Long Ride - Day 18 - Cowra to Cooma

Long Ride day 18 - Cowra to Cooma

After a short day of rain it was great to get a day of dry weather, albeit windy and cold.  The plan was to get to Cooma as soon as possible.  Cooma is in the Snowy Mountains so it can turn really cold very quickly at this time of the year.  We donned our wet weather gear as a safe guard but also as a protection from the cold.  My boots were still wet, so my feet had to go into a couple of shopping bags to keep them dry.

 

We left Cowra at around 10am allowing for some warmth to have developed across the land, at the time we left it was around 11 degrees and got colder as the day went on.

 

We headed down the Lachlan Valley Way through Boorowa and onto Yass to get fuel and something warm to drink.  This whole way we had had to fight through a strong head wind blowing from the south.  It wasn't only biting cold but also took a toll of the fuel consumption with all of us coming close to running out of fuel.

Feet.  $7 a pair at Coles.  Down, down, prices
are down!

Yass actually looked like quite a nice place but there wasn't a lot of time to look around after we had refuelled as we were keen to push on and at least get to Canberra.

 

On the Barton Highway we crossed over into the Australian Capital Territory and headed for Canberra.  We passed the Australian National Dinosaur Museum, I desperately wanted to stop but knew the others were laughing at me. 

 

We got into Canberra and I had to find a Bendigo bank to see what other donations had come through.  Finding the bank was easy enough, finding our way out of Canberra was a pain in the arse.  There's too many circles and ways in our nations capital.  I'm sure Canberra was designed by one of those rats they put in a maze and hope it will find the cheese.

 

We eventually got our way out of this bastion of boredom and headed south following the border until we again crossed over into New South Wales.  This is the start of the Monaro Highway, one of the best roads in this country for bike riding although, this part of it is pretty boring as it starts to head into the high country, the Snowy Mountains.

The Long Riders.  The new 1 percenters in town.

The funny thing in Canberra was when we parked we had done so right across the way from a Chubb

payroll van.  The guards looked like they were shittng themselves as a group of 'bikies' with balaclava's, leather's, etc were pulling up and watching them.  I wondered if they had ever had to use their guns and would they.  It was probably a bit stupid but it was funny.

 

After an hour or so we eventually got to Cooma, it was bitterly cold, around 8 degrees when we pulled in.  The great thing about Cooma is that it is extremely bike friendly due to the amount of riders who come up here for the great roads when the weather is better, at the moment they are about to go into the snow skiing season.

Canberra! Around and around in
circles ...

... and still looking for a way out.

We checked into the Greenleigh Cooma Motel, and got a pretty good price.  The place is being renovated so is in a bit of a dishevel at the moment, but still tidy and more importantly warm.  The only issue is that there seems to be sewerage issue and the bathroom smells like bumhole on a warm day.  Not nice.

 

Once defrosted we headed down the road to the Alpine Hotel for a feed.  The chicken parma was pretty good but what was even better was when we were asked to play Pub Trivia. 

 

The guy running the even noticed the shirts we were wearing and asked what we were doing.  It was explained we were on the home run from a charity ride to Cairns to raise awareness and money for prostate cancer research.  The guy then went on to announce this to the whole pub giving us some great coverage, we decided if we won we would donate this to the overall funds raised.

 

Before the trivia started the guy told us about the rides that take place in the area.  He asked which way we were planning on going, so we suggested that perhaps we would take on the alps.  He suggested we shouldn't as there has been some pretty severe black ice of late and it would be quite dangerous.  This was a massive left down as we really wanted to tackle the Great Alpine Road and Mount Hotham.

Ah, the spoils of victory.

No decision was made, we'd decide which way to progress tomorrow morning but it did seem that the alps were out.



Then the trivia started, we were in fine form and by the halfway point we were in second place and had already won four free drinks.  This was looking good, we looked like having a pretty decent shot at getting some further funds for the PCFA.

Although we had a great second round we were just beaten and had to settle for second place, a bottle of red wine.  We had also won two packets of chips.  So overall it had been a pretty productive night, especially considering we had managed to get some great coverage of the Long Ride and the PCFA.

 

We'd managed to clock up around 450 kilometres today, taking the total ridden to 6,912 kilometres.  A few donations have also come through in recent days taking the total raised to $12,923, just shy of the magical $13k figure.  Hopefully that can be achieved in the next day or two.  If you have pledged a donation and are yet to make it, I hope you can so.  Then we can make sure we get as close as possible to the target of $15,000.