In the morning I carried out maintenance on my bike including - tyre removal, switch back tyre to front and place new tyre on rear (as the rear is more weight bearing wearing out quicker), degreased chain and cassettes, lubricated all, clean bike with cloth, tightened screws and adjusted breaks to prevent rubbing on the rims. I really love looking at a cleaner bike, especially the comfort it gives me to have a more sturdy tyre and grit free chain. My chain has been skipping a little lately and I'm well aware that I'm at least 3000 km over the expected time for replacement.
My friend also took me out into the town today. He explained a little bit about the history to me, going over each of the mines in the district an which companies run them. He works in the salt plant, which I had actually ridden past yesterday. He took me to the shipping yard where we looked at a few of the freights shipping all the resources overseas (predominately China). It was weird seeing the ships right in front of me and knowing the majority of the people around me have been involved one way or another for its loading on to the ships. It made something that I had only previously read about and built ideas of in my head, real and tangible. This was a strange feeling, to think that this industry and these operations in front of me is the focus of so much conjecture and discussion both politically and environmentally all over the country.
I was really tired throughout the day but my friend was keen to show me around. He has four days off so I figure he enjoys getting out and around the town. He informed me that a lot of the people here are fly in fly out, and many others are just in for work on temporary contracts. It must be hard to build a tight community with new neighbours all the time.
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