Day 6 - Uralla to Tamworth

Today’s post comes courtesy of Kirby from Team Shirby, as last night’s karaoke was just far too big for Gary to be with it enough (after probably less than 4 hours sleep, but more than 4 song and dance numbers) to write a coherent post for you all.

We are coming to you straight from a canola field just outside Tamworth, where our yellow shirts enabled us to really blend in with the environment for a change. Many weary faces today after a massive night last night on the karaoke at the Courthouse Hotel, featuring tunes such as Sweet Caroline, Eagle Rock,  Ice Ice Baby and 500 miles (with lyrics changed to suit the occasion, “I will ride 1000ks, and I will ride 1000 more…”) It’s always an amazing night, where you just get some wonderful surprises, like Michael from Mingara One singing Delilah, which I had never heard before, but now know that Tom Jones was quite aggressive with all that threatening his girlfriend with a knife and stuff.  Maybe women throw their underwear at him to buy more time to escape.

          Photo: Donna, Sharkie, Kirby, Brad, Louise and Thelma belting out Eagle Rock.

     Photo: Vanilla Ice move over. King is in the house!

     Photo: Catherine and Gary enjoying the delicious food provided by the Tamworth Lioness Group.

We visited three schools yesterday, all with their own special way for us to remember them. The first had a mufti day which put the selections in Team Shirby’s dress up box to shame, the second had this wicked synchronized clap for special occasions, and the third really took a liking to our friend Yogi Keith and received a very special performance from our very own Beiber. Safe to say, their sick bay would have been full of kids coming down with Beiber fever after that!

As always at the hotels in the evenings, we get to share the Camp Quality story with locals. Last night, a couple of Canadian tourists upon working out what we were all doing there told us they were really “inspirated” by the challenge the riders were undertaking. That the inspirated-ness continued through to the presentation of the special jerseys. King of the Mountain went to Elise last night, who on Day 1 came down with a cold, has a knee injury and is still riding on. The Keith Lawrence Most Supportive jersey had a few nominations, like always, but last night went to Nathan, who has just been a solid and consistent support to the other riders. The Joker was a tough one to pick last night, it was so close to being Brendan again, as he cheered in the glory of the win when he beat a little girl at handball who had a broken arm (!), but once Sharkie reviewed his GoPro footage for the day, it had to go to Craigles, who filmed himself riding for about 10 minutes with the lens pointed at his crotch! Needless to say, this will not be making the final film.

These amazing riders continue to push through the pain, the blisters, the hard-core massages from Teena and Kathy and the late nights of fun to get back on the bike each morning at 7am and continue on to the next stop. It really is amazing work they are doing for the CQ kids and their families.

Please continue to leave your messages of support. You will not believe the fuel that they have been giving the riders to keep on keeping on.

     Photo: Renee, the pocket rocket, helping Brendan yesterday. What a champ!

PS. Hi Kym! We love hearing from you each day. Richie loves it too. We are all looking forward to meeting you!


     Photo: Richie charging up the hill yesterday. So many reasons to be proud of him, Kym.

Side note:  List of Team Shirby’s regrets to date.

• Singing Eminem’s The Real Slim Shady – we didn’t really think through the rapping parts, nor did we remember how quickly that bouncing karaoke ball moves through the words!
•  Running through the canola field – the excitement quickly moved to concern, when Kirby remembered she gets chronic hay fever. 
• We may regret, many months in the future, showing our rears to the riders on Day 5, but for now, we are still giggling about it.