Biking has re-commenced!

We left Airlie Beach heading north towards Cairns. The towns were fairly spaced out which made logistics a bit tricky with food and water. The sun was blaring and humidity was high. We tried to refuel in Ayer but with the Easter Holiday, everything was closed except for Subway which ended up being our lunch, dinner, and morning snack the next day! The area north of Ayer was beautiful but so desolate, even finding a remote turnoff to camp in was difficult.

Finally, we found our oasis - a partially dried up creek bed with sand bars. We were a bit worried about the crocodiles but after seeing the dozens of bird-eating spiders in the bush along the side of the road, we decided to chance it in the open, sandy creek bed. The moon was full and the bugs and birds were out. Despite being somewhat close to the highway, the animal noises were still louder than the occasional traffic. Fortunately, Aaron had his screen tent, Eric had his 4-season tent, and unfortunately, all Chad had was Aaron Rinn's fleece bag-liner hand me down. Which, oddly enough, is still in great shape and can keep you quite warm if you're camping at 12,000 feet in the Sierra's - however, when it is 80 degrees at night with 100% humidity, it can be quite uncomfortable to say the least. You may be thinking to yourself that he could have simply slept on top of it, but you must remember the size and number of the mossies (mosquitoes) out here which could have carried him away in the night!

The next day we packed up the bikes and headed to Home Hill. We stopped at the only open business, which was of course a pub, and ordered up some lunch. We talked to a local who had been drinking at the pub since 1942 (and most likely drunk since then). We asked him if there were crocs in this neck of the woods and he said "oh yeah, Mate, You better just stay 50meters from the creeks, just the other week a guy got dragged out of his tent by 4 meter croc - he didn't live to tell about it!" To which we replied, "right, we'll stay away from those creeks!". We were then off to Green Acres Resort (ha!), which sounded quite refreshing. We had been riding for several hours with no sign of it when we finally came across a lone gas station to ask for directions to Green Acres. The friendly lady behind the counter said, "Well, you found it alright, this is it!". Needless to say Aaron's motto is to keep your expectations low and you just might be pleasantly surprised. Even Aaron wasn't impressed with Green Acres! It was getting late and we wanted to get a bit more mileage under our belt. They pointed us towards a town called Giru up the road a bit. We found the turnoff just at sunset and the bugs and frogs were out in full force. It was so bad we had to put our sunglasses on just to ride through them all. They were crawling around in our helmets with Aaron's hair providing the least amount of protection! We were running into so many bugs, it actually sounded like it was raining! There were dozens of frogs on the road as well, especially under the occasional street light. We found accommodations above the town pub and were able to take much needed showers!

Townsville was the next spot on our trek which is located on the beach. They have areas of the ocean partitioned off by giant screen nets to keep out jelly fish, saltwater snakes, and host of other animals that are not very human-friendly. It was very odd to see a beautiful beach and ocean but you could not go swimming in it. This has had an adverse effect on Eric's swimming training to say the least.

So the biking has been going well. Chad's ultra-light packing has kept him breaking wind (meaning drafting, not something else :-) and leading the pack. We're averaging about 30 km/hr and doing about 80-120km per day. Two days ago Aaron and Eric broke the 2,000km mark! Aaron's legs still show no sign of getting any bigger. Eric on the other hand, looks like he should be trying out for one of the rugby teams out here. Today is our final biking day and we're off to the Tully for river rafting tomorrow. Aaron needs a prescription for Prozac for the onset of his upcoming depression because The Ride is coming to an end. Eric, however, has stepped up his drinking game to an all-time high, but unfortunately it has been at the cost of his Ironman training. Stay tuned to http://www.ironmanoz.com/ to see how he actually does (Stu, Chad's coming to your house to watch the festivities!)

P.S. The Whitsunday Sailing blog is updated more as well...