Sunday 2 December 2007 - Mooney

Mooney, ah Mooney. Fair to say that it remains one of the best places we go to ride, but this was not one of the best rides! Lots of start / stop action, lots of water, but not as much fun as is often the case with water, and a couple of DNFs along the way...

Still the environment was beautiful!

We met at around 7.30am, with a bunch of dropouts the few days before (missing T-Bone, Matt (with a good excuse!), Ed, and others - mostly scared off by the potential for rain I reckon).

But, we did have the pleasure of Donal and Phil joining us, making the Scottish contingent stronger each week - with Doug, Rees (he's baaaack!), Richard (nice new bike, see first pic below), Whisperer, Johnbo and Stephe making up the numbers.

We had a beautiful clear day, with no rain and excellent light cloud cover - so it was not too cold, not too hot, and nothing to complain about.



We headed off in high spirits, with Smartarse Creek taking some early victims, but generally all good (lots and lots of water on the trail). The group shot has (L to R) Donal, Phil, Stephe, Johnbo, Rees, Whisperer and Doug (with Richard behind the camera). Unfortunately, after this set of photos, the camera failed...



The riding was pleasant, although the creek crossing was right on the limit of passability (lots of people getting very wet, as they carried bikes across and slipped under etc). The climb to, and past, the dam was harder than ever - with no-one even looking like doing a dab free run, and with much falling into gutters and water holes!

Very early on, Stephe went into (the first) water covered rock garden and managed to bang his knee on the headset (leading to much sadness for the rest of the ride - and a DNF before we got to Oranges), and Richard was forced to pull out at the water tanks with his torn calf not yet fully recovered. As the bodies started to fall, the group decided not to push on for Oranges, or The Bucket, but turned around and headed home after a quick snack at the water tanks.

The ride down was again more dangerous and difficult than normal, albeit with much entertainment and no serious injuries (which has to be a good thing).

In all, it was under a 20km run (wow!), but the profile still looks good (limited photos and profile are up here):