mediocre mountain biker: Walhalla, Australia

Of course, that's barby like "put another shrimp on the barby, mate!", aussie for bbq. You can imagine my shock when I found out that aussies don't even use the word shrimp. They would say, "put another prawn on the barby, mate!". Whatever. We had a barby dinner and a barby breakfast up in the beautiful hills of Victoria. Walhalla is an old mining town with huge, beautiful eucalyptus trees. Think Downieville with lots of humidity. The scenery was stunning.

Mark woke me up in the middle of the night - 7am - to go ride the old railroad grade that was now a hiking trail. Apparently this was the end point for a hugemongous hiking trail that stretched all the way to the Aussie capital of Canberra. We clipped in from the cottage and grunted up the paved road that took us to the trail head.

The trail started at an old gold mine

It was very cool traversing across the hillside. Every now and then a view of town would come out. Once again, the fantastic scent of the trees was quite...dare I say magical? That and the pristine morning air, before the heat and humidity set in...there's something about riding early in the morning...I always hate getting up but once I'm out on the bike it's fantastic. And every time it's deja vu.

The trail wasn't so crazy, but that's probably good since we were both half asleep. Eventually we had to bomb down a crazily steep fire road to the Thomson river. From there we continued on another rail grade, slightly more difficult. At the end, we pedaled back on the road and had our aussie barby breakfast - eggs and meat.

I look surprising good so early in the morning...