Day 29 – Riding to Croydon (QLD)

It seems there are many Croydons in Australia; this is the one in Queensland, a bit more remote and smaller. Started off with a myriad of bats flying over Georgetown – pretty crazy! – and gas guns being shot to scare them off, which Spike did not like one bit.

I was trying to get away early but it ended up being already sunrise. Quite a golden sky though. The sun comes up pretty quickly as we are still some way north. The mornings are cool, so I am using as much riding time then as I can. I am going to try to leave much earlier as the hotter weather is upon us, but I like the early mornings better anyway as the thoughts are fresh and I have all day to clear them, even the shitty ones. Especially the shitty ones.

The route was flattish, though it had too many false flats for my taste, so it was big ring, but pushing through them, which made me rather tired. The last 30km I had to invent all sorts of tricks to keep the power going as I was getting hotter and almost ran out of water. Probably I will be taking the hydration vest tomorrow.

After a bit of a high yesterday, again I did not recover as I should have, so already after 1.5h I started to drift a bit. I was listening to music to distract myself, but I realised I had better keep my wits switched on as road trains were passing by, while on a single strip of bitumen road, and I had to hop into the gravel shoulders a few times. I have noticed that my tyres have mini cuts so I expect to have to change them quite soon. At one stage, a road train was stopped on the left shoulder (mine) and started to move towards me (yikes!), so I crossed the road to ride on the right-hand side until it was gone. A bit of an experience!

One last ride for this block tomorrow, then a rest day. It’s been a bigger week this one. We are planning to go all the way south into Albany after Perth, so possibly, even if I have clocked over 3,000 km, I still have 12,000 km in front of me, if not more [insert expletive here].