Sunday January 12, 2014

We woke up this morning with the wind battering our tent.  Wonderful, another windy day in paradise.  While I was in the shower block one of the other campers said her awning had blown away in the night.  We managed to get the tent down and had our breakfast then headed out into a very windy day.  We passed this hedge as we left the Village of Mt Somers, no idea what it was supposed to represent.

The wind was in our favour yippee.  There were some scary moments when we crossed an intersection and the wind was blowing from the side and blew me down the side-road, but for the most part we had a 60 km tail-wind.  Ralf stopped pedaling for 1 km and still managed to do 25.5 kph.

Next math question, how fast does the wind have to be blowing to move something that weighs 137 kgs (Ralf on the bike with loaded panniers) down the flat road at 25.5 kph?

We saw 7 separate groups of road cyclists that were coming from the opposite direction – they were struggling against the wind.  We however, finished 51.26 kms in 2 hrs 18mins, awesome.  Today was also the first time since Auckland that I have been in my big gears:)

We stayed the night in Geraldine, a lovely little town.  Of course there are some people in Geraldine who have way too much time on their hands.  Like the woman who has knitted the largest sweater in the world (Guinness World Book of Records).  Her husband and daughter spent years recreating the 1066 Bayeaux Tapestry (sp?) out of 4,500,000 pieces of steel and then hand-painting them to match the original tapestry in France!!  The woman at the iSite was very impressed with it and was telling everyone about it!!..

Ralf and I did not feel the need to go and visit this, even though it was in the down town area.

We met up with one of the groups of cyclists at a coffee shop, one of the ladies had been blown of her bike, so they cut their ride short.  They were training for a 3 day, 320 km charity ride in February – 3 days fully supported, with food and accommodation included for $200.00 and however much you raise for the local charities.