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Bike It In A Dress 2020 Ride

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Climbing into the Adelaide Hills from Kanmantoo

Day 10: Pushing beyond the limit, and arriving in Adelaide

Today’s ride was by far the tough­est, most gru­elling bicy­cle ride I’d ever under­tak­en, and pushed my body to lim­its I had­n’t exceed­ed for more than ten years… I rode along the city streets down Glen Osmond Road and then Pul­teney Street like a con­quer­ing Roman cae­sar as I beamed with pride, appre­ci­a­tion and sat­is­fac­tion, stop­ping at Run­dle Mall and achiev­ing what I’d set out to do six months ear­li­er, with noth­ing more than a rough sketch of a plan and a crazy idea to ride to Ade­laide in a school dress.

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Pelicans on the Murray River at Murray Bridge

Day 9: Resting in Murray Bridge

Today was sched­uled as a rest and recov­ery day, to allow me to a) recov­er from the past eight day’s jour­ney, and b) rest in prepa­ra­tion for tomor­row, which might turn out to be the hard­est day’s ride yet. So I stayed anoth­er day at the Mur­ray Bridge Mari­na & Car­a­van Park on Rop­er Road, Mur­ray Bridge.

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The mighty and beautiful Murray River at sunset

Day 8: The Mighty Murray!

I left Coon­alpyn this morn­ing feel­ing pret­ty awe­some. I’ve got­ten a large por­tion of my jour­ney out of the way, I’ve stayed at some great places, met some love­ly peo­ple, and seen some beau­ti­ful sights.

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Coonalpyn Silo Mural

Day 7: A hangover to Coonalpyn

I woke up this morn­ing with a bit of a hang­over, but noth­ing too bad, and got my laun­dry done pret­ty ear­ly. I wan­dered around town for a while, check­ing out the Bor­der­town train sta­tion, a stop for the Over­land Train I’ll be tak­ing back to Mel­bourne this com­ing Fri­day, and was sad­dened at how run-down and in need of main­te­nance the neglect­ed but beau­ti­ful her­itage sta­tion was.

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Toby Greene looking like a sad sack

Day 6: Watching GWS get spat out by a Tiger

After the hard day yes­ter­day, today was bril­liant! Awoke refreshed, with not a lot of dis­tance to cov­er to fin­ish off Leg 4 — about 40 km to Bor­der­town, SA. I left Kani­va ear­ly and head­ed out for the bor­der between Vic­to­ria and South Aus­tralia at Ser­vice­ton. I was soooo hap­py to final­ly reach the bor­der. Although I’ve already cov­ered half the dis­tance of my jour­ney, in my mind the bor­der has always been the ‘halfway’ milestone.

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The Pink Lake, near Dimboola, known for its pink algae

Day 5: The silent ‘h’ in Nhill

I set out from Dim­boola and before long reached Loch Iel, more com­mon­ly known as the Pink Lake. This salt pan is home to a type of algae that reacts to the sun by show­ing a pink hue, mak­ing the entire lake vary­ing shades of pink depend­ing on time of year, sun posi­tion, etc. It was very beautiful…

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Freight train passing on the Western Highway between Horsham and Pimpinio

Day 4: Dimboola

I start­ed this morn­ing in the worst pos­si­ble way — dis­as­ter struck my rear axle. I snapped the ‘Bur­ley Balls’ rear axle bolt, which was made out of cheap Chi­ne­sium, as I went to depart the Dar­lot Motor Inn! I was dev­as­tat­ed — this could eas­i­ly have been the end of the adven­ture right there. I was com­plete­ly immo­bilised. With­out a rear axle I couldn’t even walk the bike to the local bike shop. I rang my part­ner Danielle in despair.

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The Grampians

Day 3: Horsham

I awoke ear­ly this morn­ing to the sound of kook­abur­ras laugh­ing, and then cock­a­toos hav­ing a scream­ing match, so much bet­ter than an alarm clock! I love the bush!! Enjoyed a beau­ti­ful sun­rise through the gum trees as I packed up camp and had a mues­li break­fast. The fam­i­ly I’d met, the two lit­tle fel­lows were up bright and ear­ly like me, so we enjoyed break­fast togeth­er before I head­ed back down the grav­el track to the high­way. Love­ly people!

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Rest stop on the Western Highway between Ballarat and Ararat

Day 2: The second departure

Slept in slight­ly, then as I was leav­ing from home and not com­ing back, need­ed to dou­ble-check that every­thing was packed into the trail­er and the gear was all ready to go.

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Ready to go at the Royal Exhibition Centre Gardens, Carlton

Day 1: Up the hills!

I arrived at the Roy­al Exhi­bi­tion Cen­tre in Carl­ton this morn­ing with no small amount of ner­vous trep­i­da­tion, as well as some weary eyes, after catch­ing the 0520 train with my part­ner, Danielle. We said good­bye with a big hug at South­ern Cross Sta­tion, and I rode from there to Carl­ton, and parked at the big foun­tain to the south of the Exhi­bi­tion Centre.

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