Sunday 10 January 2010 - Mooney

Well, well, well. Turns out Mooney is much better than we had perhaps recalled... On a glorious Sydney summer's day, Peter, Lisa, Colin and Stephe arrived under the Mooney Mooney F3 bridge at around 7.30am - returning happy and tired around 12 noon.



We had ourselves an absolute hoot - although fair to say we weren't setting any land speed records: 25kms over 4 hours and 15 minutes. But that meant we had plenty of breaks, and played a bit at all the relevant stops (including a long session at "Rock Brian").

Took the standard ride along the creek to the crossing, which was fun, and all 'do able' (with some differing degrees of success - video of Peter being successful here).



Then off up the hill past the dam (Peter was looking confident the whole way, but easily distracted; Lisa and Colin just enjoyed it and got very, very hot; Stephe managed a single dab, but was disappointed not to nail it), and then off to the water towers, where we stopped and pondered whether to add an extension for a while.



We agreed (after a hot cross bun!) to kick on to Oranges for the loop, and spent some time playing on Rock Brian on the way back (video of Peter looking good on Lisa's bike here, and less good on his bike here!). The ride back down was, as ever, a whole heap of fun - with no falls. And the view from the creek crossing was also as cool as ever...



Lisa's legendary machine (a fancy new Trek) ate up the track, Peter's was very orange (!), Stephe broke a hydraulic line on his rear brake and discovered a whole new way of riding (downhill charging with only a front brake leads to some very scary / sketchy front wheel moments!) and Colin managed to do the entire thing on a hard tail with V-brakes, without appearing at any point to be doing it harder than the rest of us.

The photo collection is here, including a couple of quick videos - but, as ever, desperately need Doug to come back riding not just for his company, but coz he can take a decent photo! And, finally, a gps plot of the route (.kmz format) is here.