Alarm set for 5:25am and out the door at 5:50am meeting at Tom Brown round-a-bout at 6:00am. Think we had about 12 riders and 100,000 flies, I kid you not. Since we've had a little rain out here the humidity is through the roof and the flies jsut go nuts.
Our route today was down the "Ross River highway", no trucks or cars to be seen which is very nice. I think its about 110km to the homestead but we generally head out 1/3 or 1/2 of the way to get in the 100 or so kilometers. Ride was a nice pace at around 33km/hr 2 up, really good mix of people with 1/2 the bunch being of the opposite sex
We'd almsot reached the 1/2 way mark and yours truly gets the only flat of the ride. Well it was the 2nd stop of the ride, 10km in the seat started to slide down, I hadn't done up the screw tight enough since it came out of the box and luckily one of the guys had a multitool
Ride back was a little faster with a planned" suffering activity" along the way. Now I can handle the Lifecycles ( not according to BMXBandito) 5-10 KM thumping but this goes for about 20km. We'd dropped most of the bunch about 3km in and then the usual 3 suspects of Tim, Rob and Myself kept going. I am impressed in how Tim suffers, that guy even though he is a tad older than me can suffer as good as BMXBandito. Well my suffering went for about 18km and then sitting at max hr for too long I just had to back off. Well it looks like they played their cards better than I did as they slowed down after another 500m, maybe they had planned to give me a spanking, who knows but I do respect their abilities
I'm thinking I need to get back on the bike a little more and do some solitary hurting to get my fitness back.
There are 2 rides here during the week, Tue and Thu where they ride up to the Bond Springs turn off which is pretty much near the high point marker. The group meet at the top at 6:30am precisely and then back into town for coffee. Doesnt appear that they ride together up the hill due to varying abilities I'm told.
Anyway a good ride, back at home by 9:00am and then onto the shops before they all close at 12:00 noon
Oh the fun of living in Alice. You cant be in a hurry for things as you'll be sorely disappointed. Though spending time with Carol and the kids has been an absolute blessing
Sandman
Nice to hear from you Pete 
Great read.
