Total: speedometer busted to heat - will revise
This morning I woke up feeling great. Johnno dropped me off in the city and we said our final goodbyes. He is really a great guy. I know I'll be seeing him again and probably quite soon as I've left a bag of goods at his place till I finish my trip.
In the morning I caught up with the Japanese girl again. We had a smoothie in the city and had spoke about a few different things. She is a very kind person. It made me realise how lucky I am to have met so many great people on this trip. As I left she gave me a present. I was stunned as I really didn't expect it. It reminded me of the time i spent with my Japanese friend in Tasmania. She did not want me to open it until I left so I put it away in my bag. I'm thinking I'll open it when I get to the Nullabor. This will help if I start to feel alone but also give me something to look forward to.
The ride today was fairly hard. I put a new saddle on the bike and it took me a while to get used to. It feels more comfortable at first, as it has more padding, yet my bums still trying to adapt over longer distance. When I first left this morning I became very frustrated as a few things were playing up on my bike, namely my front wheel mud guard. Eventually I got it all sorted, despite trouble from the same metal clip a week or two ago. This is nothing to worry about at the moment, and the ride into Pt Wakefield was good.
When I pulled into town I asked around for free camping. The people I saw around town looked a little rugged so I wasn't keen on setting the tent up just anywhere. I managed to find a caravan park for $18, being affordable but enough to annoy me.
Straight after organising my tent site I asked a few locals if there was a grocer in town. The locals being either dumb as anything or shocked to see an outsider couldn't manage to figure out if the town had a grocer. The best suggestion was a cafe and these people were actually locals. Once arriving to the cafe I spoke to a local who explained there is a general store, however I just missed it by a few minutes...literally two minutes. I found out the location of the grocer as I then went looking for any fresh goods through their dumpy bins. After not having any luck I went back into the cafe. I asked the ladies in the cafe if they had any day old food they would sell to me for less. They said they only had bread, yet I was after something more filling as it is my dinner meal. I got my self a slurpee as I contemplated going back to the tent site to set up my cooker and have some lentils for dinner. As I was sitting there all of the sudden the ladies came up to me and offered some pasties and pies and also gave me four wraps they were going to throw out. Most of the food they offered me was full of meat, beef and ham (the two I don't eat and even through any exception). The main thing I like to do in this situation is show my desire for non-meat products as the best outcome for me is more places to stock vegetarian foods. Coming predominately from an environmental perspective I like the idea I can help influence business through more consumer demand. Being in this situation I was very hungry and definitely didn't want to show any ingratitude. I took the lot and ate the vegetarian pasty. All the other wraps I took back to my camp and picked out the meats. As I have not eaten these meats for sometime I am somewhat disgusted by the thought of eating it.
After my feed I've now jumped into bed and am ready for a big days riding tomorrow.
Good Job Jamie, keep it up :)
ReplyDeleteFrom SWS Training team
Jodie, Melinda Veronica and Adam