Day: 157km
Ride time: 7hours 17minutes
A long day to say the least. It was a real test of perseverance. In pure heat having to repair my bike in the morning and replace a flat along the highway. Road trains driving by, blowing all my bits and pieces away.
I woke up again to a beautiful sunrise. I was fortunate that I could fill up my water bottles from some of the fellow travellers. I was also very surprised to see two young French girls among the few grey nomads camping there. I had brekky with the girls and retouched on some social skills that may have lacked off in the past week. It's often something I try to keep mind of, being social at any opportunity possible. Riding long hours on the bike and sleeping solo in the bush can lead to an adaption of being complacent with solitariness. I thought this morning was perfect- not only company but two nice looking French girls to go with it!
As mentioned the ride was very long hot and hard. The first half was fairly windy, with the latter half of the day providing a little more ease from the wind.
Before I left I had to fix the broken rack from yesterday. I had breakfast then was quick to take off. I spent too much time talking with the girls and fixing my bike then I would've liked to, as the morning was already scorching hot. I was also desperate to use the toilet. I had 30km to the roadhouse and figured this would take roughly an hour and a half. I held on and thought I'd make good use of the next roadhouse. When pulling in I went straight inside and asked the lady if it was ok for me to use the toilet. She looked at me and said no, "Only customers". I replied "So this means I can only use it after buying something?" her response "That's what a customer is". I was well aware what a customer was and wasn't to impressed with the smug response. I had assumed rationality would prevail and the one in 50,000 cyclist that passes through the outback would be allowed to use the toilet before having to hunt around for an item to purchase. I asked what the cheapest item was and realised a bottle of water at $5 meant I wouldn't be a future customer. The lady sat there looking at me like I was some type of employee, waiting for me to suck up her backside in order for me to use the toilet. I had no patience at this moment and walked outside to find a spot on the side of the roadhouse. I will spare the detail but to say the least this was a massive relief. Dried foods, lots of cycling and most probably a lack of many minerals makes for the stomach to excrete fluidly type non-solids, really not a pretty sight..
By the time I finished, this big bustling bogan type of bloke came out walking around in circles. I was walking back to my bike and by the time he did his tenth circle he must of realised where I was. He asked "Where are you going??" I responded "To my bike!" He must of realised what I had done and started to get very aggressive. He said "Ya got three minutes to get off my bloody property!! Or I'll release the dogs on to ya!!!". I said no worries, but I find your customer skills appalling and shocking that you won't let a person who has cycled in 40odd degrees and thousands of km's to get here to just use the toilet for a few minutes. He mumbled something, in between burping, then walked off. I left pretty soon after that!
Around 80km later I had a flat tyre. I didn't have a great deal of water on me as I was confident I could get to Canarvon without loading up. At $5 a litre, and the impression I made at the roadhouse, I didn't have much of an option anyway. This was a real morale loss, having to stop my momentum at 22km (which was extremely annoying), taking off my bags (luckily front rack), having to balance the bike at the same time, go through my bag to get the tube, tools and so on and then having to cop the direct heat off the sun whilst knowing I only had just over a litre of water left for a further 80km. This moment was hard. After pumping up the tyre with my small hand pump I jumped back on the bike and pushed ahead.
It was a great relief to pull in to Canarvon. The first thing I did was go to the super market, where I bought a homebrand two litre tub of ice cream, a litre of milk and a banana. I sat outside on the ground scooping the icecream into my bottle and making some type of thick shake. The ice cream was melting pretty quickly, and the taste of this stuff was actually very far from icecream. I realised here there's a good reason why I previously didn't buy homebrand ice creams.
Later on I felt very bloated but just wanted to sleep. I sat at the front of the small shop arcade area whilst waiting for my phone to charge in the takeaway shop. I was joined by a few local Aboriginals. People were walking by and staring at all three of us. This was a very random situation yet I actually felt very at ease.
The takeaway shop closed up so I had to think quick where I would sleep. I had a little bit of battery on my phone, which was enough to search a caravan park online. I figure that I'll probably stay here two nights to give my body a chance to recover, and for some time to reload before I shoot off again. I had to bite the bullet and accept the $20 entry into the caravan park.
I've ridden 5km to get here but now have everything set up. It seems like a good vibe here, so I'm looking forward to a day off tomorrow!
No comments:
Post a Comment