Friday 12 December 2014

Day 3 (Alice Springs to Ti Tree)

39 degrees
Total km: 181km
Ride time: 8hours 52minutes

Today was very hard. It was a reminder of the pain I was going through during the last ride I did, particularly the long hot days up the west coast. The climate feels very similar to the area of Canarvon and Karratha way, the only difference is now my body's not used to it. Today we also passed the Tropic of Capricorn, something I've passed for a second time now. I think I passed the Tropic of Capricorn about 100km north of Canarvon if I can remember, so it would explain why the conditions are pretty similar. Landscape is also a little similar, with the red earth bearing many similarities. The flora differs a bit from the west coast with the species around here more similar to that in South Australia near Iron knob way, probably about 1500km directly south of where we are now. We also saw some big eagles and a few wild bulls. 

We pushed it pretty hard, although we started pretty slow. Our average was around 17km or so coming out of Alice Springs and ended up the ride around 35km to have an average of around 23 km for the day. We stopped after about 90km for a few minutes to fill up our water and then we kept going.

Originally we were meant to ride about 130km and we felt pretty good so we kept going to 185 or so for today. Our plans were to ride to the road house "Ti Tree", as here we could load up on water and get a descent sleep. As we got to about 10 km before Ti Tree there was a massive sign saying fresh cold magoes and "Best mango Ice Cream in Australia", I probably wouldn't of had the icecream but I would've love a sorbet smoothie or something! We decided to pull in there to check it out. We walked into the little shop and were a little devastated that there was no fresh mangoes as the season hasn't started yet. 

A few seconds later I started feeling dizzy and light headed. I sat down for a bit and then when I tried to get up it felt like I was going to vomit. Davi and I sat outside for about 20 minutes just to recover. Davi was keen to keep going to the Ti Tree road house, as I would've been too else I hadn't been feeling sick.

We were laying on the ground at the front of the little store on the farm. It was actually quite funny as a lot of Aboriginal customers were coming through and one of the lady's said "These fellas passed out! Too much grog!".

The owner of the farm saw we were buggered and offered to put us up at the farm for the night. As I started walking it felt like I was going to vomit, so I had to lay down more. I got up to have a cold shower but the best I could get was coldish/slightly warm due to the hot weather hearing the water. I felt better anyway.

After this we had dinner and got to chat to a few of the other guys staying on the farm to. They all seemed like good fellas. Tomorrow off for another 190km!

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