
The Woodlawn Wind Farm made for a spectacular site as we left Tarago, and this was followed by a descent into a beautiful valley that housed the town of Bungendore. Getting out of the valley provided the toughest challenge of the day in the form of a sharp 2.3 kilometre ascent known as Smiths Gap. Everyone got up the climb safely, and we soon joined the Federal Highway, and enjoyed a beautiful descent into Canberra.
The community dinner tonight provided more evidence of how the money being raised by Tour de Cure, and the alliances it is forging in the medical research community, is making a real difference in the area of cancer prevention and treatment. Kudos must go to Owen Wright, the CEO of Life Technologies, a company that distributes medical research equipment. Tonight, he donated a ion proton sequencer to Professor Alexander Dobrovic from the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research. I don’t know exactly what a ion proton sequencer does, but at over $250,000, I am guessing it is capable of a bit more than my wife’s Thermomix. If this wasn’t enough, he then went on to present a cheque for over $500,000 from Life Technologies to Tour de Cure. I have had the privliege of speaking to Owen on two occasions over the past two days, and he is an inspiring leader who is literally larger than life.
Tomorrow sees us ride from Canberra to Adaminaby, which is at the foothills of the Snowy Mountains. When a cyclist hears the word “mountains”, it always sounds ominous. Like last year, the irony isn’t lost on me that I will be riding through regions that my Dad spent a lot of time in during his formative years in Australia, he being the reason I became involved with Tour de Cure in the first place.
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