Motel in Mackay

Riding from Marlborough to Mackay

4:20am

3:40pm

229

1,856

12,555

0

234.4

25.48

Mild temperatures, partly cloudy, ESE breeze.

Big Brekky for breakfast.  Two pies and a large coffee milk for lunch.  Asian food bar, milkshake and rice dessert for tea.

Nearly met a truck head-on when I zoned out following the white line at the left of the road and looked up to see a truck approaching at high speed on my side of the road as he overtook another.  Missed me by about two feet.

Fabulous early hours on the road with clear starry sky, very little traffic and then a barely perceptible dawning of the day with very low thin head-high mists across the plains.

General lack of focus and mental fatigue.

I headed out at the usual time (gear still wet again when I put it on), but with no real sustenance because of the lack of available shopping the night before (I usually try to have a large coffee milk and a muesli bar or similar before hitting the road).  I enjoyed the early riding (see above), but after a few hours was getting quite hungry and hadn’t seen any signs of roadhouses or much else by the road.  The countryside was either forest or grazing land with low hills around.  I had hoped there would be a roadhouse at a major intersection but there was nothing.  I thought I might have to ride all of the way to Sarina (192km) before getting something to eat, but then I found a pleasant little roadhouse around 8:15am and enjoyed breakfast sitting outside on their verandah.
 
My schedule for the day only called for getting to Mackay (229km), but I thought I might continue on for a further 55km to a campground.  However, as the morning wore on, I felt very fatigued and not particularly focussed.  I kept pedalling but found it very tedious, and decided that Mackay with an early night would be fine.
 
The ride to Sarina was punctuated with two pleasant surprises which helped pass the time.  Firstly, I came around a corner near a place called Clearview and there was the ocean, translucent, blue and calm (inside the Great Barrier Reef here), stretching out to some low mountainous islands far offshore.  The second bit of luck was a strategically placed home-made ice-cream shop where I enjoyed a waffle cone with scoops of mango and cranberry ice-cream sitting out on their verandah…..superb.
 
I had lunch at another roadhouse and stopped for a vanilla slice in Sarina before a fast last 37km to Mackay with a nice following breeze and smooth road surface with sugar cane fields towering on either side of the road.
 
Mackay is a big city with lots of motels on the road into town, all with “No Vacancy” signs, even at 3:30pm in the afternoon.  I began to think I might have to ride the extra 55km after all, but then found a motel near the centre of town and a big shopping mall and got a room.
 
After a shower I wandered across to the mall, already feeling like an alien in the real world, especially with my nice bike tan (my white hands at the end of my now-bronzed forearms creating a nice effect!).  I bought dinner in the food court there and headed back to the motel looking forward to a very early night.  Tomorrow is scheduled to be a long day (306km) and I hope I wake up a little more motivated than today.