Day Three Mittagong To Canberra 176 kms

What a massive day.

Where do we start ? We left Mittagong at 700am . Craig crashed into me at 720am riding up a huge hill. He had his head down going hard and did not see me stop in front until he hit me. Slam. He didn't hit to hard but he went down using my whole wheel as a landing patch. It was all good because we were laughing about it hysterically only one minute later. Mal was disappointed because Amanda jumped out of the car to help craig instead of filming it.

It was the coldest day on record in October in forty two years apparently.

Craig and i can defiantly support that claim. I went to have a drink out of my water bottle and it was frozen..... just kidding.... we had to ride with our mouths shut because our teeth were aching. We had every bit of cycling clothing we could find on and craig even had the newspaper shoved down his front for extra protection. If that was not bad enough we had to ride the whole way head on once again into a busting southerly ( with a massive wind chill factor ).

Mechanical failures today seemed to be in fashion ....I broke several more spokes, craig had two flat tyres and broke a gear cable and we also had a flat tyre in the support car..

With all of that happening , the seemingly endless icy cold head wind and the huge amount of kms we had to achieve , you could only imagine how big today has been. But surprisingly we are feeling ok. A little bit sore and very tired and once again I have to watch craig get his humongous calves massaged while I sit here and write this blog ( he complains like a baby as Amanda massages him with an evil smile on her face).

Sarah and Reg have been fantastic in the background running around getting things fixed, making breakfast lunch and dinner and most importantly today, going from bike shop to bike shop buying craig and myself some slip on thermal leg and arm sleeves to combat the freezing conditions. We would like to thank the Clifford Street Cyclery in Goulbourn for their fantastic support today in fixing craigs bike and looking after us on the price of the thermals.

Craig saw his first snake skin on the trip and I saw an echidna digging a hole. One really big problem we are experiencing is the amount of rank road kill that you can smell for 100 metres before you get there. It is really hard to hold your breath while riding a heavy penny farthing up a hill.

Well tomorrow is another day and its going to be bigger than this one. We are going to do a couple of hours riding in the morning around canberra followed by a 10.00am meeting at Parliament House with the senator for health and a few television crews.

Goodnight all and thanks for tuning in to our kid friendly blog .