START - FINISH: Bowral - Moss Vale

DISTANCE: 7.12 miles

ELEVATION GAIN: 291 feet

RIDING TIME: 0:57:23

TIME AWAKE SPENT IN PURSUIT OF THE TRIP, ROUGHLY: 6:00:00

POINTS OF INTEREST/OBJECTIVES: Take a train from Bowral to Yass Junction and continue our ride.

CUE SHEET: KML File Download

WEATHER: Cloudy in the morning, but it got really pleasant by the afternoon, but then it got misty. Moss Vale is a sensible name.

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In Australia they speak English. Sure it has its accent and colloquialisms but on paper it’s English. Kinda like how rock bands from all over the world, when singing in English, sound all sound like they’re from Fresno, CA.¹¹Is this yet another flagrant example of our ethnocentrism? So what if it is? My point is that we should’ve been able to figure out the train schedule. It’s a train schedule, not advanced Game Theory, at least that’s what we thought. But we couldn’t, and in true blue do-or-die, all-or-nothing, give-it-one-hundred-and-ten-percent style we went whole hog and missed not one but two trains. Still, we were able to destroy some juniors in a bout of velodrome racing, and almost got into a fight with a horde of feral sheilas.

• 9:00am: Up and ready to catch the 10:00am train leaving Bowral for Yass Junction.
• 10:00am: Discover that the 10:00am train doesn’t leave from Bowral. The station is basically a ghost town, and the ghosts whispered, “You are fools.”
• 10:15am: Discover there is a train leaving from Moss Vale for Canberra around 2pm.
• 10:20am: Figure that if we can get to Canberra we can adjust our route accordingly and get back on track.
• 10:53am: We have breakfast at the No. 325 Cafe, where they don’t serve butter with your toast. Dry as the Sahara in a sun storm.
• 11:45am: Take off towards Moss Vale.
• 11:57am: See a sign for the Bowral Velodrome.
• 11:59am: Arrive at the Bowral Velodrome and proceed to utterly destroy some young up-and-comers on the track.
• 12:45pm: Reach the Moss Vale train station.
• 12:46pm: Find out that the tickets for the train we needed to catch have just sold out. (See destroying up-and-comers at the Bowral Velodrome.)
• 12:48pm: Buy tickets for the 10:00am train to Yass Junction that leaves from Moss Vale the following morning.
• 1:26pm: Head to Bernie’s Diner to enjoy a 1950s Americana meal experience. Just what we needed after two failed attempts to get on a train.
• 1:26pm – 2:05pm: Get into a flip-off fight with a family of blonde mulleted lady badgers. Or rather, have a fight picked with us. We just looked up from our burgers and fries and there, across the street, was a pack of these critters miming intercourse in our direction. From what we can tell we didn’t do anything wrong outside of being three-quarters American and riding bikes. I guess that could constitute grounds for profane body gesticulations, but if that’s the case, frankly we’re surprised it didn’t happen much more often throughout our trip.
• 1:45pm: Lachlan wonders aloud if one of these badgers is going to grab a machete. To which Franks remarks, “A machete is basically a knife-bat.” Somehow this makes our situation a bit more unsettling.
• 2:06pm: The horde of mulleted lady badgers pack into their ute and speed off. Our group believes this was only a warning, and we push our security level to Code Orange for the remainder of our time in Moss Vale.
• 2:15pm: Find a couple of rooms in the Bong Bong Motel. Turns out the owner had a daughter who spent a year of high school studying abroad in Portland, OR, Yonder Journal’s home base. Kinda cool, but just because we had something to share didn’t mean we got any kind of discount.
• 2:35pm: The sun comes out for the first time in 48 hours.
• 2:36pm: We set our clothes out on plastic lawn chairs and miscellaneous yard ornaments to dry.
• 2:45pm: “The Cricket” is on. A test match between Australia and New Zealand. When the camera pans to the crowd it’s pretty obvious that the majority of them are heavily pissed up. Which is to be expected when the matches go on for hours and all you’re doing is sitting in the sun drinking.
• 3:51pm: The sun once again takes a vacation behind some dark and heavy clouds.
• 4:53pm: Our crew takes a stroll through the town of Moss Vale looking for dinner.
• 5:10pm: We decide on Tooses Wine Bar & Lounge, but we get spooked by the vacant-eyed waiter and the model home decor. In order to not raise any suspicion we order appetizers—remember we are still in Code Orange.
• 5:15pm: It starts to rain.
• 6:37pm: While walking in the rain back to the Bong Bong, we stop in to the Moss Vale Hotel (this is one of those hotels without hotel rooms) for a round of parmis and fries.
• 7:45pm: Turns out that Bowral is where all the action happens. Moss Vale is dead dead dead. The only sound audible in the town is the slight rasping of needle and thread as the population collectively works on a community quilt.
• 8:30pm to Z:ZZ: Nacho Libre is on. Hey, this movie is FUNNY. We know that collectively we may be tired of Jack Black, we’re with you. But Nacho Libre is so GOOD.

Communication is a KEY component to an effective and efficient investigation of a culture. In order to 1) understand what people are saying, 2) fit in, 3) keep your foot out of your mouth²²You won’t make the mistake of telling your wife you’re looking forward to sharing a coupla sluzzas with friends after dinner because you assumed a sluzza was a mixed ice drink not unlike a blended margarita., and 4) demonstrate respect via a willingness and excitement to learn, Yonder Journal collaborated with a team of Australian Linguists and Cultural Anthropologists to create an interactive glossary module of common expressions. Especially those which we’d be likely to hear and/or use in the context of a Normcore Bicycle Tour in the Australian In-and-Outback.

Click the interactive glossary entries below to hear Dingo Lingo in use.

In Australia they have a saying: Too Easy. What’s Too Easy you might ask? Well, in the land down under just about everything. It’s a universal rejoinder, acknowledgement, and affirmation. Ordering a coffee, Too Easy. Riding your scooter to the pie shop, Too Easy. Chilling against a wall, Too Easy. Everything in OZ is TOO EASY.

But what’s Too Easy all about? I’ll tell you, Too Easy is all about confidence. Australia is the land of sun and fun, of venomous critters and toothy predators, of “Neighbors” and Bondi Beach. If you don’t have confidence in this country, you’ll be eaten up and spit out.

As conscientious travelers we try our best to assimilate the accepted cultural norms of the countries we visit. In Australia that meant trying on a heightened level of confidence. But let me tell you: confidence is not without its nuances, and it’s “Too Easy” to be over confident. Take, for example, our idea of catching a train in Bowral. Too Easy we thought. We didn’t do a thorough check of our sources, we didn’t check in ahead of time, and you know what? We got stranded.

Despite this minor setback Yonder Journal has stuck with the Too Easy lifestyle because confidence is addictive, it’s a sly confidence, a subtle confidence, it’s—dare I say it—a COOL confidence. Too Easy isn’t aggro Monster Energy confidence. There’s no need to get in anyone’s face about it. This confidence is a bit FU, a bit come join the party. It’s a vibe man, je ne sais quoi. It’s just Too Easy.