Day 15 - 'to triumph without risk is to conquer without glory'

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Wild camp site outside Bright to Mongans Bridge 42kms

Who remembers those inspirational posters from the nineties, black background, photo of an eagle or a dolphin or some dude bungee jumping, paired with some twee saying.  We didn't know it at the time, but those were the precursor to the meme.   And 'to triumph without risk is to conquer without glory' has been on repeat in my head all day.   A quote directly from one of those posters,  I think it had a hang glider as the aspirational image.  We risked a wild camping spot, hoping for quiet.  But the moment we laid our heads down, the local feral bucks began their mating calls.  If you've never heard it,  I don't know what to say except imagine an eerie screeching bellow, with plenty of stomping.  After such an excellent night's sleep,  I was super glad for a breakfast of foraged fruits and museli, yum!

We were keen to start pedalling, as it was chilly and damp.   However,  just one kilometre in, and there was something wrong with my bike, she felt all wonky.  Yep, flat tyre.  Further investigation revealed flat tyre by blackberry, not the nineties kind, damn breakfast.  After much roadside wrestling, pumping up 3" tyres with a mini pump is slow, we were back to pedalling.  Warm now, frustration is a very warming kind of emotion.


At this point it is fair to say I wasn't in the best mood ever, Kerstin  wisely took the lead as we slowly, at some points very, very slowly made our up to Tawonga Gap.  

Passed by everyone, most were friendly, especially the motorcyclists, the road riders were more horrified at what we were doing to the image of cyclists everywhere.  Didn't we know we were supposed to make it look easy?  After much sweating, and grumping (from me) we reached the top, the view was pretty damn good!



The descent was right up Kerstin's ally, with enough hairpin turns and steep angles to keep it from being too sedate, ie. I was squeezing the brakes like a boa constrictor the whole way down.  Finally back at the same altitude at which we started the day, which kind of makes you wonder, why?  We lunched in Mount Beauty, made ourselves at home in their park, drying our tent and charging the phones on our little solar panel.  

At which point we decided the enough risk had been taken for Louise to have triumphed, with glory, and perhaps discretion really is the better part of valour.  New plan... instead of taking the 50km MTB trail over 1000m of elevation gain tomorrow, we will intead head north to Tallangatta.  We hear that Canberra is full of inspirational people!










Comments

  1. FrancieFebruary 23, 2022 at 1:21 PM

    Wow. I have just read the past few days blog and the stories and photos are wonderful. You are doing very well with the climbs and the occasional frustration along the way. Human and animal background noises while trying to get a good sleep. I am writing at 10 to 3 in the afternoon here and we are about to head off to the Library for a 1 1/2 hour session on "Keeping Backyard Chooks". I think we know most about this but we are keen to meet Ella from "Chooktopia" who is quite the expert on this. You always pick up one new fact. Hope you have a peaceful evening.

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