Day Eight: 16km to Bundaberg.

Evan was up before me! Wow! Had rice ready from last night so getting up was quick and easy. Sat round watching people feel cold for a bit then took off. It's only 16km to town so I would like to get there around 9am and get the most out of shopping hours. That's easy enough, I was there by 8:30 with only the minor challenge of a bridge into town that has a "bikes use footpath" sign in a dumb position, from where it's very hard to actually get the bike up the curb and onto the footpath. So I head for the council offices to explain the problem and talk to a nice transport dude called Tim who's very helpful and shows me his multi-modal transport plan for the city. It's all very exciting and he seems likely to change the bridge approaches! Cool!

Then I start looking fort a bike shop and end up at some expensive joint in the main street, but they have Hookworms so I can change out my left rear tyre that's full of little bits of glass and small cuts from previous bits of glass being removed. There's still a fair bit of wear left in it, so I'll keep it as a spare front tyre.

I do free Internet at the library, but their machines are locked down to only run FireFox and physically hidden, plus I can't bypass the popup blocker so work web mail is inaccessible (it's one of those joyous things that emulates Outlook really effectively, but only if you have IE with security at its lowest setting). Talk to Martin at work and discover that the release I was working on before I left has still not shipped. So much for that panic. Phuong emails me to say that having been unfaithful already she's now thinking more about polyamoury (her version is more like an open relationship, I only find out things after the fact), so I spend some time crying in a local park instead of doing the public meeting.

When group arrive I find that Evan has lost his cellphone, which is why he wasn't answering it. The rest of the group hang out with a "Make Poverty History" evangelism crew who have two busloads of enthusiastic young people winding up the centre of town. I spend that time talking with Phuong then some of the group trying to get myself back together. About 2-ish we start leaving for the good bike shop out on the east side of town.

The bike shop is indeed good, it's another one of those "rent is cheap" huge places with some decent stuff for sale. Robyn gets a front rack and panniers, the rack is a Bob Yeuh that kinda works with her suspension forks but doesn't really looks good for carrying weight. Neither does her rear rack, really, but this way she can definitely carry more than before. Since she's one of the stronger cyclists this is good! Evan and me a get a box of some NZ-made energy bar things at a reasonable price (about $5.40 each), and will be on selling them to the rest of the crew as well as stocking up ourselves. I also picked up some more Eneloops for about $5 each, so will be trading some of those for bars.

Panic sets in because we're scheduled to be at the Landcare centre at 4pm, so Ev and Cassie take off and are possibly there more or less on time. Robyn and me wait for her rack to be installed then hit a vet for doggy bags (strong, waterproof plastic bags).

At Landcare we eventually got a photog from the local rag who took a pile of shots and hopefully we'll get a reasonable article. You just never know. Apparently there was TV at the Poverty thing (they have a great media setup) and we got filmed as part of that. But the actually coverage was a pan across cycles and no mention, so not really a win for the team.