Nov 4th, off to see the Capital City

We didn't realize it last night when we arrived, but Cooma seems to be a gateway to a couple of Australian ski resorts. As we left town in another chilly morning we passed several locations with ski equipment "for hire". The sun and a climb quickly warned things up and we quickly found ourselves taking off our outer layers of biking gear.

 At about 36 k (22 miles) we hit the only town for the day, Bredbo. We were lucky. A small cafe with good coffee and tasty treats awaited us. It seems that many of us were traveling at a similar pace today since when we arrived there were several people already chowing down and by the time we left most of the rest of the group had arrived as well. These morning stops are eagerly awaited each morning and not always available in some of the more remote locations.

As you can see in the elevation profile below, if we weren't climbing a hill we were riding a hill down. A day like this can be very tiring. The downhills seem too short and the uphill are too long.

Canberra, Australia's Capital, is in the ACT (Australian Capital Territory) sort of like the Washington DC in the states, only much more land.

Lunch was tasty as usual and for the first time on the trip for since Adelaide all the riders were at the lunch stop at the same time.

On more signification climb then lots of downhill into Canberra. The route into Canberra followed a "bike lane" on the B23 into the city. By the time you're 18 km the B23 that had been fairly quite becomes a very busy 3 lane freeway and we were on the shoulder that had bike lane markings on the road. Sometimes it seemed that the drivers didn't even know that we were allowed on the road. We finally all arrived safely at the hotel.

It was about 4 PM and I sprinted off to a bike shop called Pushys to have an issue that I've been having with my front derailed shiftier looked at. I explained that I was on a bike tour passing through town and described the issue. I was set up with a mechanic immediately and was allowed to look over his shoulder as diagnosed the issued and made some adjustments and cleaned up the mechanisms a bit. I'll need further work when I get back home, but it should keep me on the road until then.

Photo Link:

Happy Biking,

Brian