Nullarbor Total: 1220km
Days: 11 (9 cycled)
Time cycled: 54.04 hours
Avg per day: 6 hours (roughly)
Avg Km's per day: 135 (111 overall)
Today felt like torture. I was so sore and just wanted to get to a town with a few shops. I was craving fruit during the whole ride today. It was another strong head wind and very hot. Today was perhaps the first time, other then the 90mile straight road, where I found the riding unbearable. It was a real challenge and I was counting down the km's.
I should note some of the regular routines that I go through when camping and riding. When I wake up the first thing I do is roll my sleeping mat up. This can be quite annoying as it's an air mattress and keeps trying to re-inflate as I roll it. Secondly I hop out and take off the second layer of the tent and lay it in an area with some sun to dry out some of the moisture collected overnight. Thirdly I take my sleeping bag and lay it over my tent to air out while I have my breakfast. Following breakfast I put my sleeping bag in its carrier bag, then fold up my tent up. I then put all this back into another bag, along with my water carrier . I pack the rest of my stuff into my pannier bags, then tie it down with the occy strap.
As I take off to ride I usually like to have some snacks to eat for the first 10-20km. After this I usually don't eat until 100 odd km. I find that for some reason I crave food at the start of each ride and I also feel really sluggish. At the end of a days riding I no longer crave snacks, or at least in the same way as in the morning, yet I have a lot of power to ride.
When I ride I listen to music, sometimes albums, sometimes random shuffle and other times no music. If I'm in the mindset I try to listen to a podcast that has some relation to environmental issues or indigenous culture. I get pleasure from seeing the small signs on the side of the road that indicate 10km has been passed. In the same regard I also get annoyed when I realise I'm 10km shorter then thought. This then makes the next 10km very hard. These signs have been a common pastime for me to lookout for throughout my trip, in particular through S.A as they indicate every 5km passed.
As you can see the days become very repetitive and in the days of extreme physical exertion it becomes somewhat unbearable.
When I was at the end of the ride today I was so happy. About 5km before Norseman they had signs saying "Roadhouse", "IGA", "Cafe". It felt like I was finishing the Tour de France and the signs were saying, "keep going", "nearly there" or so on. I was so happy to have finished the Nullabor. It was boiling hot and I felt like just laying on the ground. Riding through a street of houses on my way to the Main Street all I was looking for was a fruit tree. I was ideally looking for a fig tree as I know it's season and was hoping someone would have one that's easy to reach. I could easily of eaten ten or so fresh figs. Unfortunately the only fruit tree I could see was a few lemon trees. Pulling into a cafe I was lucky as today's special was $3.95 banana smoothies. I ordered two as I knew I'd be having more then one. After these I went to the IGA and bought a bag of mixed nuts and ate them whilst I sat down on the street. A few guys were joking around saying to each other "watch out for that dead body on the street!!".
I loaded up on a few veggies and went to the local caravan park. This was the first time I've eaten fresh veggies for a few weeks. The caravan park was very expensive, at $29 a night. I investigated every other option in town but any other room was double the price. I was too buggered to go any further so this was the only option. The people inside the park have been really nice, offering food and so on. I've met a really nice German couple and also a family of French people, with a young South African guy dating the daughter. In the end I'm glad to have pulled in, but will be moving on tomorrow as I'm not keen on paying all this money today in a small town with no beach or lake to relax with.
Next stop will be in direction of Esperance.
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