Today and over the next few days, I’ll post a daily dairy of sorts. A quick download of the things that we got up to during the day.
Today was our first full day in Hobart and we were off to a cracking start with our local guide Smithers taking us on a little 40km shakedown ride along the water front. While we started in the dark, once the sun came up we had a great talking tour of Hobart with Smithers guiding us around his home town. He’s a great guy, with his only flaw being he doesn’t like “hot drinks”. I was immediately worried about his choice of coffee shops, but I’m happy to report that he did not let us down.
He’s not perfect though, as he did comment on a corgi walking past – “Imagine having legs that short!” Pagey, who does have legs that short, took those comments in her stride much to Smithers embarrassment and Bardo and my amusement. Smithers bless his soul, knew he had put his foot in it as soon as he spoke.
We cruised back to the hotel, where I’m sorry to report that Em was 7 minutes late for breakfast. This discretion will be noted on my event feedback sheet. This was in direct contrast with Tay Tay, who I found out today is “time anxious” – she was at the meeting point 15 minutes early. Maybe it was only me who heard Tay Tay say “Seven minutes is really late”.
Next stop was breakfast. Tay Tay rolled up her sleeves for this one – only so she could see her birthmark and distinguish left from right. It’s great to be travelling with somebody as directionally challenged as me!
After breakfast it was divide and conquer as the team scattered across town to get shit done. Bardo and I were off to Bunnings for some essential supplies and of course a sausage! Then it was over to National Storage to meet the team and first pack of the vehicles.
After the pack Killer, Pagey, Bardo and I set off to reconnoiter the last 30 km of the ride. We drove out to Richmond, where we pottered around looking for a suitable lunch venue for our ride, and had some lunch ourselves.
Richmond is a little tourist destination with a cute little gingerbread shop. I had to sample the local delicacies and can report they are delicious. Pagey as the resident vegan of the group had her hopes of a little gingerbread snack cruelly dashed. The lovely young girl behind the counter told us that they did have vegan gingerbread men – but they were soap! All of us thought this little joke was quite funny apart from the vegan.
I’m happy to report I have Valhalla ice cream for lunch. A highly recommended product from Smithers and I’m happy to say he was right again.
It’s now 24hrs later, so I’m now officially 24 hrs behind on the blog. Lets just finish here by saying we finalised day 5 route to cope with some unexpected road closures, had a great Nepalese dinner and collapsed into bed.
