The Wine Was Fantastic

Home from 4 fantastic days at Bright. Great weather (stinking hot actually), good friends, good food, good times.

A quick precis of the weekend:

Saturday

Arrived just before lunch. Straight into the lycra and unload the road bike from the car for a jaunt up Mt Buffalo. Ye-ouch. Having not done any real or sustained climbing for quite some time (and not having ridden Buffalo for about three years) this was a shock to the system. I was pretty happy with myself though, spun the whole way up, door to door from Bright was about 3:18 - ave just a shade over 21km/h. Gives me a benchmark and something to improve on.

Tried to grab something resembling a nap before dinner, before tarting ourselves up and heading for Poplars. This was the celebration dinner for the BMI Challenge - and what a challenge it was. I'll probably do a more detailed post on this in the next couple of days, but it really came down to the wire, with one person throwing an excellent result in the last week to burgle to Comp and take the prize (free dinner). Can't be too sour about it, I lost 5.3kg over the Challenge, and am within 300 grams of my first goal weight.

Poplars, as usual, was brilliant. We went the whole hog (pretty much literally), entrees, mains, desserts, liquors, coffees, it was ace. At $100 a head it was not the cheapest meal out, but worth every cent of it.

And Dee - the Penfolds was straight out superb. You are right, I am a poor, poverty-stricken student, the Penfolds harks back to the days when I was an entrenched in a senior management position for a fairly large fast food company. In fact, that bottle was actually my Xmas bonus in 2002. I still have one more of them in the cupboard (a '97), I'll wait another year and wait for a suitable occassion to crack that one out.

Sunday

The head should have been foggy, but it wasn't too bad. A bit of cotton wool mouth was about as bad as it got. I saddled up the mountain bike and headed out for a spin with some of the Alpine Cycling Club guys - they'd had a huge day on the Saturday running the Bright 6 Hour - a tough, demanding course in hot, humid weather. From all accounts it was a blast.

Then napping, reading and eating. I think in that order.

Monday

Bit of breakfasting and browsing the Rotary Markets. Then some napping. Then some riding - took the MTB out and explored some of the trails around Mystic Hill and up towards Wandiligong. Great fun. Cranked out the BBQ for a spot of dinner, relaxed with a Bundy and beer or two, and solved the problems of the world.

Tuesday

Another ride - hit the road and headed up Great Alpine Road towards Harrietville. The weather was starting to look ugly, big dark front coming over, wind coming up, so turned just shy of HTV and made for home in a rush. Followed up by a lovely breakfast (really, really don't want to know what my cholesterol will be after the last 4 days) and a couple of coffees, we packed the car and meandered home via Myrtleford, Beechworth, Stanley, back to Beechworth for lunch, and then finally home. Watched the race, lost all our money, picked up the pooches from the kennel.

Happy to see us? Serious understatement.

Had a ball. 4 days on the bike in a row, lovely spot, great company.