Wildside Tasmania looking back

Reflecting back on this race the pure diversity of terrain we rode stands out.  From mountain to beach and everything in between, each stage was distinctly different.  Seeing the animals, vegetation, topography and people (and lack thereof) here is burned into my memory, what a beautiful place this is.  From Cradle Mountain to Hell's Gates where the prisoners came in, it was a good cross section of adventure and test.

I had failed to appreciate the name "Wildside" properly in advance.  I had passed it off as just a sensibly creative name for a race that perhaps drew on history.  In reality, this side of Tasmania just feels like the end of the earth.  There's a few mining operations but people work shifts and live elsewhere, but other than that, mankind hasn't made a lot of imprint here.  Given the protected world heritage status of much of it, won't anytime going forward too.  Australians are no strangers to remoteness and harsh climates (ie. the outback), and with that context still call this place the wildside.  It's heavenly, and even though they're a very different size, the animals and setting reminded me more than once of "where the wild things are".  Between the birds that sound like sheep and my new little friend the devil that I got to pet and all of the others, I sure hope they survive, whether it takes advanced science or modifications to human behavoiur to help.  Who needs worlds like in Avatar when we have them right here.

The other takeway that formed this week is that Australia is like a giant frat house.  I tried not to jump to opine right away, but I didn't see much evidence to the contrary.  Our race kits came with beer cozies that were very very well used in the field.  The announcer/organizers/volunteers had nicknames like Boag and Wombat and sipped away on their "ales" all day, meanwhile dispensing banter amongst their semi organizedness.  It's not like anything was unorganized, it's just the approach to organization is different.  "Hey Wombat, is there is a garbage around?" "Matey that's a good idea-r, but I don't have a bin.  Maybe take your rubbish over by those caravans (RV's) and just make it look like theirs, you know?  I'd say pick one with kids, that'll pass it off well."  Right. 

Jumping into water is really popular.  Anywhere there's a bridge, there's guys jumping in.  Even better when the town strip is in sight of the pier.  5 guys made a human pyramid to help one climb up to the top of a big pier post - he saluted at the top and all the patio goers cheered.  He then dropped his trunks, spun them around, threw them on the pier, followed it with one more salute, then did a big swan dive off, of course to more cheers.  When the little girl coloring with crayons at a table beside us looked up to see what all the commotion was about, her mom just pointed over and said "the blokes over there are just giving it some fun without their swimming trunks", simple as that, she laughed and went back to coloring an elephant.

It seems really popular to chuck stuff around rugby/Australian rules football style, especially if it's heavy, you can throw it hard, and the intended recipient is only half paying attention so you can get them in the gut really well.  One of the stage draw prizes was a couple of kilos of fresh crayfish wrapped in paper.  Perfect chucking material.

I may be in the minority here, but I think the most death defying part of the riding was these left hand drive traffic circles, man am I glad there's no traffic.  Still haven't seen a stop sign or traffic light!