Thursday, 02 August 2012

Day 5 riding

I decided to get an early(ish) start.  I’d arrived after dark last night and wanted to see what made Maroochydore and these other coastal towns part of “the Sunshine Coast.”  Before I even got out of town, I found this picture-worthy restaurant.

I rode south Maroochydore, Mooloolaba, and Caloundra.  It’s beautiful and the Sunshine Coast is a perfect name for it.  So glad I got up and out early.

I turned west to find the “tourist roads” (scenic highways?) that lead to Maleny where Ian and I were to meet.  I arrived “at the shops by the dip in the road” just before 10.  I was starting to get worried at about 10:30.  There were lots of motorcycles passing by but no Gilera Runner.  I walked to the library across the street.  All the ladies were very nice and they let me use their phone to call Ian.  Plus, they had WiFi.  Bonus!

The bad news: Ian broke a belt about 20km from home.  The good news: he’s still kind of close to home, his mechanic picked him up and they were going to try to get it back up and running today.  No problem.  Everyone’s safe and the delays can be overcome.  I hung out at the library, caught up on e-mail and tried to bring the blog up to date.  (Didn’t quite complete that task.)

Ian arrived sooner than I thought.  Yay!  He must have been riding like Speed Racer. Here’s Ian and his mascot, a Vorpal bunny, complete with fangs

We ate lunch and came up with a rough, somewhat abbreviated plan for the rest of the day.  The scenery today was just as beautiful as the past several days: lots of cattle ranches, forested areas and quaint small towns.  Perfect weather, too.

We found a “caravan park” (RV campground) in Gympie and set up our tents before dark.  I was walking back from a nice hot shower as the nearly full moon was rising.  Beautiful!