The plan was to make it to Ceduna today but I ran out of
daylight, mainly due to:
·
Not factoring in that a place 1000km east gets darker earlier (not even
accounting for the different time zone)
·
Of the 9 hours riding, it rained on me for 7 and
I had enough of it!
So, I booked into a cell with a peculiar smell in the Penong
Hotel.
As predicted, today’s ride was duller than yesterday’s. I
expect there were a few spectacular views along the way but I couldn’t see them
the weather was so bad L.
It was OK for the first hour after leaving Balladonia but then it closed in and
either rained or drizzled for hours after that. At least it was dry for the 90
Mile Straight!
 |
| Saw this and thought of Humph! |
I stopped for fuel at Border Village then rode inside a
cloud for half an hour, visibility between 50m & 200m in places – unreal.
Then emerged from the cloud to a clear sky and a spectacular view of the Southern
Ocean. Didn’t take long to find more rain though.
Lots of long straight stretches of single carriageway road
with road trains & camper trailers. Hard to see anything when trying to
overtake the road trains as they throw up so much water from the road.
Given that this was over 900km of road starting at the edge
of nowhere, through the middle of nowhere to the other side of nowhere, there
were some unexpected sights:
- What’s left of the truck that burned out & closed the road on Monday
- A guy jogging along pushing a cart (a glimpse of his vest showed he was fundraising for a charity)
- A motorcycle & sidecar combination (why do I always think Wallace & Grommit?)
- A Bushwalker
- 5 people on push bikes
- 2 Can-Ams (trikes with 2 wheels at the front and one at the rear) towing trailers, I just don’t see the point
A couple of other surprises along the way:
- Fuel at $2.18 a litre
- $4 for an instant coffee that you have to make yourself - makes a Perth weak skinny decaf latte (aka an LvR) look like good value
Bike stuff
When you’ve ridden through rain for 7 hours and still got
dry feet and dry balls, your gear is doing its job I’d say. In fact, all of me
was dry, so thumbs up to:
- Sidi Adventure Gore-Tex boots
- RST Adventure 2 Pants
- Wicked Gear Textile Jacket: bought on sale at $120, dry as a bone – absolute bargain
- Wicked Gear Hippora Gloves
The best bit of kit I used for the last two days was a CrampBuster.
A low-tech piece of plastic that fits around the throttle grip and allows you
to use the heel of your hand to lever the throttle around – means you don’t
need to keep a constant grip on the throttle for hours on end. Not used one
before but the best $9 I’ve added to the bike.
 |
| CrampBuster |
This is all beginning to sound eerily familiar; continuous rain? Hotels with unpleasant aromas? 90 mile straight though.......zzzzzzz
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