Welcome to the 2Bob Blog
Friday, April 24, 2009 at 3:21PM 
Me and Wal on the weekend I bought my bike. We had just ridden home from Sydney and it was 42°C, stupidly hot.
2bob came about like all great ideas, sitting on the couch with your mates, drinking beer and watching the telly. Watching the Long Way Round actually and I firmly lay the blame for this at Charley and Ewan’s feet. We were obsessed with the show and would get together every Saturday evening to sit on the couch, drink beer and talk incessantly about how brilliant it would be to ride around Australia to the point where Fi, my wife said, “if you think it would be so good, why don’t you do it?”
My reply was simple, “cos I don’t have a bike and I don’t have a license.”
To which she said, “then go and buy a bike and get a license.”
Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I did just that and here I am, preparing to do the first half of the trip of a lifetime.
The initial plan was to go all the way around Australia, but given family commitments (Fi said she was happy for me to go for 10–11 weeks as long as I was happy to use my testicles as nose plugs), the trip was shortened to 5 weeks and the eastern half of Australia. This is still a long time to be away from my family and I am very, very grateful for the opportunity.
This trip is a mere 12,000km from Canberra, up the east coast to the tip of Cape York, around the bottom of the Gulf of Carpentaria (arduous riding and wildlife that will eat you), down to Mt Isa across to Tennant Creek then down the middle to Alice Springs, Kings Canyon, Uluru, Oodnadatta, William Creek, Woomera, Adelaide then around the bottom to Robe, Apollo Bay, Phillip Island, Wilsons Promontory then home.
There is some pretty solid riding in amongst that but given the incredible amount of experience I have managed to amass in my 15 months of commuting to work, I am quietly confident that by the time we get back, I will be extremely skilled in picking up my bike.
