Red sky at morn...

Bush fire sunrises have been painting the skies red and orange in the mornings lately. I've never seen a red sunrise and there is something really wuite eerie about a giant red fireball in the sky. "Red sky at night, cyclists' delight. Red sky at morn, cyclists be warned..." We were joking a few nights ago about how we've had these incredible vibrant sunrises - supposed to be a bad sign for sailors, does it transfer to cyclists?

It was just a saying until 6 am the other day when we were 10 km out into our ride from Ararat to Maryborough with the second crew group and we saw a truck racing towards us, slamming on the brakes as we approached. The driver yelled out to us that there "has been an accident with your group up ahead" and that she was checking to see where the ambulance was. In disbelief, we raced on ahead as the ambulance came up behind us and a couple kms ahead we learned that a crew member had come off her bike after getting the wobbles down a hill with a trailer. She hit her head and landed on her cheek, she was unconcious for a few seconds, but came to quickly. She had cut her face pretty badly and her hands and knees were scratched up. The ambulance took her back to Ararat and the woman who had stopped in her truck took two crew members back with their bikes to the hospital to wait for updates.

The rest of us were left with a pretty shaken up group, odds and ends from the other three that didn't get taken back to Ararat and had to organize a plan. We eventually decided to keep moving on to the first checkpoint on the way to Maryborough, 25 kms from Ararat, and wait for news before heading further away. We figured that it wouldn't help having 12 other people in the hospital waiting around and causing more confusion.

Getting updates from the two people at the hospital with our injured member really helped us keep moving on our ride. Even so, the 90 km ride to Maryborough was a long one. She's doing really well (and is apparently very charming on morphine), no fractures, no lasting damage, but one hell of a lack eye and a mandatory 5 to 7 days rest, which means we probably won't see her again until the tour is done and hopefully we all meet back in Melbourne. I'm really going to miss this crew member in particular - she's been someone I've felt an especial friendship with.
It's also been amazing to see the generosity of the woman who stopped in her truck when she saw the accident. She stayed with the group and hauled people back to Ararat with her. She put those two up in her house out of town that evening and drove them back to Ararat the next morning to visit the hospital. She drove another crew member all the way to Maryborough so that he could join us for the school presentation this morning and has offered to do more driving to make sure that the other crew member still in Ararat makes it back to the group after the girl in the accident heads home. She has really been incredible and we can't thank her enough.

Outside of all that, things are going really well. We've had a super busy schedule with tons of school performances and riding every other day to a new town. We've only got a handful left: from here on to Castlemaine, then Bendigo, Kyneton, Woodend and back to Melbourne. I can't believe how far we've come! We're staying in a really cute Scout's Hall in Maryborough and a couple people managed to do some "urban gleaning" and come back with boxes full of fresh fruit and veggies that were waiting on a pallet to be thrown out by a large supermarket just next door. If I'm going to take away one thing from this tour: it's shock at how much good food we throw out. We are so wasteful! Why is all of this food being put in a dumpster? We put so much of our energy and resources into growing, raising, watering, fertilizing, harvesting and processing all this food - wrapping it up in pretty packages, trucking it across countries, shelving, tagging, organizing it and then throwing it into a bin. There's got to be a better way than this.