START - STOP: Moss Vale - Yass Junction - Tumut

DISTANCE: 78.3 mi.

ELEVATION GAIN: 4373 ft.

RIDING TIME: 7:18:29

TIME AWAKE SPENT IN PURSUIT OF THE TRIP, ROUGHLY: 11:00:00

POINTS OF INTEREST / OBJECTIVES: Get to Tumut. Ride in a field alongside kangaroos. Spend some time on the shores of a billabong talking about ute upgrades with locals. Eat a parmi.

CUE SHEET: KML File Download

WEATHER: Pleasant, trending towards too pleasant.

This morning we were fortunate enough to catch a train from Moss Vale to Yass Junction. Right place ✓ right time ✓ right train ✓. We disembarked in Yass and immediately found ourselves on quiet country roads as we snaked towards a spot on the map called Wee Jasper.¹¹It seems notable enough to note that everything was closed in Wee Jasper. Even the school. However we did discover a switch from pavement to dirt track, and from there we climbed into the company of a horde of flies, which Lachlan told us had blown in from the desert with the western winds. Clouds of little black buzzing buggers harried us up and over the hill to our final destination of Tumut where we were late to dinner and thus heavily scrutinized.
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• 9:30am: Arrive at the Moss Vale station and box our bikes for the train.
• 9:47am: Lachlan and Kyle receive a verbal warning about standing too close to the tracks.
• 9:57am: Daniel takes a photos of all the bikes stacked on top of each other, “That stack is worth like 13,000 dollars or something.” This becomes known as the Goldburn Bike Stack.
• 10:00am: ALL ABOARD!
• 10:00am to 11:15am: The woman just across the aisle talks incessantly in a foreign tongue, seemingly narrating the objects passing by outside the window like a Rain Man Bob Uecker.
• 11:16am: Disembark in Yass.
• 11:17am: Disrobe and gear up for riding in Yass. Kevin Franks still has the body of a calendar model.
• 11:17am: Turns out the rest of us have the bodies of calendar models too. Just not a calendar anyone with an appetite or hope would buy.
• 11:20am: The older female station manager cruises our scene and casually lets us know that water is available at the other end of the station.
• 11:21am: Did she wink?
• 11:45am: We start riding.
• 11:53am: We choose to believe she did, in fact, wink.
• 12:03pm: The crew stops at a Woolies on the outskirts of Yass to fuel up on Cokes, meat pies, candy bars, and water.
• 12:34pm: We’re successfully outside of Yass. The roads are nearly empty, the sky is azure and clear, and spirits are high.
• 1:30pm: Lachlan, “Yeah, like Australia’s never really flat, you’re either going up or down. But it’s not flat.”
• 1:45pm: We roll into Wee Jasper and there is a store/hut/building there with all the trappings of a really fine burger/shake/popsicle joint.
• 1:46pm: It starts to set in that maybe the Wee Jasper store/hut/building is not open for business, i.e. the windows are shuttered, the door is barred, the water is turned off, and there is are no signs of life around anywhere.
• 1:47pm: Uhhhhhhhh…
• 1:53pm: We finally agree to accept that this store may not be open.
• 1:58pm: We’ve accepted that this store is not open. That means no burgers/shakes/popsicles/water until we reach Tumut.
• 2:05pm: The two-track starts.
• 2:36pm: The road leads us through a tree plantation.
• 2:37pm: Flies. If you stop, the flies like to find the edges, you know like the edges of your eyes or nose or ears. I figure they need attention, they want you to acknowledge their existence, in fact they demand it.
• 3:36pm: Its seems we have reached the top of the climb.
• 3:54pm: Nope.
• 4:22pm: The sign gives us a choice: 31k or 27k to Tumut. We can ride pavement or we can ride gravel. We’re not savages.
• 6:22pm: Arrive at the Woolies in Tumut. Drink some Cokes. Chill on the sidewalk.
• 6:58pm: Check into our hotel.
• 7:45pm: Head to the hotel restaurant for dinner.
• 7:48pm: Find out our arrival for dinner is a lit-tall bit of a surprise.
• 7:53pm: Turns out the cook is good (the best in town the owner says) but a touch ornery.
• 8:11pm: Our food starts arriving. Not bad. Not bad at all.
• 8:53pm: As it so happens the ornery cook takes a shine to our little quartet of travelers, going so far as to prepare us a plate of mango for dessert.
• 9:12pm to Z:ZZpm: Watch James Bond’s Quantum of Solace and fade into the night.

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.