watch out for those cows...

Friday the 22nd of October 2010

Things that make you laugh, everyone at Dorrigo said it was going to rain, but it didn’t rain at all last night…
Before we left Dorrigo I got a cramp down my left lateral muscle, it was unbelievably painful but in 10 minutes it had gone, unlike my hay fever. I’m thinking I need to see a masseuse. Yes I know I’m getting old…

We then went through the ritual of loading the bikes, and given my gear sack is particularly troublesome it takes a tad longer than Alan’s to get sorted, which displeases Alan immensely.
The road out of Dorrigo is once again fantastic in terms of scenery, but here is a warning. There are signs saying cows loose on the road!!! Normally I don’t bother worrying about such things as I’ve only ever seen a couple of Kangaroo’s and one Emu on the side of the road, but this time there were several cows grazing on the road side. So if you do decide to ride through NSW and see a sign about cows I’d suggest you slow down.

The day started of fine, but as per normal the weather changed, it suddenly got dark in the middle of the day and the drizzle began to fall. So I pulled over and put on my wet weather gear on, whilst Alan chose to ride on. I later caught up with Alan (he had pulled over to play with his IPod) and he gave me the speech about not being able to read the signs. The theory goes like this you don’t need the wet weather gear if the cars coming towards you are dry and not using their windscreen wipers.

Now I have to admit that this makes perfect sense, if you can actually see… the weather did look clearer but turned for the worst again. So I stopped again to put the rest of my gear on and once again I caught up with Alan who had been hit by hail. Apparently the early warning system has some flaws…
No sooner had we got moving again it cleared up completely, beautiful sunshine and it was starting to get warm. Alan really doesn’t like the heat so he started shedding his waterproof booties whilst riding, which caused him to ride erratically, so we pulled over again so he could shed all his wet weather gear. My thoughts on that were really simple, taking it all off again was guaranteeing that it would rain again. Thankfully it didn’t.

Alan also made an interesting observation at this point, as we crossed over the top of the Great Dividing Range the landscape changed dramatically. On the eastern side its dense forest and lots of tree ferns etc, but as you cross over it thins out into spars gum trees and lots of farmland. The other thing you notice is the smells, the forest has its own unique smells, however with my hay fever I can barely smell it unless we stop for awhile. But you can always smell the sheep and cattle trucks…..

Finally I lost my disk lock because I left the saddle bag open after I got my wet weather gear out. Yep Mark I know what you’re thinking I’ve done that before.

Cheers
a