Dave Segal was visiting the lab for three weeks from UC Davis recently, and we decided that the best way for him to get a real taste of the Australian bush was to take him on a rogaine! He bravely signed up for a 12-h event with Joel a couple of hours north of Sydney in the Watagan State Forest area. Dave said he hadn’t been doing that much exercise lately, but we remembered that he *had* walked solo across the USA as an undergrad, so there must have been some walking genes in there… Jacqui was doing the 6-h event at the same time with Gareth Denyer, another academic from the School.

Turned out to be a beautiful day for an outing and Joel and Dave had a good event overall – finding all the checkpoints they set out for (always the sign of a good rogaine!) and even nabbing a few more near the end when they made up some time. Dave slowed a couple of times in the middle of the event with a bit of nausea, but it turned out that all he needed was an enormous burp! Then, he was off like a prawn in the sun again and seemed like he could easily have hammered out another 12 h – shame we didn’t have a 24-h event on! Because it was a 12-h event, he even got a taste of the bush at night, which is something most visitors don’t get. Unfortunately, we didn’t get too many photos, but there you go…

By all accounts, he had a good time, so we will see if he comes back for another one!