Life's little epic, legendary moments

It is August 2007, we are in Melbourne for a brief holiday, we are staying with Nigel Dalton, a friend who also happens to be as nuts about cycling as me – he even has more bikes than I do!

Nigel and I decide a big ride in the mountains is in order, its Sunday morning and raining as we set off for a ride in the Dandenong Mountains behind Melbourne.

I had lived in Sydney for a couple of years so wasn’t expecting too much from an Australian ‘mountain’ ride, generally the typical Aussie cyclists’ idea of a mountain would easily resemble an average motorway flyover anywhere else in the world.

I was wrong, this ride was fantastic, 8km climbs, beautiful roads, we had a great days riding even if the weather was quite un-Australian like – rain and cold – an omen for the future perhaps?

Somehow this ride reignited our passion for cycling, it was challenging and adventurous just like ‘real’ cycling should be. One of those rides that become a milestone event that gets clearly etched into the memory, the details of the ride may get fuzzy but I can still feel the rain and smell the bush like it were yesterday. The experience moves from being an ordinary one into being a legendary one.

After 37 years of cycling I probably only have 5-6 rides catalogued in the memory like this one. Why do we value so called ‘authentic’ experiences so highly, maybe in our civilised, cool, calm collected world we look for adventure in any way we can. After all drinking coffee in chic cafes and shopping for stuff you don’t need eventually gets bloody boring.

Some weeks later we were both still banging on about the Dandenong ride, we both agreed we needed more rides like that, but where could we find ride that was challenging, a real adventure, an epic even?

The day after this conversation, I received a text from Nigel that would set some key events in motion. I would get motivated like I have not done so for 25 years, it would give me an excuse to do some solo world travel once again, it would enable me to ride an epic to end all epics, and it was also something an event that would save Nigel’s life.

The epic event we had ourselves booked in for was the 2008 Etape du Tour…