The 30km ride to Finley included being passed by dozens of trucks at times where the side of the road was pretty rough, although there were some good stretches of road verge where I had good seal under me approximately 1.4m wide.
Tidy Town wins are treasured in Country Towns.
However, I recall one truckie giving me a warning blast with his horn as he had to pass me whilst facing a truck heading towards us. I very quickly moved the trike right off the bitumen, but he still managed to pass me with a good safety margin. I repeated this sudden move to my left into rough grass for necessity just before Finley where I think I might have punctured my left front tyre. This was a relatively slow leak that had the tyre almost flat by the time I rode into the BP Service Station.
My repair procedure was very simple. I used the valve tool to remove the valve stem and poured approximately 50ml of Tyre Shield ® into the tyre, re-inserted the valve stem, rotated the wheel slowly a couple of times to redistribute the sealant and then pumped the tyre up again to 65psi and rotated the wheel some more. I then added more air as the tyre pressure had dropped to less than 30psi within a couple of minutes and rotated the wheel some more. The tyre has held its pressure for the several days since. That’s fixing a tyre with this new sealant Tyre Shield ®.
Decided to have lunch in a Finley park to ensure that my left front tyre did not need any more air and sat down to my prepared mixed grain rolls with spread cheese and pre-packed coleslaw. A local car drove into the car park near me and a local gentleman introduced himself as one of the volunteers distributing free coffee, tea and biscuits at the Finley Fire Station. He had met me on my early May ride north, after my first tyre puncture just south of Finley and I recalled our earlier conversation. He wanted to wish me well on my continuing ride.
From Finley I tried to book into a motel at Katamatite but it had closed so I used Call Connect to find me a Numurkah motel and had to extend my ride for this day by another twenty or so kilometres.
As I continued on my way south through Tocumwal I found the local public toilets clean. I also had the pleasure of riding up a short hill, onto the bridge over the Murray and I was back in Victoria. The next three or four kilometres of highway across the Murray floodplain are a bit hazardous, but it is fortunately signposted at 8okms per hour. However, there are narrow stretches of road between even narrower bridges and I peddled furiously to be on the bridges for the shortest period of time and managed to get through without creating any traffic jam or worse still ‘Hank jam’ (squashed Hank), hence I had reasons to smile.
Saint Mary MacKillop's good influence stretched far and wide including places like Numurkah.
It was just before 5.00pm by the time I reached the centre of Numurkah and I was happy to check into the comfortable El Toro Motel and get under a hot shower on Wednesday night. A good steak (only $15 for a 400gm rump) followed at the Numurkah Hotel.
In the morning it was just going to be a short 40km ride into Shepparton and I was planning on wearing my ‘day’ clothes including long pants for wearing on the train to Melbourne.
What a nice surcharge!
If I had an extra Day I would have continued my ride to at least Seymour and probably Melbourne after an overnight stop at Nagambie.
Bike path into Shepparton. I should have mentioned earlier that both Bourke and Hillston also had good bike paths.
As it happened I allowed nearly four hours to cover the distance to Shepparton and suspect that this last day’s slow ride was probably the busiest in terms of traffic on the road I had encountered anywhere. Arriving at the Shepparton railway station at around 11.50am I bought my ticket and made a phone call to the only person I knew to be in Shepparton and invited Brian, from Express Car & Truck Rentals in Shepparton that I had utilised during my abandoned ride north, to have a celebratory coffee at the conclusion of my 1800km ride.
Back, at Southern Cross Station.