No it’s not an Enid Blyton novel, but given the characters involved you wouldn’t be surprised to learn it has all the elements of a great adventure delivered in rip-roaring style from beginning to end. It is of course the story of a team of Armidale Cycling Club boys and their entry into the 2014 Scody 3 Peaks Challenge. They left as boys but came home as, er boys, via a couple of pubs, airport lounges and courtesy of some excellent Qantas in-flight service.
It all started somewhere back in the cheery days of spring, inspired by the exploits of Blanchy and Johnny during the 2013 Grafton-Inverell it seemed like a great idea for a weekend away. Tinny, Kirky, Johnny and Swanny had all done it before in 2010 and the great healing properties of time had washed away much of the pain and reality of that long, stormy day. They could now once again face their demons, mainly because they’d completely forgotten about them. They managed to rope in Pete (PD) Creagan, Ben Harris and me (Rob Hale), promising it would be “a great day” and after all “it’s not a race, just a ride”. So fees were paid, flights booked and transport arranged and the long training rides commenced.
Fast forward to the weekend of the race, er ride. Sir Wanny had driven down to Wagga and taken 4 bikes with him, leaving just 3 to fit on the plane. The corner where Kirky’s bike came off the roof of Swanny’s car wasn’t so much a tight one but it had been a long day and those corrugations can catch you out so easily. Anyway, a bit of liquid paper (thank God he bought a white frame) and it looked as good as new, at least from a distance, in quite low light. With Swanny driving, that left 6 to catch the plane. As we were boarding the Albury flight in Sydney we were still a man down. Kirky had been performing some last minute research putting the final touches to his thesis on how high quality carbs and proteins only present in certain beers can provide an excellent base for a weekend-long endurance event such as 3 Peaks. Being the dedicated guy he is, he’d put so much effort into his research that he’d slept in, clearly exhausted from all that work. He then surpassed himself by managing to arrive at the gate without a boarding pass but he looked so professional with his suit jacket, thongs and boardies they had little option but to wave him through.
Swanny met us in Albury and he’d saved us a trip to Coles by buying 300 bananas, 5 loaves and 2 fishes and a trolley full of pasta to go with something rather special he’d rustled up in the family kitchen the night before (more on that later – much more). All 3 bike boxes came tumbling out of the back of the plane and our van appeared on the rental forecourt. So with confidence sky high, we embarked on the trip from the airport to Falls Creek which couldn’t have been easier. Strange then that 4 of us managed to get quite a long way towards Melbourne before realising there weren’t many hills ahead. Fortunately we had Ben in charge of navigation and we quickly took a few short cuts to get us headed back in the right direction. Except it wasn’t the right direction, but we did see some lovely parts of Albury and Wadonga and Albury again and especially the new Woolworths which really does look quite swish.
A couple of hours later, we made it and Tinny had done us proud with the accommodation which was just a few hundred metres from the start line. A few hundred metres that was, vertically up an extremely steep hill. After shuttling cars and bikes about we were all ensconced in the ski lodge and congratulating ourselves on what had been a pretty impressive effort so far. We put the bikes together which for me was a fairly lengthy process as my integrated seat tube meant that in addition to wheels, handlebars, forks etc I’d also had to take the chain rings off in order to get the bike low enough to fit into the box. At this point Johnny pointed out that I could have just slipped one crank off and saved myself about 30 minutes… sigh. Once assembled, we took the bikes down to register with the scrutineer and collect our food and valet bags, numbers, stickers and all the usual paraphernalia and we were ready for the rider briefing.
At this point Tinny started to shake uncontrollably and Kirky went unusually quiet for about 15 continuous seconds. The demons from 2010 had returned and some unpleasant memories were flooding back inspired by some black clouds and at least one flash of lightning. Fortunately Swanny had also purchased a couple of cartons of beer and gee’d on by Kirky spouting all kinds of crap about how it would help him with carbs and proteins, he got himself under control in fine style. Swanny had the ‘special’ dinner simmering on the stove by now and along with about 25KG of penne and a couple of the loaves, we got stuck into a more conventional carb-loading session. It was round about now that Swanny told us that this particular dish is known in his family as ‘the dinner that keeps on giving’ – if only we’d known what he actually meant by that we might not have had 3 servings each…
And so to bed – and a pretty good nights sleep on the top bunk amazingly enough. PD demonstrated that it is possible to suck a roller blind across a crowded room from a horizontal position, accompanied by a sound not dissimilar to a herd of African Wildebeest stampeding across the plains. Fortunately I had my trusty dual-purpose ear plugs (handy hint coming later) so wasn’t overly impacted by that. And once we heard Tinny tell Kirky to shut up, there was relatively little noise from down the corridor either as we all prepared for the big day which got off to a slightly rough start as a line of fluorescent tubes fired up inches from my eyes at 5:00am and we headed out into the dark and cold mountain air…
Stand by for Part II where we learn more about that meal that keeps on giving and the startling realisation that Col is apparently not Scottish after all but rather a native of India…
Check out Seven Go Climbing, Part II here…