Jimmie's knee was giving him serious problems so when we got to Seymour on day 6 he investigated options for leaving the ride early. As Herny & I weren't enjoying the GVBR crowds all that much we decided to join him.

It seems after the thunderstorms of day 6 we weren't the only ones looking to bail. On Thursday (day 6) arvo a couple of folks were already on the platform at Seymour station waiting for the next train. Friday morning there would've been about another 20 waiting for the 2pm train which had a luggage van.

It didn't seem likely that we'd all be able to get to Melbourne by train and as we'd already booked our XPT from Melbourne to Sydney departing 8pm that evening we needed another option.

We contemplated catching a train to Melbourne, hiring a van and driving back to Seymour to pick up the bikes. Its only 100km.

Then the idea of using a maxi cab came up. Run down to the cab rank, chat to a waiting cabbie and he reckoned we could easily get 5 people + bikes + luggage into a single maxi cab, and it'd cost about $280 to Melbourne. Do-able!

We ended up sqeueezing in 6 riders, with bikes and luggage, and only had to take the front wheel off one of the bikes. Pretty epic packing.

I didn't catch his name but big thanks to the waiting cabbie who spent about 20 minutes helping us pack everything into the maxi cab even though it wasn't his cab.

Ended up costing $50 pp which is reasonable considering the alternatives.

My 7 year old finally decided she was ready to give riding her bike without training wheels a try. So, I took her out to the intramural fields on campus and within 5 minutes she was zooming right along! She still needs to practice starting, stopping and turning before she'll be ready for the streets, but it was an awesome first effort. She's so proud (and so am I)!

I got plenty of the obligatory freeze-frame fast shutter speed shots out in the bright sun, but I really wanted something that captured the sense of motion. This shot was taken from the hip at ISO 100, f/29 and 1/20 second while running full speed along side her. I only managed to get off a half dozen shots or so and this was the best one. Maybe not technically "prefect" but I think it works pretty well :D