Journal: |
I got up at 3am and was on the road by 3:45am. Despite the
slack day yesterday and eight hours sleep my motivation was still
low and I almost dreaded wheeling the bike out of the motel door to
begin riding. I guess it’s a combination of fatigue, missed
objectives and the immensity of the task ahead. I’m not
daunted by the distances I have to ride, but dislike doing it when
I’m not getting enough sleep. On some nights, particularly
when roadside camping, I feel like I have barely stopped riding from
the day before when I have to start riding again. One of my
running heroes in the 1970s was Dave Bedford, the great and
ground-breaking English distance runner. He experimented with
running vast distances in training and also, at one point, with
running as many as five times a day. When asked what this was
like, he said that sometimes, as he completed one training run, he
met himself leaving for the next one. That’s how I feel some
days. Anyway, I feel the need to regroup and reassess and have
decided to switch to the mode I used in last year’s attempt where I
endeavoured not to camp and was prepared to have some very long
days, and some quite short days, depending on where the towns are.
When camping, I tend to ride late and don’t sleep as well. At
present, I am two days behind a 50 day schedule. I’m not going
to bother trying to make up any time in the short-term.
Instead, I’ll stick to the daily targets as best I can and hope no
bad days (headwinds or bike or body trouble) intervene to put me
further behind schedule. That’s the plan, anyway….we’ll see
what happens. Once I got riding today, it wasn’t too bad.
The first three hours were in darkness, beneath a brilliantly
starlit sky along a mostly flat road with barely any traffic.
I listened to the Test Cricket on my radio and around 6am thought of
my friends back at Terrigal setting out on the monthly 10km running
time trial. It was cold in the shallow valleys but I resisted
the temptation to put on more clothes. There was a slight
following breeze which gradually strengthened as the sun rose.
The countryside was most savannah lightly-timbered with scraggly
trees and mostly covered with long brown grass. Cattle could
be seen here and there and I disturbed a number of eagles feeding on
kangaroo road kill as I whizzed along making good time.
After about 100km I stopped in a half-completed rest area and
enjoyed some sandwiches for breakfast while warming myself in the
emerging sunlight. I guy driving in the other direction
stopped and came over for a chat. He was on his way from
Darwin to Brisbane but was hoping to pick up some work in Mount Isa.
He told me that there was a Camp Draft (like a rodeo) on in
Camooweal, my target for the day, and that the small town was very
busy, making it unlikely I would find any accommodation. Oh
well, maybe I would be roadside camping after all, since the next
habitation was 272km further on. I continued on to
Camooweal, arriving at 12:30pm and tried the first place advertising
cabins, but they were booked out. However, at the second
roadhouse, they had one basic cabin left and I took it. First
I had a big brekky and then had a shower and did my chores.
The little town is certainly busy with the Camp Draft. On the
way in I could see a large gathering of trucks, horse trailers and
caravans off to the left, along with penned cattle and some
horsemen, and the wafting sounds of a loudspeaker system. In
town, which is just a main street with two roadhouses, a butcher’s
and a pub, there was quite a lot of noise emanating from the pub and
various stockmen, many of them aboriginal, lounging around town in
the required dress of boots, jeans, big buckles and beaten up hats.
There were also a number of young kids, some similarly dressed,
patronizing the roadhouses, presumably on a rare trip into town.
I imagine it will be quite noisy here tonight. I plan to go
to bed very early tonight and leave before 2am for the 272km ride to
Barkly Homestead roadhouse, and then make a similarly early start
the next day for the very long and challenging haul (374km) to Cape
Crawford across the Barkly Tablelands along a minor road with no
facilities whatsoever.
|