Rain, sleet and debri won't keep us away

I can't speak for everyone but with only 9 days, 18 hours, 37 minutes and 15.25 seconds to go to boarding our flight to Sydney on the way to Singapore and finally Paris, I am truly excited and hanging out to go.

Yesterday James Jones and I drove out to Warburton (Vic) and rode up Mt. Donna Buang. It's only 1250m high and we started from approx 350m above sea level so it would be close to 1km in height and 16.2km uphill distance. Talk about crazy. It was approx 10c at the bottom with heavy clouds overhead threatening. Then from a cold start we rode the first half with a fairly constant 7% slope which levelled off at a hairpin intersection halfway up the mountain. We had to negotiate a fair amount of tree debri on the road from the last few days high winds.

We stayed together until then but once we started climbing the 2nd stage to the top which ranged from 8% to approx 10% James cruised ahead and was soon out of sight. I was struggling a bit with a tired lower back and had to stop to stretch it out. It was then that we climbed into the clouds and the bad weather. With only 100m to go I saw James riding down to give me a final psychological push with "Come on, you can make it. There are naked ladies waiting for us at the top". I knew that wasn't true even though I wished it was (after all he wouldn't have come down to meet me if it was) but it did give me the motivation to get it over with (at least the uphill part). By the time we got to the top after 75 minutes it was a near freezing 1c and we were not looking forward to the downhill trip. Thankfully there was a hut with the remnants of an open fire still burning so we were able to dry off our backsides and gloves which helped.

We had to eventually pry ourselves away from the fire as the wind was picking up. On the way down the warmth soon left our bodies. The last thing we wanted to do was to take it slowly as the fingers and toes started going numb. There was nothing to do but to JUST GO FOR IT. We were as careful as possible but we got up to 50km/hr on the straights and probably 35km/hr on the bends whilst negotiating the debri on the road. By the time I got quarter way down I had lost James in the fog and sleet, I had a terrible throbbing pain coming from where my fingers and toes would have been had I been able to feel them. I honestly don't know how I managed to keep my fingers on the brakes all the way down as I simply couldn't feel or move them.

Finally, after 20 minutes we made it down alive but frozen and the looks of relief and "WOW" on our faces told the story. We found a place to change into our spare clothes and a coffee shop with a heater to warm up by as we downed our hot chocolate & coffee and hot steak and bacon pies.

What a trip. Anyone want to join us for a return trip next week?