macclesfield

Rock and Nicky and I make a deal to ride on Good Friday. Rock, still recovering from broken ribs and torn shoulder ligaments when he cartwheeled over the bars of his MTB, suggests Macclesfield. Is he up for 80 kilometres, we ask in unison. He’s just desperate for physical activity, he says, after weeks of being immobilised.

Four of us gather at my front door this morning. Wendy is with us too; cancelled a visit to her mother in Mornington. So four of the six of us who spent four days riding together from Khancoban to Mansfield the week before Christmas set off again. Nicky is in good form: she’s been racing F grade at Eastern Vets. Wendy is recovering from food poisoning.

We cruise out on quiet roads, talking in pairs. We regroup at Mt Evelyn and again at the top of the Wandin Primary School hill, a nice little grunt of ten per cent. Down the Beenak road and over into the smoky Woori Yallock Creek valley. DSE are burning off somewhere in the Divide.

The Macclesfield Road from Yellingbo to Maccy is sheer delight. Swales Road and its 15 per cent slope up to Monbulk tees off on our right but we don’t take it. We’re all hanging for the Emerald Bakery, surely the best bakery in the world. Bikes surround it when we roll up just before eleven. No speed records today.

Wendy waits till coffee and pasties are inside us before regaling us with tales of food poisoning and its explosive effects. Completely unaware, so engrossed is she in vomiting into her toilet, she shits on the shower screen behind her simultaneously. Even her new mobile phone cops a dollop. Few women could recount such a story of their misery and humiliation. We like Wendy.  

She’s already knackered: six days in bed has zapped her. I see the treetops whipping in a strengthening wind outside and know we’ll struggle back into the northerly. Let’s go, I urge.

The downside of this ride is returning through Upper Gully and along Dorset Road. The wind is now a powerful northerly blast, the temperature nudges the predicted top of 30 degrees. It’s sticky, gritty work pounding into the wind.

Nicky peels off through Croydon to pedal home to Mitcham. She’ll have close to 100 kilometres behind her when she gets there.

Rock and Wendy fall onto my couches and demand the overhead fan and cups of tea. We vow to ride more often. Our time of this earth gets shorter and we must use it to best advantage.

Rock on.