Day 3 - mainly spent in my pants!

Hoorah - real electronic communication from Gaz today, so you're getting his own words for his eventful day today - enjoy:

After a pretty hard day 2 (day 1 of full riding) through the rain - which means deep poo to ride through, on base layer of glass like hard clay, today has been a mixed day.

I am riding in the orange team, team 3 (apparently in ability) out of 6, so opted for the 'easy then hard' route, letting the suicidal go 'hard + hard' and the sensible go 'easy + easy'.

It really Peed down in the night, so it seemed I'd made the right decision....after 2km one of the top team (marigolds) lost it on the clay-glass, causing a small pile-up, but mainly bruised egos rather than limbs.

Just stopping was tricky - I could barely keep upright and pulling away sent out rears snaking around (note from Hilary - sorry I've tried to tidy up Gaz's speed typing but I'm really not entirely sure what he's trying to say here - I guess he was sliding around a lot!?).

The Hard+Hard group were supposed to meet us at 1pm, after 3hrs, we heard they had only done 8km.....and then had a river to cross down the valley from where were waiting....so some of us were starting to fry now, in the sun, and decided we'd do what we could to help. An hour later 7 or 8 of us were in only our under crackers and motocross boots, hoyking bikes out and up the bank. Three of us ended up there all day lifting and riding bikes up to the road, as the walking wounded (one snapped knee tendon and a few on drips for dehydration) came out on foot (or not).

A great day for bonding - just as well as two others and I are on the floor tonight, so now enjoying a few bottles of 'Castle' to help the snoring (my volume that is).
Its hard, enjoyable after you've done it and the waves and cheers we get from all the kids lining the dust/quagmire roads are worth every drop of sweat and bruises!
Cheers Gaz