Sunday 25 June - Mooney and "the Bucket"

[note from your editors: much of what follows has at least a passing resemblance to the truth, but readers are advised to exercise caution in their review... Also attending were: Doug, Brian, Joe, Rees, Ed, T-Bone and Stephe - not that it's obvious from Ed's review below!]

G'Day bike enthusiasts, Ed here posting my first entry, for those that don't know me I'm the one with the cute bum.

What a spectacular day it was at Mooney. Couple of hiccups as per usual. We'd started out looking strong and all of us were psyched for a big ride.

Unfortunately smartarse creek was not going to be accommodating today with a number of us having problems. T-Bone did fantastically well considering he was breaking in new shoes and pedals and not being accustomed to them found he was unable to disengage himself at crucial moments (crashing headfirst into Smartarse being just one of them).

Truth be told he was not alone, I managed a spectacular dismount which left me feeling slightly deflated.

Got to the bridge at the next creek when T-Bone realised he'd forgotten to do his nails or some such thing which meant a detour back to the car for me and a drive into Gosford and back to procure the necessary item.

Upon our return 35 mins later we found our bikes abandoned and the rest of the guys goneskis!!

T-Bone was pissed... he'd gone to a lot of trouble to get his nails looking great and was looking forward to showing them off to the boys. The Boneman and I resumed the ride with vigour and thought we would catch them up in no time, (cause truth be told they're all a bunch of
wusses!).

We got to the water tower with no sight of the callous, insensitive bastards and decided, "F**k it, lets do the Bucket".

It had been some time since my last visit to the fabled location, and truth be known it seems to have taken on mythic proportions amongst the group, with us frequently being reminded by Doug of how many times he has achieved the climb out without a single touch, (Doug likes to talk himself up.....to be fair he's about three times as fit as the rest of us).

Getting to the top of the long (looooooooong) climb up before the drop down to the bucket was a great feeling, kind of feel further away from things up here, and there are some gorgeous views of the distant ranges. T-Bone and I took the drop at speed, enthusiastically negotiating the many tight corners and just loving that feeling of freedom that a high speed descent affords.

A quick lunch break and we were into the climb back out.

We heard Stephe long before he got to us. Apparently the boys had been amusing themselves in the bushes when we got back to the bikes much earlier.....not quite sure what they were doing? Of course they tried to blame us and say that we had abandoned them....unbelievable!

The best thing about the ride back was the two long descents, lots and lots of fun was had by all and I'm pretty wrecked right now.

I did manage to get to the bottom of the issue from last week that meant we did Redhill rather than Mooney, apparently it was all Doug's fault.

Photos, GPS, and multiple satellite shots here. Here is the GPS track set up to load in Google Maps, and here is the .kmz file for Google Earth.

Some highlights, below - but check out some of the sillier shots of Ed, and the *fantastic* profile on the albums page: