![\"canonnotice\"](\"http:\/\/bikeme.tv\/wp-content\/uploads\/canonnotice.jpg\")
<\/p>\nI couldn\u2019t leave for the Tumbarumba TT with Boris and Bly and the others on Thursday. They were cutting over to a new ERP system at work on 1 April, and Thursday was 31 March.<\/p>\n
At 2130 on the evening of 31 March the office was still humming with accountants and consultants and managers. I don\u2019t work on the accounting side, but there had to be a way that I could help make 1 April better.<\/p>\n
So I downloaded a Canon logo and made up some signs and laminated them and got one of the managers to help me stick one to each copier on each floor.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Hilarity ensued on 1 April, but not as much as I had planned, because I wasn\u2019t riding to the Tumbarumba TT. I decided I would ride down on the Saturday. Google Maps said it was five hundred and four kilometres and I could get there in five hours, but I would have to slab it down the Hume Highway.<\/p>\n
I couldn\u2019t. It would destroy my soul, and it is far too late in life for me to be developing red hair; so I rode over the mountains on the Bells Line of Road, and through Georges Plains and Barry and Neville and down the Mid Western Highway to Cowra. It was a great ride, in perfect weather.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t think I\u2019d ever stopped in Cowra before. There\u2019s a memorial there to a prison break in 1944, when three hundred and fifty nine Japanese prisoners of war broke out of their camp. Two hundred and thirty one died and a hundred and eight were wounded from charging machine gun emplacements and such. I am told that Seiji Ogi, the ringleader, told his men to die like the carp. I have seen carp die, and it usually involves them flopping around on the dirt on their side gasping. I fail to see the attraction, but Ogi\u2019s men thought that it was a good idea, apparently.<\/p>\n
The Japanese are an inscrutable race, and have foolish moments.<\/p>\n
I filled my tank and headed east to the Snowy Mountains, and found Tumbarumba. There were maybe a hundred people drinking at the caravan park. I joined them, and drank Gromit\u2019s wine, which gave him an excuse to open a second bottle, and listened to the stories of the riding that day, and ate a meaty dinner hot from the grill.<\/p>\n
The next morning Bly decided that slabbing it up the Hume would destroy HIS soul, too, so we went back the way I came. We rode the winding roads of the Snowy Mountains, and the lonely high speed straights of the Central West. The weather remained perfect. We stopped in Manduramah for a pub lunch in a shady beer garden.<\/p>\n
I got home about 1700, after a satisfying blast over the Bells Line of Road. The GPS said I\u2019d done over thirteen hundred kilometres since the previous morning.<\/p>\n
I unpacked my bags. I had a hot shower. It was most relaxing. My soul felt undestroyed. I dried off and checked my hair in the mirror.<\/p>\n
There was not a tinge of ginge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There had to be a way that I could help make 1 April better<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":14924,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[221],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14923"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14923"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14923\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14929,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14923\/revisions\/14929"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}