Stage 4  Jindabyne to Thredbo village for coffee and return.

Well the numbers were really down for the final stage.  Only half in fact.  Maniacs Rob “The Prince” Cater and “Big Bird” Murdoch left two hours earlier to go over Dead Horse again and their timing was actually perfect as they met up with the main bunch at Thredbo village for coffee.  I asked Big Bird how the climb was and he said, “It was easy” – Yeah right Big Bird !! 

I reckon, Nick Hall had to get the "Puncture" trophy of the weekend with three punctures on this one ride.  It was good to have Joanne and the car handy as the track pump made the work pretty easy.  Scotty Callum just loves changes punctures.  I recommend him thoroughly as he can see glass slithers that I would need a microscope to pick up.   Next year Nick bring tyres that you haven't done 10,000 kilometres on before the trip

Ride Captain, "Jacko" with master hill climber "Smartie".  Just as well we abandoned the January ride as it was some fire that came through here.  Check out the landscape behind the guys.  The trip up was very controlled. Everyone was pretty tired and we wanted to keep the peleton together so Ride Captain “Jacko” almost wore his voice out singing out, “Settle Spongie !!”  on the way up. 

On the way up we picked out a sprint point near the end of the ride for a final sprint.  I was able to save face by taking the final sprint of the Tour.  It got a little exciting though as Spongie felt he didn’t have sufficient roadway and picked the grass verge to sprint on.  Trouble was, there was the grass verge and then about a 30 metre drop and I thought Spongie was going over for a moment however displaying superior cycling skills he bunny hopped a rather nasty raised edge of the roadway at about 70kph which I thought was pretty skillful.  Well it was either skill or pure unadulterated arse, one of the two.  Actually I think I know where that term came from as earlier I had seen Scotty Callum jump something and realised it was a dead bunny.  The whole picture of this beautiful place put me in mind of that classic Australian film, “The Castle” as I took in the “Serenity”.  The Magnet was going "off" reckoning he got me in the sprint but to quote another classic line from that movie, “he’s dreaming !!”  So by my calculation, I reckon I still have the green jersey for next year as I got a 4^th in the Dalgetty sprint and a first in the final sprint and the other sprint winners, Matty and Robbie failed to place in the other sprints.  So there !!  I will award the pokadot jersey to Robbie and the black jersey (fastest descender) goes to Marek “the Skud” Prachar and puncture award goes to Nick Hall.

Conclusion

Everyone had a great time and the long weekend was thankfully without incident.  Thanks to Mark Murdoch who arranged everything, the accommodation, food and especially the beer.  Thanks to Joanne Buckton and Colin Jenkins-Flint who provided the support vehicle behind each of the rides.  Thanks to Bruce vote of the Sydney Club for providing us the magnificent accommodation.  Thanks to the bloke upstairs who provided 3 glorious days of magnificent blue sky at in the Snowy Mountains even though it rained continually in Sydney.  I recommend that all members put this trip in their calendar for next year.  I can assure you that you will really enjoy it.

Last updated: Tuesday, 05 December 2006

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