girl+bike in Outdoor mag

Flick your way to page 115 of the latest (March/April 08) issue of Outdoor Australia magazine, where you'll find 'The Next Step' feature on cycle touring, written by one said girl+bike. The story is titled 'Learn the Contours: Travel for the self-propelled' and features great pics from Peter Solly (and some by me) in a 6-page spread.

In totally unrelated news, Adelaide has festival fever, with the Fringe Festival underway and the mainstream festival about to kick off. We caught a great show the other night, Tom Tom Club, a fusion of beatboxing, DJ-ing, drumming and acrobatics in a high-energy show. Great stuff. Makes me want to be an acrobat, too.

Paddling on the Glenelg River

Can't wait to do some more exploring. There are purpose built camps for paddlers along the river banks, and I'd love to spend a couple of days kayaking the river. It's beautiful.

Where does the time go?

Can't believe it's already mid-February, the year is now well and truly underway and I'm just starting to feel like I'm ready for (last) Christmas... Sad but true!

Back in the office now after 2008 started with a blast! I managed to slip back to Wollongong to catch up with my family over Christmas, before Peter, myself and our friend Karen spent a few lovely days along the Great Ocean Road. Our New Year was spent relaxing in Port Campbell, where the sun set over the harbour, a spectacular way to end 2007.


Tour Down Under: What a week! We had some great people come across to Adelaide from Melbourne, Grafton NSW, Auckland and Wellington NZ to join us for the week. It was an intense week and we packed a lot in! We also spent a bit of time relaxing in the Lobby Bar of the Adelaide Hilton, the hub of the TDU, spotting our favourite cyclists and various other celebrities. A little bit of good-natured stalking went on as well but I won't mention any names, except to say that if Robbie McEwen ever goes to Wellington, he'd better watch out! haha

And although I managed to sneak a pic with Mr McEwen, I'm afraid to say he wasn't as happy about the whole thing as we were. He'd had an average day of racing and had just been informed by his team manager that he had to ride back to Adelaide. Needless to say he cheered up considerably later that night and was most obliging to pose for photos in the lobby.

Our Great Ocean Road jaunt over New Year was practice for the 'real' trip which took place straight after the TDU. We again had a most fantastic group of people and had an awesome time on our bikes, swimming, walking, canoeing and eating (eating and more eating!).

This photo was taken on top of 'Big Whitey', a huge sand dune just before Cape Bridgewater. It was like being in the Sahara, with stretches of clean white sand spread out before us. Running down from the top was much more fun than climbing up!

The Glenelg River was definitely a highlight, we spent a day paddling canoes from Princess Margaret Rose Cave down to the rivermouth at Nelson. Bodensee Peter & I managed to find a good technique and cruised along rather nicely, despite the roaring headwind that afternoon. I would definitely love to spend more time paddling the Glenelg, the designated campsites make kayak touring a very tempting holiday (or tour) idea.

In between all of this I managed to get a couple of stories off to both NZ Adventure magazine (they also publish Curl and ASL surfing mags), and Outdoor Australia mag. So look out for upcoming issues of these.

And now, it's back in the office - we've just about put our 2009 schedule together and it's looking very nice indeed.

One thing I'm looking forward to is waking up to views like this...