First few days out! Pretty fun, pretty stressful, amazing places and difficult cycle.

We said goodbye to Sam on our second day when he had headed back to Sydney from Morriset. We had spent the night before at Budgewoi beach sleeping between the dunes, I was pretty tenuous at first about our first free camp but happily settle in for some dinner. I think its going to take some getting used to the sounds of nature at night, its quite loud!

We rode a very relazing first 2 days on a nice flat bicycle path that we joined at Tuggerah only a few sections on the road which i didnt enjoy but can see myself getting more confident towards. Although it has made me think of some new rules I think should be implemented throughout Australian roads.

1. ALWAYS have a shoulder. Also if there is a shoulder dont suddenly erase it from the landscape and someone may have been using it and planning on continuing to use it.

2. Placing a sign that has a picture of a bicycle does not mean that it is a bicycle friendly road. Both Jacob and I have decided that at one point in time some politician said 'I will give NSW another 1000km of bicycle safe road or lane in the next 3 years'. This politician then bought 200 signs with a picture of a bicycle on it and a bicycle stencil and proceeded to place these signs in places where people would hardly ever ride and place spray paint bicycle stencil on parts of roads that have wide shoulders (even if in 5 km the shoulder ends with no option but to cycle your way up the side of the lane). We have gotten used to ignoring these signs and paths as they usually do not lead anywhere safe!

The second night we stayed at a lovely national park camp ground in the Watagan National Park named Gap Creek. I would suggest this camp ground to anyone who is keen to get out of Sydney and go camping for a night or two as it has beautiful walks, working bbqs and toilets (its also 100% free) but I do not suggest it for someone on a bike who does not like hills or unpaved road. We were carefreely cycling through beautiful landscape on what we thought would be about 15km of easy riding until suddenly the tar disappears and the road turns up. I make it about 300m before I jump off and start the old push, Jacob doesnt make it much further. It ended up being about a 3km climb then another 5 km down along a pretty shocking road to Gap Creek. Difficult but definitely worth it!

Starting to fall in love with our Trangia stove and can cook a million different dishes on it (although mostly stick to tomato and onion stew). We are eating like horses and enjoying ever bite!

Last night - Cold feet

Last night before we leave!!

Mostly packed (Jacob is currently running around packing and re packing the panniers). We have our friend Sam coming with us for a week and he is making me very jealous that he's not carrying anywhere near the quantity of stuff that we are taking, though in saying that he is taking it all on his back. I've got to say fully loaded riding felt very different to how I thought it would feel, almost comfortable it a very very slow way!

Jacob, wearing his new rad sunglasses from bunnings, and our panniers all ready!!

 
We have also roped in two mates to come up with us for the first day and even though I don't think they are going to continue for long with us (they have work and such, suckers), it's lovely to take a little piece of our life in Sydney a little bit further with us.

We have had such a lovely last week with a South American dinner, ceviche with hogau, guacomole, aribos and homemade cheese all made by two girls from work, with our work colleagues on wednesday where my beautiful friend Francis presented me a scarf that she knitted and dyed herself. I'll post a photo later as it is packed deep in the pannier for luck (and cold nights). Our cutest friend Maya made us some inspiring friendship bracelets in the form of acronyms. Some goodbyes were said and promises of meeting them in South America later in life and our first section of our life was all but closed.

Maya's bracelet!

Jake enjoyed his week a little bit more than I did as he was able to fully relax with no work or study. He took it a little far on friday whilst I was studying not returning home til 7 am but apparently had an incredibly enjoyable night with his uncle Peter. Last night was the goodbye night and we had a small bbq at the beach for our friends then went to one of our favourite couples home for some cheap asian food and lots of wine.

Today was family goodbye which is expecially hard for me since my darling sister Camille is moving to London in 2 weeks and this is possibly the last time I'll see her until I get over to England. Just thinking about it now brings tears to my eyes with an insane craving to scream at her 'YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED' until she agrees not to go and promptly packs herself into one of my panniers.

In a nutshell:

Nervous. Scared. Excited.

Averill

Almost Leaving

As you may have notice we have a lack of blogging over the last few weeks but it has been mostly due to our large amount of work and study.

We finally had our last day of work (and last 5am morning with our work mates) on Sunday and I have finished off my second last exam!! Only one exam to go and then we leave on Monday morning at 6am for a train to Tuggerah.

Due to the fact that we have to be back in Sydney for Christmas we are just taking ourselves slowly around known rides in the near vicinity to Sydney. For the first week we will be travelling with Jake's good mate, and doing a trip by Rob Taggart around Lake Macquarie then continuing on over through Wollembi (a route also planned by Rob Taggart).

Also, really cool coincidence happened when we were travelling back from work. Standing at the lights on our bright purple and bright green bikes when we hear from behind us 'Are you the guys from rolling around Australia?'
Somehow in this city we found one of the only people to read our blog!!

Nice to meet you Oscarian!! Hope we can bump into you again and do some cycling!!

Also for updating, Jake's has replaced his boring almost broken black bar tape with his new fizik bright green bar tape. Our bikes are getting a little ridiculous!