Pitched my fly last night to stop the dew. We're starting to get that wet feeling in the evenings, and I'm not into waking up with my gear all damp. At about 5:30am it starts raining. Real rain, for the first time in months for us. Well, by Sydney standards it's more a brief drizzle, but we get excited.
Excited, in the sense that I poke my arm out from under the fly and go "hmm, wet", then go back to sleep. Other people panic and run round in circles pitching tents and falling over things. Jonas looked at his watch and decided that he wasn't into pitching his tent just for an hour, so he started riding. Later he says he stopped down the road a bit where it was dry and slept for another hour or so. How sensible is that?
Up at 7am for real, wake the group up coz they've got a long day ahead. There's a bit of a head wind so some people are going to be sitting at 10kph with serious whining noises coming from the engine. I'm doing support with Erin, so she gets to sleep in. She got up anyway after half an hour, not sleeping with all the bustle. Lots of leftovers from Tali and Sunny cooking, so today should be pretty easy. We left pretty early, and I took the liberty of hiding last nights bread so we can have it for lunch.
Lunch at 60km, 5km before the schedule but most people have been in a peleton for the day and they stopped at 50km for a break so they're all fine. They went past us at a great speed and barely broke cadence to say hi. But they're stopping in 13km at Paynes Find for a real break. A couple of others are grateful though. But our great gumboot- throwing pitch gets ignored, which is a bit disappointing. Me and Jonas have been throwing a boot we found...
We reach Paynes Find to discover the espresso crowd hanging out sipping lattes and chatting. Oh the hard life of a cycle tourist, eh. Filled the van with fuel and water, charged the cell phones. Jedda and Leo hitch on a truck because they're not into riding another 40km to the camp site. Van will go back at 7pm to pick up stragglers, because it really is a bit of a hard day for a lot of them. The peleton has fallen apart too.
Easy dinner as per plan, emptied everything out of the van and Erin drove back. Returned bringing Charlotte, Chris and Jean. Charlotte is in the unenviable position of never having biked much before and joining the ride when everyone else has been cranking out the kilometres for months. Her bike is ok but more the $400 KMart special than a real tourer. The trike arrived, which is a bit of a surprise, but they're much faster with Tali driving than with John.
Not sleeping too well, getting headaches from the knee pain, taking painkillers but don't like that. Need to sleep though, this is the hard bit for me because I can't get away from the group any more. Will piss off tomorrow and spend the rest day away from the group I think.