Myrtleford to Whitfield 53 miles (208 miles total)
We awoke to overcast skies and 10 degrees. Pure Bliss!
On our rest day (yesterday-Day Five) we were joined by another collegue, Jane, who is to ride with us for the second half. She was nervous arriving with her husband as she thought it was going to be an iron-man triathalon type of thing. I assured her that if I, and some of our less than fit boys can grunt through this, sh was going to have no problem.
Anyway, we got up and started the ride casually and I enjoyed having someone new to chat to duing the riding. After only a couple hours we stopped at Brown Brothers Winery (a great marketing deal was struck, thank god) and had some lunch and wonderful coffees. Naturally I had to pick up some wine, and since my dad was arriving in a couple weeks, I decided to buy a number of his favorite bottles, whhich were shipped free for us nut jobs in lycra.
We continued on what was to be the easiest day of the ride. We cruised for the rest of the day and ended up stopping short of Whitfield at another winery. We pulled up and sat outside, eating antipasto, drinking local beers, and taking in the beautiful sight of the vineyard. It was bliss, except for the GODDAMN FLIES. The last few summers have been particularily nasty for flies. This is unlike anything I have experienced before. If you are to remain relatively motionless, you will be surrounded with dozens of the little bastards and they will become even more voracious should you dare enjoy eating outdoors. I tried to find a zen space within myself and ignore them, but I was flooded with images of napalming them all off the face of earth. I guess when the wind blows from the north, where the cattle and sheep stations are in the driers areas, the flies are blown in as well. It is a joy.
We got to camp and the clouds broke. The sun beat down yet again. Went swimming in lake.
We saddled up to dinner, which was a lovely beef and rissotto-thingy. But let me paint a picture for you. As Ed and I sat opposite one another in the huge meal tent, sweating, we had to keep one hand constatly waving furiously back and forth over our food as any lull would bring the hundreds of flies hovering about our faces to touchdown on our dinners. I finally sacrificed my desert brownie with candied cherries and slapped it down on the table ext to my plate. The brownie was actually hard to see under the shroud of flies that swarmed over it. We looked at each other...
"I'm over this," I said.
"What, the ride?"
"No. The flies."
"Don't look up then."
Of couse I did, and saw that at the highest point of the tent the dim light faded to black under a canopy of thousands of the little bastards.
"At least they're not on me."
When we finished, the three of us decided to catch "Walk the Line", which was playing at a local winery. We strolled over to find a beautiful, fly-free vineyard, a huge inflatable screen, beautiful gums silhouetted against the setting sun and unlimited glasses of wine. Decadence. The highlight for me though, was the toilet. (The toilets on the camp were semi-trailer rigs with the collection area underneath. They were filthy, stunk, small, and designed to be nothing more than the most practical way to legally releive you of your waste. And they got worse with every passing day.) Sitting on a proper toilet. Alone. Clean. Fresh. This was paradise.
We watched the film, enjoying it thoroughly, and then walked back to our spartan, sprawling campground.
Tomorrow is actually supposed to be the hardest day of the ride as it has a mother of a ride over a mountain pase, but then the bastard just keeps going up and up. No rewarding downhill ride until the very end.
I went to sleep feeling pretty good about my chances of making it.
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