Number 13-unlucky for some…but not for us! Day 13 was a ripper. Why? Read on…
Today we ran past Yass, which brings us to just over 600kms. This is about the same distance between London and Edinburgh in the UK, or say, perhaps the distance between Melbourne and Yass…pretty exciting.
I woke during the night for dash to the bathroom-it was minus 3 degrees! When we all got up to get ready at 6am-ish it was still minus 1…freezing! (Colder actually).
We drove back to our starting point around 30km short of Yass, the only problem was we couldn’t find it. Edge had marked it out with white electrical tape across the barricade, however trying to see this from the across the road at 100kph through the mighty thick fog was quite a task…and eventually involved two U-turns, an extra 10 minutes or so, and unnecessarily high levels of concentration before sunrise…the price you pay to take EVERY step from Melbourne to Sydney.
The delayed start meant it was a balmy 1 degree when we started on the road. We have been getting used to the cold slowly but surely…today was supposed to be tops of 9 degrees, but with wind chill never really got much above 6 degrees. We could see our breath not just in the morning but throughout the entire day.
After around 13km on the road we jogged up to Ruby rather routinely and we noticed another car in front her and Edge had the camera out and poised-something was up. Out jumped two of Joel’s Uni mates, Kea and Nicole. It was a big surprise for him and put a big smile on his dial, which was contagious (much like the nasty rash he’s developing on his body). Kea and Nic had decided to join us for part of the day (Kea’s actually from close to Tamworth so was a big effort from her). They walked and jogged along with us for a bit and kept our spirits up while Joel and Sam caught up with them and talked business.
With all the commotion going on we had a pretty slow morning, and by 11am or so we’d only managed just over 20kms, when we saw Ruby being chased by a cop car with lights ablaze. We weren’t too worried-the cop was Matt, who had contacted us earlier and offered to give us a helping hand in whatever form we needed. He hooked up a newspaper interview for us on the spot, had previously helped us with logistics up the dirty Hume and also organised us free Maccas, which Ben and I were most impressed with. As we caught up to Ruby we introduced ourselves to Matt at which point he nearly broke all of our hands…not in self-defence but with his solid and manly handshake-as Ben put it, “he can shake a hand, that man. He’s someone who you wouldn’t wanna mess with”. Ben has been icing his hand since this point in time.
Matt continued on his way, however he’s going to have a jog with us tomorrow. We’ve been practising hard manly handshakes on each other in preparation for this.
The rest of the running afternoon went to plan and we finished early with our shortest day yet-only 39.5kms. We headed straight to Maccas so we could A. Have a free feed, and B. try to collect some money in our tins. We met the lovely owner of Yass McDonalds, Karen (who knew Officer Matt) and told her our story. Just like that she donated $200, gave us cookies and fruit pieces for the road and offered us free breakfast there tomorrow! What an absolute legend! More unexpected generosity coming out of Yass, just like Dale and Chris at Gundagai.
We said goodbye to Kea and Nic and headed back to the caravan park for massages and showers. However instead of getting snugged up we hit the local pubs (Joel dressed in his freshest gear for the occasion). Again, this was to earn some coin with our tins. We walk in, following the Edge, and as he does best, promotes our cause as loud and proud as he can by getting everyone’s attention and announcing it to them and people just start throwing money at us. What the Edge says, goes, even in Yass. After meeting and greeting with the locals at the Royal, we moved on to the Australian Pub, where the same action is taken. All in all, we raked in $300 while we exchanged stories with the friendly locals. One particular pub patron was David who hosts a sports show on the local radio, who said he’d do an interview with us tomorrow morning, which was a great effort too.
After a solid night in Yass, we retreated to the caravan park for a nice dinner (thanks Lyndal!) and off to bed to get ready for tomorrow, which we hope will be as successful as today, but with longer beards.
Cheers
Nick
You can see us in this picture if you zoom in...we're only 20 metres away-through the thick fog. Was minus 1 degree here.
Kea and Nic suprise Joelo. Here he sheds a tear of joy and pride as he realises he is the token ladies man for the day for a change rather than Ben
Nick doing an interview, Joel and Ben talking business, and Officer Matt looking for someone's hand to shake
Benny trying to work out his phone because he never uses it
Karen, the most McHappy manager going around
Nick counting our pub/tin money in an unorthodox (but quite business-looking) fashion.
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