Cycle Tour

Day 1 Monday 6^th February 2012

Monday was the first we got to shred rubber on the road. The trip we did in the morning was from our Wambana campus or Point Turton to West Cowie and then the return from there as well. On our way over to West Cowie we thought it was incredibly tough as we were so unfit from the holidays, but the first real relief was when we stopped at the Brutus area school which had some really old cars which were worth around 2,000 dollars and when it is restored it will be worth around 100,000 dollars each. The newest of the two cars still had its for sale sign there, it’s pictured below. Then we came back to Wambana for lunch, we found out that we had only done 20 kilometres out the total 40 kilometres for the day so in the afternoon we started from the campus and we rode all the way to Warooka where we posted our letters and had a look at the town. When we got back we were so tired but still we had to make dinner clean our trangia, leadership handover and do oranges lemons and winner before we go to bed, so by the time we were in the tent, sleeping bag we fell asleep immediately. Oranges, Lemons and Winners is a time when we all tell each other what we thought was good, bad about the day and who we thought were the best performers.

Day 2 Tuesday 7^th February 2012

Today was when we were able to really get into the flow of riding. We rode from base camp or Point Turton to Minlaton where we posted our letters and then we packed our bikes into the buses and rode the way back. We started riding our twenty four gear mountain bikes around dirt tracks and Tuesday was personaly the best day because it was relatively flat, but there was parts of the track which were covered in sand so we were all really annoyed that we were used as lab rats because that specific track is usually ridden the groups in winter when the sand is harder. While we were ridding back to Wambana in the buses, but Chikovski’s right front tyre blew and bits of the tyre were scattered everywhere. Jeff could accommodate most of the boys who were in Chikovski but there were five less seats. So five boys including myself stayed behind, we were allowed to start on the letter for tomorrow and we had heaps of things to write about including the tyre blowing up. It took ages to remove and change the tyre because it was rusted on so it took two teachers and the RAA repair man to remove the bolts and one teacher had to keep their foot on the breaks. The picture is of the blown out tyre.

Day 3 Wednesday 8^thFebruary 2012

Wednesday was the day where we got lots of working as most of the track was full of hills. We rode around the whole Innes National Park. The challenge was probably the hardest thing we did as we had to ride almost three quarters of the day back in the gears two and eight. It was excruciatingly painful up the hills and easy cursing down them. Then there was this massive hill where I stacked it and the gears changed without my knowing. When we started riding we rode up the steepest hill in the Yorke Peninsula which led to this beautiful 360 degree lookout and then going down the hill was really fun as you built up heaps of speed because it was so steep. Then we kept riding for a bit more but we let the slow people go in front so we could all reach at around the same time at dolphin bay. When we reached dolphin bay we were allowed to go for a swim if we finished our letters, I was one of the first finished but I did not want to swim because some of the boys who were finished before me and had gone in had said it was really cold. Then we rode the same way back to  the buses which we packed up and then we set of back to Wambana even though it felt hard it felt really rewarding.

Day 4 Thursday 9^th February 2012

The last day of the cycle tour felt extremely hard because we rode mostly the whole way on gravel so we felt very horrible because of the corrugations.  Anyway we started riding at a rode just of Sunbury and we rode to suicide point where we had our lunch it was called suicide point because a young boy around the age of 20 got a massive fish on his and he refused to let it go, so he was pulled in to his watery grave. Then we rode to the Trou Bridge lighthouse where we took some amazing photos of it and kangaroo island. Then we rode through a wind farm with  our leadership partner  (Andrew Fleming was my partner), so that we could teach about each other for the excuse me gentlemen program. We finished at Edithburgh where we went on a compulsory swim in a small tidal pool, it felt great as we were refreshed and cool. We were so relieved when got out and got back in the bus to know there was no more riding to be done, but we felt really pleased with each other as we just rode around 180 kilometres to finish the whole trip.