Or the third Climb That Shall Not Be Mentioned of the ride, come to think of it....
On a bike, the wind is either your friend or your enemy. There's no middle ground. No-one is apathetic about the wind on a bike. In a car, unless it is really howling, you don't teally notice.
We blasted out of Jamieson after an hour and a half lunch (tick, tick, tick) on rolling terrain heading north. Once we had cleared the rollers and the aforementioned Climb, we were flying along at 40km/h. Traffic was significantly heavier but we hardly even noticed - pretty much every driver was well behaved.
Then we turned towards Buller as we approached Mansfield. The wind was no longer our friend. In fact, it was now a nasty crosswind. You'd think a headwind would be the worst for a cyclist and, on your own, that's probably true. In a group you can work together against the invisible enemy but with a crosswind, there is no where to hide on a public road. It was a slog towards Buller. Our speed had gone from 40km/h to a little over 20km/h. The clock was still ticking. Tick. Tick. Tick. On the Bendigo 600, the number that obsessed me was kilometres. On day 2, it was time. with over 400km in the legs, it had suddenly become hard.
Just outside Merrijig, Joel took off at a furious pace. There was a pub in Merrijig and we had planned to re-enact the coke and chips strategy. Had Joel rang ahead and found out that they only had one coke left or did he just need to find a friendly toilet for a sit down? Of course, Joel being Joel, he had raced ahead to order and buy the rest of us the emergency supplies. By the time we rolled in, he had laid out the revival kit for us!