tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-66339101872880440162024-02-19T06:57:41.619-08:00Where the bloody hell are we?Meandering Marsupialshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12501083587914140645noreply@blogger.comBlogger60125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6633910187288044016.post-2393585601611213442011-07-30T00:37:00.000-07:002011-07-30T00:49:53.646-07:00An update, of sorts<div style="background-color: white; color: #cc0000;">By Sundance: </div><br />
Yesterday was something of a landmark, being the first anniversary of our return to Adelaide - or as we like to call it here, Radelaide. So to commemorate that, and to keep this blog active so Google doesn't decide to do anything funny with it, we thought it'd be nice to tell you a bit about what we've been up to.<br />
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As we didn't get to do the full ride out to the beach on our return to Adelaide, on October 3rd we rode our bikes (minus panniers and camping gear, thankfully!) into the train station in town, caught the train up to the hills to Belair Conservation Park, and rode into Crafers and back down into town along the bike path along the old freeway, and taking advantage of the nice weather (this time!) rode out towards Glenelg, up the coast along the beach, to the mouth of the Torrens at West Beach, along the Torrens past the city, ad back to our house. This was the way we'd wanted to complete the trip, and it felt like we finally got to close the book on that particular adventure.<br />
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But there have been plenty of other adventures. We flew over to Melbourne for the 2010 World Science Fiction Convention, I've been doing a lot of rockclimbing in the Adelaide hills. My dad and brother came over to Adelaide for family Christmas at our house, Yana and I went to Mt Arapiles in western Victoria (about halfway between Melbourne and Adelaide) with our friends Linda and Peter for some climbing around New Year's (and for which we also got to take a quick bus trip to see Yana parents for New Year's Eve itself), and spent as much time as possible enjoying the nice weather of summer. In terms of big travels, nothing much on the scale of our bike trip has happened lately, but I did head over to Europe for a work trip to a conference in Madrid, followed by visits to Nottingham, Utrecht and Golm. In the spirit of the bike trip, I did all my travel within Europe by surface transport (trains, buses, and boats). It's a nice way to see the countryside, and I look forward to riding across Europe with Yana someday on our next big bike adventure.<br />
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I guess that's all or now. All the best!Meandering Marsupialshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12501083587914140645noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6633910187288044016.post-32779733990140783992010-08-18T07:47:00.000-07:002010-08-18T07:47:22.967-07:00What better place to make your base than the arse end of the Earth?Distance in Australia: 2155.01 km<br />
Total distance: 9536.8 km<br />
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<span style="color: #cc0000;">By Sundance <span style="color: #3d85c6;">(</span></span><span style="color: #3d85c6;">with help from Yana):</span><br />
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At long last, the day has come.<br />
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Not the day when we return to Adelaide, of course That was almost three weeks ago! The day when we finally get organised and motivated enough to write up the events of our last two days on the road and post a blog entry. Yep, we've been slack. <br />
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Last time we posted a proper blog entry, we were in Murray Bridge. After spending a little time at the local library doing our blog post we rolled down to a park next to the tourist info and council offices building and made lunch, then hit the road again to press onwards to Adelaide. Our plan was to make it to Eagle-On-The-Hill, find a turf-surf, and spend our last night on the road in the hills overlooking the lights of Adelaide, before rolling downhill in the morning to the beach, and then inland along the river Torrens linear park back to our house. We'd made an announcement on facebook to our Adelaide-based friends that we'd be passing the Adelaide University footbridge around lunchtime if anyone wanted to drop by and say say hi as we rode past.<br />
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The road out of Murray Bridge has a bike route signposted along the way, which diverted us from the freeway and ran past Monarto and into Adelaide along the old freeway. It's a fairly dry pice of terrain, with vegetation that reminded us of how much Texas reminded us of South Australia - if that sentence makes sense. After a little while I found that my rear wheel seemed to be rubbing on the brakes and slowing me down, and since I tend to travel faster than Yana I told her to go on ahead while I adjusted my wheel, and I'd catch up. It only took a couple of minutes to adjust the brakes and I set off again, but very soon I found that the wheel was starting to rub on the rear forks - this suggested something that did not make me happy. The last time I'd had a problem like this was on the road into Van Horn, Texas. I stopped again, turned the bike over, took off the rear wheel and just as I'd suspected, the rear axle had snapped! <br />
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Normally that's the kind of thing that would screw up your mood and your journey utterly. Fortunately though, I'd become a little paranoid after the last time my rear axle broke, and had been carrying around the makeshift spare I'd used to get my bike back on the road in Van Horn. Lugging the extra weight halfway around the globe finally paid off. But first I had to deal with the fact that Yana was riding on ahead of me, oblivious to the fact that I needed to do a repair job that would take a substantial amount of time. <br />
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And it was here that I noticed a definite cultural difference between South Australia and Victoria. We'd discovered that as soon as we got west of Melbourne it was virtually impossible to stop by the side of the road without having someone pull up and check if we were okay. On one occassion, we'd even been sitting happily munching on our sandwiches for lunch when a tour bus had rolled past us, stopped, and backed up so that the driver could check if we needed assistance. But as I stood at the side of the road, pointing at my upterned bike and making "telephone" gestures with my other hand, a string of about eight or nine cars sped past me with no apparent intention of rendering assistance. Eventually a woman stopped and let me use her phone to call Yana and tell her what the situation was. It turned out that one of the previous drivers had caught up to her and told her he'd seen me fidgeting with my bike. Would've been nice if he'd stopped to check if I was okay, though.<br />
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Anyway it took me about an hour to take the old axle out, clean the gunk out of the bearings, get the new axle in position, re-lube the bearings, centre the axle, put the appropriate spacers on the axle, tighten the cones properly and get the bike back on the road. I caught up to Yana on the crest of a hill overlooking Callington, which led us into a fun, fast downhill run. The road continued on into the pretty little town of Kanmantoo. The landscape as we rode in included some very appealing eroded ochre valleys in the green farmland.<br />
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In many ways it was reminiscent of the ride into San Diego - rather than rolling down the backside of a mountain range we were cruising through a succession of valleys and farms and rolling hills. As we passed out of Kanmantoo the hills gradually became more pronounced, and by the time we made it to Nairne, a little after sunset, our legs were complaining and I was muttering bitterly under my breath that I hadn't realised Nairne was the highest point in the Adelaide hills - at least it felt like it must be. When we pulled up in Nairne we decided that eating immediately outweighed all other considerations, and fortunately the BBQ chicken shop we wandered in to served the finest chicken and chips ever crafted by human hands. Or at least it seemed that way at the time. <br />
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After eating our fill, we climbed back on the bikes, with some intention of finding a place to sleep for the night between Nairne and Littlehampton. We knew we weren't going to make it to Eagle-On-The-Hill on account of my broken axle, and while we could have headed towards a caravan park, we felt that it would be nice to make our last night on the road a turf-surf night. Almost immediately upon leaving the BBQ chicken place we started encountering signs that we were on the outskirts of Adelaide, such as TransAdelaide buses. Only a little further on, out of Nairne, we realised that the road was becomeing quite busy, and wound tightly through the hills. The nearest house seemed like a good place to stop and turf-surf. A car was pulling out of the driveway as we rolled up to the gate, and the driver informed us that they didn't live there, but the owners were home, so we rode up the steep drive, wheeled our bikes around to the carport on the side of the house and introduced ourselves to a woman who turned out to be named Gale. She was happy for us to pop up a tent in their front yard, and when her husband Graham and their two kids (who were curious to meet the people travelling on bicycles) joined it we wandered across the front yard down towards the duck pond, then back to the rear yard before finding a nice flat spot close to their chook shed. We popped up the tent, and after getting everything organised, and trying to cope with the strangeness of knowing this was the last time we'd be setting the tent up on this journey, headed inside to share our story with our hosts. We were plied with cups of tea, discussed our experiences crossing the USA and Mexico, talked about philosophy and their kids high school academic interests, and finally wound up getting sucked into watching <i>Spicks and Specks</i>, <i>The Gruen Transfer</i>, and <i>Yes We Canberra</i>, before dragging ourselves away from the TV and the dinner table to retire to our tent.<br />
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That night it rained. I awoke several times to hear the patter of raindrops on the tent fly, and was pleased to realise that we could roll the tent up and pack it away wet instead of having to dry it in the morning because we didn't need it again.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzVs1-tMTMP4cw6wjqHFdGZGAxzyGYH5XGT93ZGGmZQ0cKeR0mHVVp6tyD4Jei3cYaWOOVaQh7ZmejIal1AYfWWKKTAehLsTIHswxntrKs4dqpfzwexom5F3yhqvbJhIP8QGP-lmQXeeE/s1600/IMG_0375.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzVs1-tMTMP4cw6wjqHFdGZGAxzyGYH5XGT93ZGGmZQ0cKeR0mHVVp6tyD4Jei3cYaWOOVaQh7ZmejIal1AYfWWKKTAehLsTIHswxntrKs4dqpfzwexom5F3yhqvbJhIP8QGP-lmQXeeE/s320/IMG_0375.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>In the morning we got up, grabbed breakfast, said farewell to Gale and the kids as they left for school, and chatted with Graham while we packed and made ready to depart. Gale and Graham's chickens checked us out as we packed.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi81CV2S-UBe3s1oBqQ1U44IZl1diVb1eFqMk1M-fYjSjyLv8vybvwpuI-XN8YvtCmBgz9ix1IwnmIClcVfrDdG1m6T10QBRv6MfkWochy9lYQdda8r2x7cQQmiEsJOtq8ATgOzrVogezI/s1600/IMG_0376.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi81CV2S-UBe3s1oBqQ1U44IZl1diVb1eFqMk1M-fYjSjyLv8vybvwpuI-XN8YvtCmBgz9ix1IwnmIClcVfrDdG1m6T10QBRv6MfkWochy9lYQdda8r2x7cQQmiEsJOtq8ATgOzrVogezI/s320/IMG_0376.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>We hit the road and wound our way through the hills, passing the Beerenberg store before we knew it, and rolling with a feeling of some triumph into Hahndorf. Our surroundings looked decidedly familiar. Unfortunately the weather left a lot to be desired, but we pressed on towards Bridgewater, up steep hills, and back down them again as we worked our way through Aldgate and Stirling.<br />
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In Stirling we somehow missed our turn and found ourselves almost heading onto the freeway, but backed up to check our maps and got some confusing directions from a passing fellow, before spotting a sign that we'd somehow riden straight past before which promised pedestrian access to Crafers. This involved riding up a fairly steep stretch of pedestrian path that ran behind houses and off-and-on minor roads before reaching a footbridge over the freeway. We rolled down the other side looking for further bike directions into Adelaide, and didn't see anything signposted, circled back to a service station to ask the guys who worked there if they had any idea which way we should go, and finally asked some council workers who pointed us in an appropriate direction. In fact, just a few metres past them I spotted the Adelaide bikeway sign that we'd been seeking earlier. This bikeway follows the old road into Adelaide, running roughly parallel to the new freeway, but with none of the traffic. Admittedly, as we were enveloped in a thick white mist at the time we could barely see ten metres ahead of us, let alone the view of the city. Somehow these things never unfold exactly as you imagine they will. It was still a delightful stretch though, as we had the entire old road to ourselves, and it was just a matter of comfortably coasting downhill, towards home. We had decided that the weather was too lousy to be bothered riding to the beach and back, so we stopped when we saw the "Welcome to Adelaide" sign at the bottom of the freeway for our obligatory photo opportunity, with the city skyline (visible at last!) in the distance, then rolled on into town along Glen Osmond rd.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXlUeAq0HM1YC96QXx-CqqUJhnuWA_wOVHRZtdKBaZYBBdaPuLUvkuOv43IP7PA23PUCv7eCX11eXnpEhNQ5bYwwE7hhPQtpfvGQj5vIxR4-SjjIczTiTIo2TjaiUQntdvI0KdHybqwUk/s1600/IMG_0378.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXlUeAq0HM1YC96QXx-CqqUJhnuWA_wOVHRZtdKBaZYBBdaPuLUvkuOv43IP7PA23PUCv7eCX11eXnpEhNQ5bYwwE7hhPQtpfvGQj5vIxR4-SjjIczTiTIo2TjaiUQntdvI0KdHybqwUk/s320/IMG_0378.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>The whole thing was a bit surreal, because we finally knew we were almost through with this amazing journey. From time to time as we got closer to Adelaide we had been discussed how it's sometimes difficult to believe that places still exist when you're not there - the world can feel like a movie set that gets torn down and rebuilt each day. It was a funny feeling to admit that Adelaide had continued to exist for all the time that we've been away doing things on the other side of the planet, and as we rode into town we joked that the props department had done a good job rebuilding everything just the way we remembered - or joking that they'd messed up when we passed a new building or a business that hadn't been there the last time we were here. We continued past the east end of town, through the University of Adelaide grounds and across the university footbridge to stop and make sandwiches and see if anyone would come to say hi (admittedly not likely as it was early afternoon on a work day for most people). While we were making our lunch it started raining on us, so we grabbed all our stuff and ran it down under the footbridge to get under some shelter, then Yana exchanged a few text messages with her friend Richard to let him know where we were. Richard showed up and we spent an hour or so chatting about his travels (across Russia on the Trans-Siberian Railway) and our own, before I gave my mum a call and let her know we were on our way home. Then we set out on the penultimate leg of our journey. <br />
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The ride from the footbridge to the rendezvous point where mum was going to intercept us was exhilarating. Everything was familiar, yet everything that had changed was immediately obvious, like a new footbridge, markers showing the distance from the city every kilometer or so, and new patches of native vegetation being replanted to replace the introduced plants that grew along the river. Eventually we pulled up at the park just beyond Portrush rd, called mum, and waited for her to drive down the hill from her house to find us. Several minutes passed and then a familiar sounding engine and a blue truck turned the corner. It pulled up across the road from us and as soon as the door opened, my mum, sobbing uncontrollably, climbed out and into the biggest hug I could give her.<br />
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Needless to say, mum was relieved to see us. She's a mum, and that means she worries about my safety, and boy was she glad to see me alive and well! Anyway, we hugged, and we chatted, and mum took photos, and we rang my dad to tell him where we were, and we figured out how to use the video feature on mum's camera, and gave her one of our cameras as a backup and she drove off to our house to await our arrival, at the last front door we would roll up to, to video the end of the ride. Then we hopped back on our bikes for the last time, and rode once more along the river, amongst the beautiful river redgums that I love so much, past playgrounds, parks, benches, rock cuttings, and ochre-coloured river banks, until we reached our exit onto the road, turned up our very last hill (which we always found pretty steep and difficult when we lived here before, but now seems quite gentle and manageable), turned at the top of the hill, and then paused. <br />
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I wanted to make sure mum was there waiting for us, so I'd asked her to wait at the corner to let us know she was ready to video us, and we could get the last part of the trip recorded for posterity as we rounded the final corner and rolled into the driveway of my house. There was no sign of her, and eventually Yana edged forward, peeped around the corner, let me know that mum was indeed there, and we pushed the pedals, I set eyes on my house again, and in the space of a few seconds we had done what we set out to do almost a year ago. We stopped our bikes in front of the house, dismounted, and did all the things triumphant adventurers do, like posing for photos with our steeds, hugging and kissing, putting down our packs, stepping inside our home so mum could show us what a great job she'd done of getting it cleaned up and ready for us to move into, ringing dad to tell him we'd made it, and all that stuff.<br />
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And even though this is the end of the bike journey, it's not the end of the story. The weekend after we arrived we got interviewed for <i>SA Life</i> magazine and the resultant article should be in next month's issue. We'll hopefully keep blogging from time to time about our future holidays, or adventures around Adelaide, around Australia, and around the world. Plenty of people have already asked us where we're going to ride next. Kangaroo Island, The Great Ocean Road, and across the Nullarbor are high on the list. And we've picked up a passion for a lot of foods we'd never tried before, so I expect we'll turn this into a bit of a cookery blog too, on occassion. I feel like we should make some grand statement, some finishing note, on a par with the magnitude of our journey. But all I can really think to say is, thank you for reading about our travels, thanks for the comments on the blog (even if we rarely found the time to reply, we still appreciated them), thanks to everyone who helped us along our way, who opened their hearts and doors and back yards to us. <br />
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It's nice to be home.<br />
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And yes, our legs are tired.Meandering Marsupialshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12501083587914140645noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6633910187288044016.post-27945327814575967342010-07-30T02:20:00.000-07:002010-07-30T02:20:19.462-07:00Going all the way<span style="color: #cc0000;">By Sundance:</span><br />
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Just a quick update, to let you all know that we made it to Adelaide yesterday! Hooray for us! It sure feels weird but wonderful to back in our own home. We'll post a full description of the last few days of the ride, and what comes next, in the next few days.Meandering Marsupialshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12501083587914140645noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6633910187288044016.post-12356679567931711172010-07-27T19:55:00.000-07:002010-07-27T19:55:41.895-07:00Coorong, and thanks for all the fish!Distance in Australia: 2036.06 km<br />
Total Distance: 9417.8 km<br />
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<div style="color: #3d85c6;">By Yana:</div><br />
Harrow turned out to be one of those surprisingly charming little towns, and we found ourselves spending a little more time there than we initially intended to. We had a quick touristy look at the log jail, which is right next to a little wooden shed which apparently used to be the local "Finishing School for Young Ladies and College of Deportment". We've rarely seen such a grungy little building give itself such airs and graces, and had a good giggle about it.<br />
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By the time we left Harrow, it was well into the afternoon, and we were still about 15km away from Edenhope when it started getting dark. Still, as we'd kept up alright with our schedule in the previous days, we decided that this didn't bother us too much, and we started to keep an eye out for turf surf opportunities. We did still have to ride on for a little bit, but after a few sheep paddocks, we found a little house and knocked. Val, the lady who answered the door, was happy enough for us to put up our tent, and got hold of her hubby, Peter to figure out somewhere reasonably dry to put it. In the end, Peter offered to stick us in their little granny flat instead, which we accepted. Another pretty comfortable night.<br />
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In the morning, while we were getting ready, we had a bit of a chin wag with Peter, and he bestowed on us a few grapefruits from his tree. We set off shortly afterwards, and rode the last 11km into Edenhope. The town was pleasant enough, though not hugely remarkable. It did have a bit of that vibe of a South Australian country town though, which was kind of nice. We also discovered, when we got our groceries, that the local supermarket had completely phased out plastic bags! Great to finally see that. That done, we skipped across the road to the bakery, as Val and Peter had told us that it was a good one, and had ourselves some pies. While we were eating, we spotted another heavily loaded bicycle close to us, and realised that there was a fellow traveller around. When the fellow returned to his bike, we popped out to chat to him. His name is Guillaume, and he's heading from Melbourne up to Alice Springs via Adelaide. Very cool. We exchanged contact details, and if we happen to get to Adelaide before Guillaume does, offered him a place to crash. Not sure we'll get there before him though, he's not carrying quite as much weight as us, and has a slightly more zoomy bike. You never know though.<br />
<br />
We headed off a little bit before Guillaume, towards Apsley - the last town before the SA border! We were heading along at a fair clip, which was nice. We got to Apsley in pretty decent time, and made a quick stop for the local public toilet. We ended up having a bit of a chat with the guy who runs the local roadhouse, a fellow named Gary. He was a bit of an interesting character, with the right side of his face tattooed, and skull-adorned swastikas on the backs of his hands. He was interested to hear about our travels though, and we had a pleasant enough conversation.<br />
<br />
We headed onwards, with only a short distance left to the SA border. We stopped a few km short to dig up our grapefruits, as we would have to get rid of them soon, which was when Guillaume caught up with us. After a brief chat, he zoomed onwards, and we lost him completely.<br />
<br />
We reached the state border shortly afterwards, took our celebratory photo of our last state crossing, and rode on in search of somewhere to sit down and have lunch. We ended up sitting down by the quarantine bin when we reached it, made our sandwiches, ate our grapefruits, and threw the peel in. Interestingly, most of the quarantine paranoia seems to be about phylloxera, that nasty vineyard parasite, although fruit flies are also a thing South Australia is trying to keep out.<br />
<br />
After lunch, we kept on pedalling, and discovered a paddock full of kangaroos, wallabies and deer off the side of the road, just short of the town of Hynam. Quite cute - the kangas and wallabies all hopped up to the fence to say hi, whereas the deer dashed across to the other side of the paddock. We rode through Hynam witout stopping, and headed onwards to Naracoorte, with maybe an hour of daylight left.<br />
<br />
Once in Naracoorte, we considered our options. The town boasts some nice caves about 6km south, but we also have a big day ahead of us tomorrow if we want to make it to Kingston, which is right on the coast. We ended up heading to the tourist information centre, and the fellow there was quite helpful. We wallowed in indecision for a little while, and almost went down to the caves, with the intention of camping and then looking at them the next day, but changed our mind at the last minute, as the weather was turning cold and icky. We decided to head in the direction of Kingston, to at least knock some of that distance off of the following day's trip. We didn't end up going much further though, as it was starting to get dark, and a few kms out of town we picked a cluster of housey-looking lights to try for a turf surf at.<br />
<br />
This turned out to be a little more complex than expected, as we ended up riding a decent little distance over a very gravelly track with some pretty big rocks, but we eventually found the house in question. The inhabitants saw us as we rode up, and came out while we were being mugged by a pair of friendly dogs. Gabrielle, the lady of the house, consented for us to put up our tent, and hung around outside to chat with us while we put it up. We ended up cooking our dinner indoors, which was a plus, and are now chatting with the family. We also had the opportunity to do some laundry, which was an overdue necessity.<br />
<br />
We ended up having a fairly late night staying with Gabrielle and Brett near Naracoorte, as we managed to get sucked into watching an AFL game. Hawthorne vs St Kilda, a draw, if anyone's interested. We still got up at a not too disgraceful hour, but ended up chatting with Brett a bit after breakfast. To add to all of this, just when we were about to set off, Sundance spotted a bulge in my front tyre - yes, ladies and gentlemen, the first Wal-Mart tyre had worn through, after taking me all the way from Hazlehurst, Mississippi, to Naracoorte, South Australia. Brett quickly ran us up to town in his ute, and we got a new semi-slick tyre at the bike shop. A fairly efficient procedure, but it still took a bit of extra time.<br />
<br />
Our second attempt to get going was successful, and we said our goodbyes. A few kilometres down the road, Sundance spotted our friend Guillaume having a rest. We had a quick catch up chat: he'd stayed at a hostel in Naracoorte, and was now tossing up whether to head to Robe or to Kingston. We left him to his decision and kept on going, figuring we'd have lunch in Lucindale, which was at roughly the 40km mark. The terrain was fairly flat, although we sort of felt like we had a bit of a headwind. Must have been our imagination though, because not a blade of grass was stirring. We got to Lucindale without further incident, though we were feeling a little pooped. <br />
<br />
We set ourselves up for lunch at a little picnic table, where someone had for some reason left a pristine 3 litre bottle of milk, which looked like it might even still be fresh. Odd. We had our sandwiches, supplemented with some chicken nuggets and a sausage roll Sundance procured from the local tuck shop. He bumped into Guillaume there, who had arrived while we were making our sandwiches. While we were eating, we saw him zoom past us. He had decided to head for Kingston, the shorter way.<br />
<br />
We headed off not much later, still noting that phantom headwind. Maybe it was just the fairly rough paving of the road which was wearing us out - it does make a difference.<br />
<br />
A few kilometres out of Lucindale, I saw an indistinctly blob-shapped brown thing crossing the road in the distance. It had burrowed into the grass on the side of the road by the time we came close enough to see, but we decided to investigate anyway. As it turned out, the critter in question was an echidna! Very cool. I'd never seen one before, and to come across one in the wild kind of added to the thrill. The echidna wasn't feeling sociable, and just kind of stuck out all his quills. We hung back a little bit, and were rewarded with it at least showing its long nose as it looked around to see if we were gone.<br />
<br />
We eventually stopped pestering the little fellow, and continued to head towards Kingston. We weren't going to make it before dark, so after a little contemplation, we decided to opt for a turf surf, if we could find one. Pretty much exactly 17km before Kingston, we got lucky. We rolled into the driveway of an invitingly scruffy-looking place with a backyard overrun with cats. The proprietor, Colin, wandered out just as we were leaning our bikes against the fence to go and ask permission to pitch the tent, so it saved us a walk up to the door. He gave us permission, and had a bit of a chat while we put up the tent. He also got the nearby fire drum rolling, which was nice.<br />
<br />
It was turning out to be a rather cold, dewy night, so after having our dinner, we headed inside to socialise with Colin and his friend Wayne who was staying over that night. We also ended up watching the latter half of Bee Movie, which was unapologetically silly. We turned in not long afterwards, once again grateful for the fact that the tent is a force to be reckoned with when it comes to the cold.<br />
<br />
<div style="color: #cc0000;">By Sundance:</div><br />
As we ate our dinner and then later as we climbed into bed it was interesting to note the bats swooping around overhead. Apprently there are a bunch of fruit bats that have taken up residence in South Australia for part of the year, though they normally belong in Queensland. The following morning we awoke, climbed out of bed and chatted some more with Colin and Wayne - Colin is a big fan of some interesting TV series, including Seven Wonders of the Industrial World, and so we had a chat about things like the Hoover Dam and the Panama Canal, and other things we'd like to see on our future travels.<br />
<br />
We got into Kingston after about an hour's ride. Fortunately the weather was nice, but being Sunday almost everything was closed. We found an IGA supermarket which was shut, and then some local directed us down the street to a Foodland which was open. Yana waited outside while I went in to restock us on pretty much everything. We took a brief detour to look at the beach, then on the way out of town grabbed a couple of yiros' at a cafe. We're really found that having "second breakfast" is an essential part of not getting worn out by all the exercise of riding. On the road out of town we spotted the big lobster - one of the numerous Big Things made of concrete scattered around Australia - and posed for the obligatory photos. The road north of Kingston was pretty long and uninteresting, though it was nice to reach the start of the Coorong National Park. We had a map of campgrounds in the Coorong that Brett and Gabrielle had printed out for us, and we started looking out for roads leading towards places we could camp for the night (as we figured we wouldn't reach the town of Salt Creek before it was quite late and dark). We eventually opted for a road which looked to be in the right spot, even though there were no signposts indicating camping areas. It turned out to lead us to the 32 Mile Crossing camping area, which is what we had been expecting. Unfortunately, almost immediately after the drop-box where you pay your camping fees and put them in an envelope the road turned from unsealed, to sand! We had to get off and push our bikes, and after a couple of kilometres trying to find the proper camping area decided that we'd satisfied our duty to try and camp in an environmentally-harmless, responsible area and we were just damn well going to camp where it suited us! So we picked a spot where there were no plants to crush, and Yana put up the tent while I made some yummy noodles. As the night settled, a fog composed largely of mist from the ocean rolled in and obscured the stars somewhat, but still, while the rest of the country was watching the final of MasterChef, and the pre-election Great Debate (why not just combine them and call it the "Masderbate"?) we slept in the Coorong sand dunes, beneath the Southern Cross and a full moon. <br />
<br />
We woke up in the mornng and, after packing up our campsite, walked te rest of the way through the dunes to the beach, watched the surf rolling in, admired the scenic beauty of it all and then headed back to our bikes, noting various animal tracks along the way. It looked like sometime during the night a wallaby and a feral cat may have crossed paths, and it was a bit disturbing to think of feral cats and foxes running around in this national park. We pushed our bikes back to the start of the path, washed the sand off our gears in a puddle, and rode back to the main highway. We rolled into Salt Creek about an hour later and stopped to buy some chips and local shark and mullet, as well as make sandwiches and clean the sand off our tent fly. By the time we had finished eating we had a bit of a tailwind! So with some astonishment we took off north again, passing beautiful views across the Coorong, and averaging about 20 km/h for the next couple of hours. We were about 10 km from Meningie by sunset, and passed Camp Coorong, an aboriginal cultural centre. We pushed on another couple of kms, and came to a sheep farm where Yana called the phone number on the gate and asked if we could camp for the night. We got permission, but I felt a little bit like it would be nice to see if we could stay at Camp Coorong, so I headed back by myself to doorknock, while Yana set our tent out to dry a bit more. I got to the camp and knocked on the door but nobody answered so I eventually gave up and headed back to Yana. <br />
<br />
It was a very chilly night, and as we sat eating our dinner, looking at the moon, and planning our course over the next few days, we reflected that we may only have two more nights before we are back home in Adelaide. That's a very strange thought after almost ten months of travelling. It was a cold morning when we got up, and while we got our gear packed up with our warm gloves making us clumsy we were treated to the sight of sheep being herded past us. Then we set off and rolled along the road into Meningie.<br />
<br />
In Meningie, Yana dropped into a supermarket to grab supplies. After we'd restocked we went and ate second breakfast by the shore of Lake Alexandrina, although it was chilly and very windy, and then went to the local library seeking internet access. That turned out to be fruitless, as the computers wouldn't read the pre-written blog |I had typed up on my USB key. We then headed to the council offices, trying to use their wireless network to get online, but their network was down! Frustrated and feeling like we'd wasted a lot of time (which we had) we set off again. The gong was slow and we had to deal with the headwind the whole way. About 20 km down the road we found a place to sit in the shelter of some trees and make sandwiches. Unfortunately as we were halfway through our lunch Yana spotted a group of bull ants making their way towards us, and as we jumped up out of their way she got a nasty bite on the ankle from one!<br />
<br />
We pushed on and made it to Tailem Bend just before sunset. At last we were less than 100 km from Adelaide, and could see the Adelaide Hills in the distance.We decided to stop at a caravan park in Tailem Bend for the night, have a shower in the morning, and we've just arrived in Murray Bridge, having completed our last proper river/bridge crossing of the whole trip (although the pedestrian path on the bridge was so narrow we couldn't really ride and had to walk or kick our bikes across.) We're now so close that this will almost certainly be our last blog update before we complete the trip!Meandering Marsupialshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12501083587914140645noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6633910187288044016.post-71510849938954677572010-07-21T22:59:00.000-07:002010-07-21T22:59:57.333-07:00We are the Grampians, my friend!Distance in Australia: 1631.8 km<br />
Total Distance: 9012.6 km<br />
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<span style="color: #cc0000;">By Sundance:</span><br />
<br />
After our last blog update in Lake bolac, we hopped on our bikes and pressed wetwards through Glenthompson, where we got sprinkled by a sudden shower a few hundred metres short of a shelter, and then towards Dunkeld. We also caught our first glimpse of the majestic Grampians rising in the distance. About 6km out of Dunkeld a guy pulled up in his ute offering to give us a lift into town. He informed us that his wife had seen us one the road and was concerned that it was getting dark and we weren't very visible. We explained to the fellow (who's name turned out to be Robin) that while we appreciated the offer, it was a bit of a matter of pride to cover the whole distance on our own leg-power, and we really just were looking for a place to put up a tent for the night. Robin suggested that one of his sons had a farm a little way down the road where we could stay, then suggested that if we wanted more comfortable lodgings we could ride to Dunkeld and stay at his place. Since it was only another six kilometres we opted for the latter, memorised the instructions to get to his house, and set off in his wake. We arrived about twenty minutes later, and after a quick jaunt to the local cafe for some dinner, settled in to a very pleasant discussion of the upcoming election, and various envirtonmental and political matters. I also tried my hand at baking some parsnips, spuds, carrots and sweet potatoes in Robin's oven, as our appetites are gigantic and Robin offered us a few extra morsels to cook up and supplement the food we had bought from the cafe. <br />
<br />
In the morning Robin had to take some lambs off to market, so he bid us farewell and let us make brekkie in his kitchen, shower, and lock up after ourselves. Yana made some very nice porridge, and we got ourselves well fed before hitting the road, though we did feel compelled to leave Robin some money for the food of his we'd consumed. It was a pretty foggy day, but once we got out of town we found that the sky started to clear, and we had quite a good view of The Grampians as we rode along. We stopped in Cavendish for lunch, where we were amused to see the local pub was called the Bunyip Hotel, and a group of adolescent magpies wandered around our lunch table looking cutely inquisitive. The terrain was rolling, a bit less flat than we would have considered ideal, but it was nice and green with lots of gum trees. We rode on to Balmoral, where we knocked on a door for a turf-surf and met a fellow called Joe, who let us put our tent up at the back of his land, which fronts onto the Glenelg river. While Yana set up the tent, and then got sat upon by Joe's insanely affectionate dog, Monster, I struggled with getting a fire stared (most of the wood was quite damp, at some of it I concluded was taken from fenceposts that had been treated with some sort of fire-retardant chemical, since I found that they stubbornly refused to burn) although it eventually turned into a merry blaze. We popped up to the house before bed to use the loo, and got chatting with Joe and his wife Betty, and ended up having quite a late night. betty did mention that ther were platypi (or platypusses) in the river, but alas we didn't spot any of them.<br />
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This morning Joe and Betty had gone to work, and we were having breakfast when Yana spotted that one of their hirses had gotten her foot caught in a roll of wire, so Yana had to be horse-whisperer and hold her steady while I uncoiled the wire from her foot. Fortunately she was a very chilled-out horse and nobody got hurt. We hopped on our bikes, abnd rode up into town wher we saw a very cool house built into an earth-mound We knocked on the door and found that the resident was an American woman who'd moved to Australia 38 years ago to be a teacher. So we chatted a bit about our bike trip, and the design of the house, and then headed off to grab second-breakfast at a cafe in town before riding out into the countryside once more. It wasn't long before we passed the 9000 km mark of our journey, the last thousand-kilometre mark of this trip, as we're only a few hundred km from Adelaide now. We then rolled on into the historic town of Harrow, where we're currently having lunch.Meandering Marsupialshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12501083587914140645noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6633910187288044016.post-5282871649865108812010-07-19T20:48:00.000-07:002010-07-19T20:48:38.858-07:00Come and See Dereel Thing...<span style="color: black;">Distance in Australia: 1477.15km</span><br />
Total Distance: 8859.05<br />
<span style="color: #0b5394;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #0b5394;">By Yana:</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;">We spent an extra day in Dereel with my parents, taking the time to chill and enjoy more excellent food. On our second evening, Mum's friend Christiane came over for dinner, and we stuffed ourselves silly with various types of curry, at which point Sundance of course put us all to shame. Yup, we still exercise hard. We also took the car into Ballarat the following day, in the name of getting groceries for dinner that night (Sopa de Lima and Chicken Cordon Bleu), and also to get provisions for the next few days of our trip, as we weren't sure when we would next pass a town with decent shopping facilities - we were quite deliberately planning to circumnavigate Ballarat.</span><br />
<br />
The morning of our departure, we got off to a bit of a slow start, and were only ready to go at midday. Sundance had to re-measure the front wheel of his bike, as his speedo/odometer had obnoxiously decided to reset itself completely. Good thing we had written the previous blog entry, so we could enter the important stats again. The day was quite pleasant, which was a nice change from the previous day, which had been all rainy and icky. As Mum had had to leave for town, we had already said our goodbyes to her. Dad waved us off, equipped with his camera, and we headed down Rokewood Junction Road, deeper into the middle of nowhere. The road was blissfully flat, and even the slight headwind we had wasn't so bad. We passed through Rokewood Junction, as well as various other little localities which aren't marked on the maps. We made the occasional snackstop whenever we got hungry, having decided to push all the way to Skipton, in order to have lunch there. Sundance got a few groceries there and we had our sandwiches, bundled up against the increasing cold. There was a family from out of town using the next picnic table - Skipton was a point of interest to them, as one of their ancestors used to be the schoolmaster there.<br />
<br />
We headed onwards, figuring that we'd maybe get another 20km or so further before sunset. Not quite far enough to get to the next town, Streatham, but we were going to go for a turf surf anyway. Around the time the sun started to set, we started to keep an eye out for reasonable candidates, especially as we didn't want to ride in the dark, as Sundance's headlight had a flat battery. We found that it was pretty empty, aside from the paddocks filled with empty tin sheds. Farmland, obviously. We did spot a pretty little brick house with a beautiful driveway planted with flowering natives, but it was apparently abandoned. From the looks of it, the front yard was being used as an occasional sheep paddock by someone, as it was strewn with sheep dung.<br />
<br />
We had almost resigned ourselves to heading to Streatham, as it was getting increasingly dark, but ended up spotting some lights a little way off the road. We went up a long dirt driveway to investigate, and discovered a friendly-looking house. We were greeted by the lady of the house, Sally, who didn't hear Sundance knocking on the door but fortuitously came out to look for the family dog, and her four little boys. She was quite happy for us to put our tent, and ended up directing us to the cottage where one of their farm hands, Evan, lived. We trundled down the driveway to the cottage in the headlights of the car which Sally had put on for our benefit, and knocked on Evan's door, explaining that Sally had given us permission to camp nearby. He ended up inviting us to use the spare bedroom in the cottage, as the other fellow who lives in there is currently travelling. Convenient. We accepted, after making sure we wouldn't be cramping his style.<br />
<br />
While making dinner, we also got to meet Sally's hubby, Alastair, who was helping Evan move in some sort of cabinet. We had our dinner in the comfort of the house, with an episode of <em>Mythbusters</em>, followed by <em>Man vs Wild</em>, which is a bit of a luxury. We turned in a bit later than planned, but still got a good night's sleep, and didn't get up too horribly late.<br />
<br />
We got up to a bit of a damp morning, and got ourselves ready, only briefly catching sight of Evan, as he was already up and about, doing his work. We went past the main house on our way out, and came across Sally, Alastair, and their kidlets. As it started to rain just then, we stepped under the shelter and ended up chatting for a bit, telling them about our adventures thus far. We told them that we would probably be aiming for Dunkeld today, which Alastair told us is a beautiful place, boasting one of the top two restaurants in Victoria.<br />
<br />
When we got a break in the rain, we got moving, and back onto the road. As the road was wet, we found ourselves occasionally sprayed by a passing truck, as they kicked up a fairly impressive amount of water as they went past, no matter how polite they were about giving us a wide berth. We shot through Streatham, wanting to head on to Lake Bolac fairly promptly. About half-way there, we found ourselves in another little town, Westmere, and made a quick stop at the little antique shop we found there. I partook in a cup of mocha, and Sundance got himself some ginger beer as we admired the various nifty little antiques, which were varied indeed. There were quite a few wooden inlays of various Disney critters, as well as all sorts of crockery, and old motor cycle, a small stove, and several ceramic hot water jugs. Not bad.<br />
<br />
It was raining again when we came out, but we just shrugged and headed onwards to Lake Bolac, where we decided to have lunch. Conveniently, there is a tourist information centre here, with internet access, so I'm taking advantage of the chance to type up a blog post. The town itself is quite pleasant, and obviously geared to cater to the travellers who pass through it, which is appreciated. The weather has also become a bit more sunny, which is nice too. Might turn out to be a nice ride to Dunkeld, after all. But I think we must remember to come back here sometime, partly for the consumerist urge to buy one of the rusty metal emu and wallaby lawn ornaments which can be procured here.Meandering Marsupialshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12501083587914140645noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6633910187288044016.post-31575187724323197012010-07-16T21:45:00.000-07:002010-07-16T21:45:55.154-07:00Leaps and boundsDistance in Australia: 1384.2 km<br />
Total distance: 8766.1 km<br />
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<div style="color: #cc0000;">By Sundance:</div><br />
We had intended to stay at my Dad's place for a couple of days, but the weather decided we should stay for three. We spent our time in Healesville happily hanging out on the farm, helping Dad move an old tree stump, tinkering with the bikes and cleaning our multifuel stove (which works nicely now that we determined that the recommended fuel, called "white gas" in North America, is what we Aussies call shellite), cooking up Sopa de Lima for Dad and Teena, and generally relaxing. On Saturday we decided not to head into Melbourne as the weather forecast was for high winds and rain. It turned out to be reasonably dry, but the winds were fierce, and we were glad we had delayed our departure. Apparently a couple of trees got blown over in Healesville.<br />
<br />
On Sunday morning we had brekkie and set out, with much hugging and kissing and well-wishes. We rolled nicely down through the hills beside Healesville Sanctuary, avoiding the centre of town. We rode on along the road through Lilydale, stopping to pick up a few muesli bars to fuel us for the ride. The rest of the way, I found myself gradually seeing more and more familiar landmarks. The route we followed basically took us right through areas that I spent various parts of my childhood in, and I delighted in seeing familiar road names and landmarks - a library where I remembered borrowing books about dinosaurs as a little kid, the area where our family GP used to practice. It was starting to get reasonably late in the day, but I led Yana on a detour past the<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOU2uYVNVdaEhvR8U9wQCwwfvar28PgdPWpwGb-HFUhDYIR6-0dKH2OACvW0yqu-_syYF1h7PXdY_ugYmaF-gionr3nTpRjFPDExRYRvgenheKpieWpg-iuxbCs2fBLtsikBaVWY6F6ow/s1600/IMG_0028.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOU2uYVNVdaEhvR8U9wQCwwfvar28PgdPWpwGb-HFUhDYIR6-0dKH2OACvW0yqu-_syYF1h7PXdY_ugYmaF-gionr3nTpRjFPDExRYRvgenheKpieWpg-iuxbCs2fBLtsikBaVWY6F6ow/s320/IMG_0028.JPG" /></a></div><br />
park where I first learned to ride a bicycle, and past the first house I remember living in as a child - which was still standing, much to my amazement, although much smaller and dilapidated than I remembered. I knocked on the door, but there was nobody home - although to my amazement I recognised some defects in the paintwork on the front of the house, which I think five-year-old-me may have been responsible for. We pushed onwards towards town, catching sight of the central business district of Melbourne from the crest of a hill. Each new street seemed to hold different memories - being driven down a road the proud owner of a brand-new Swiss Army knife (which has accompanied us throughout this entire trip, decades later), the road my Dad had a shop on, the apartments one of my primary school friends lived in... Eventually we arrived at the corner of Glenferrie road. We decided to have a late lunch in the Chinese restaurant that occupies the building my Dad used to run his leatherworks business out of (largely out of curiosity on my part to see what they'd done to the old building) and discovered that their food was actually extremely nice, and we'd probably be inclined to eat there again if we were in the area. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAJ2C8pK9GAQOo7H1la4oL9ql1Kxi7WzpOKpeG3_fsLe5Jy9omQJKdU2rwvf4I6S15eX6YbluA9M3ZwYF6xdgRIPPDaXKn-h1-GXpP0gFOemGIqz8r-81V2PkBf3YGu4OzjkkneWBq-oo/s1600/IMG_0029.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAJ2C8pK9GAQOo7H1la4oL9ql1Kxi7WzpOKpeG3_fsLe5Jy9omQJKdU2rwvf4I6S15eX6YbluA9M3ZwYF6xdgRIPPDaXKn-h1-GXpP0gFOemGIqz8r-81V2PkBf3YGu4OzjkkneWBq-oo/s320/IMG_0029.JPG" /></a></div>It felt great to be navigating through a city by memory rather than maps. We rode onward to follow the bike path along the Yarra river, a path I haven't cycled along since I was in high school, catching glimpses of the city along the way. We turned up Chapel street, and then (getting carried away with how familiar everything was) I forgot one of the turns that Google Maps had recommended, which resulted in us going too far south and having to backtrack to our friend Grace's place. But Grace greeted us warmly, with a delicious Sunday roast, and we chatted far too late into the night.<br />
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We spent Monday looking around town (and bumped into an old friend of mine from gymnastics, on the tram into town), doing a bit of shopping, and headed back to Grace's place, where we all watched the DVD of <i>Secretary</i> for after-dinner entertainment. On Tuesday we wound up going shopping in town a bit - I'm looking for a new phone, and Yana's been on the prowl for a new camera to replace the one we've used during this journey (which has gradually been wearing out, e.g. the timer button no longer works, which is why all the photos of us on the blog are taken at arm's length), and in the evening we took Grace out to dinner at an Indian restaurant on Lygon street to say thank you for letting us stay at her place. On Wednesday we headed to lunch with my brother, Luc, and sister Greta, and their mother and caught up on what they're all keeping busy with these days. After that we scooted back to Grace's place, collected our bikes, and rode out to the home of Brad, one of my oldest and best friends from high school. The route was a bit confusing in places, as I haven't lived in Melbourne for 19 years, and a lot of roadworks have happened in that time, but we got there in the end (despite a near miss from a silly woman in a car who rolled through an intersection and completely failed to see me), had dinner, met Brad's wife (at long last - I don't think she really believed we actually existed, as we've kept not meeting each other for one reason or another for several years!), and gave Brad the slideshow treatment of our excellent adventure.<br />
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On Thursday morning Brad showed us how to get on the Federation Trail bike path down to Werribee, which was a pleasantly traffic-free and reasonably verdant way to go, even if we were fighting a headwind the whole way. We stopped in Werribee for lunch, and to buy supplies, then headed out of town along a road that eventually turned to hard-packed dirt. That and the headwind made it slow going, but once again we were glad we had mountain bikes instead of road bikes. By sunset we found ourselves a turf-surf on the farm of a fellow called Damien, who drove us across his paddock to camp by a natural spring, sheltered from the wind in a stand of manna gums. Oh, once a pair of cyclists camped by a billabong...<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>The following morning Damien picked us up and chatted to us, describing how his farm was located quite close to where the explorer Hovell had found a stream and good soil for farming. We then pressed on past Anakie (which means three sisters in the local aboriginal language - referring to three extinct volcanic cones in the area), up into the Brisbane Ranges national park, stopped for lunch in the town of Meredith, then pressed onwards through Mt Mercer to Yana's parent's place in Dereel.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9EdkWLMyaDuINHHv_8pvFCEjFfnY6-fcvGQIUxin-dEbSTB49X2dUa_HngwPsvGXHWocGcKKBK3L97oqx2H10-2XQPzKAbCe8YMo3AcuCYqWOybw8d8LIGrEs1-pQcRXK4dDkyFGX82I/s1600/IMG_0030.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9EdkWLMyaDuINHHv_8pvFCEjFfnY6-fcvGQIUxin-dEbSTB49X2dUa_HngwPsvGXHWocGcKKBK3L97oqx2H10-2XQPzKAbCe8YMo3AcuCYqWOybw8d8LIGrEs1-pQcRXK4dDkyFGX82I/s320/IMG_0030.JPG" /></a></div><br />
The dirt by the roadsides was becoming that wonderful red-ochre colour that screams "Australia!", and we saw a few mobs of kangaroos bounding across the road in places. Yana's Dad wanted us to call just before we arrived so he could take pictures of us arriving, but the mobile phone reception was lousy, so we made several failed attempts, eventually arrived without proper notice, and had to pose for our "arrival" photos.<br />
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This morning we went in to Ballarat, to watch Yana's mother taking their new dog (which looks like he's half-bear) through his paces in obedience class, and this afternoon and tomorrow her father is dedicating some time to teaching me how he bakes sourdough bread. Yummy!<br />
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<span style="color: #0b5394;">By Yana:</span><br />
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<span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="color: black;">Thankfully, our most recent day of riding hadn't been as windy as the previous one. As I came to realise in the morning, part of the reason I was going even slower than usual was my chain, which was producing an obnoxious screeching noise with each tread of the pedal - probably less than a km into the day, we stopped at the top of a hill and Sundance lubed the chain for me, which shut the bike up. Words cannot describe how grateful I was for that, as I really don't think I could have taken twenty minutes of that noise, let alone all day. Apparently our recent ride through the rain, on the way to Brad's place, had washed the grease off.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="color: black;">Ironically, the steepest hills that day were not while going through the Brisbane Ranges - that was actually quite flat and pleasant - but further on, as we had to cross two valleys. One of our decents was so steep that even Sundance put on the brakes, which is saying something.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="color: black;">As Sundance has already mentioned, it turned out to be practically impossible to warn my parents when we were about to arrive. Apart from the reception being absolutely awful in the area, it turned out one of the landline phones was on the blink, too. Upon seeing us, dad chased us out of the gate again to ride past as he took the photo. It was already getting a little dusky by then, so we ended up opting for an artistic 5-second shot of us riding past in a curve with our blinky lights on.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="color: black;">It's been surprisingly comforting being back at my parents' place, and not just because I finally got to see my crotchety old cat again. We also finally got to meet the new additions to my parents' household, their new Siamese cat, and shaggy black rascal of a German Shepherd puppy. The little bugger is quite the handful, and it's not without a certain amount of glee that I have watched my cat smack him one every now and again.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="color: black;">We now have the decision of which way to go back to Adelaide ahead of us. While we have pretty much decided that going along the Great Ocean Road is going to be a) cutting it very close in terms of time, and b) disgustingly cold, there are still some other possibilities, including possibly going along part of the Murray River, which sounds like a nice idea. We shall have to look into it. </span> </span>Meandering Marsupialshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12501083587914140645noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6633910187288044016.post-89463820335627595412010-07-08T07:26:00.000-07:002010-07-08T07:26:05.743-07:00I love the smell of Eucalyptus in the morning! Smells like...Victoria!Distance in Australia: 1164.01 km<br />
Total distance: 8545.9 km<br />
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<span style="color: #cc0000;">By Sundance:</span><br />
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<span style="color: #cc0000;"><span style="color: black;">Once again it's been far too long since we have updated the blog. Email access has taken backstage to getting camp set up in the evening and making dinner. And with it being winter in Australia the days have been short - so hours of daylight tend to be spent riding rather than getting online.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #cc0000;"><span style="color: black;">Anyway, excuses over. We're now almost in Melbourne, at my Dad's place in Healesville, taking our first actual rest days since we left Sydney. And that means we can at least update the blog!</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><span style="color: black;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><span style="color: black;">We spent the first part of our day in Narooma restocking our supplies, washing clothes, and relaxing a bit. There's a nice new bike/pedestrian path along the inlet which we cruised along as we headed off after lunch, and wound our way past a caravan park I nostalgically remembered camping in as a very little kid. After grabbing an afternoon snack in town we headed out along the highway, making it to the campground at Mystery Bay in time for sunset. Another spot I recalled fondly from years gone by and camping trips with my Mum. It hasn't changed appreciably in twenty years. Yana and I cooked dinner and sat on the beach chatting, before crawling into our tent. The following morning it was overcast and threatened to rain, but I spent a little while climbing on the rock outcrops at the end of the beach. Eventually the clouds opened upon us (just as we finished packing up camp) and we sheltered under the roof of a toilet block before deciding to don our wet weather gear and ride off to the highway, along a winding dirt road fringed by cows in paddocks, wondering who these strange flourescent two-wheeled things panting past them were.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><span style="color: black;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><span style="color: black;">We grabbed an extremely nice gourmet pizza in Bermagui, and pushed on to a little north of Tathra, where we sought a turf-surf. The house we knocked on turned out to be an excellent choice. Peter and Danya who lived there with their three kids told us they'd come home one day to find a female cyclist sheltering from the rain on their front porch one day, and were glad to host more travellers. They fed us cous-cous, let us sleep in a caravan they had in the yard, and I put on my physicist hat, answering questions for their kids about light and mirrors and stuff. And by a stroke of luck, as I stepped outside at one point I noticed that there was a lunar eclipse happening. In the morning we got up and were fed some delicious five-grain porridge before the kids were driven off to Eden to play soccer, and we got back on the bikes. We rode into Tathra (another place I fondly remember camping in as a kid) and on through Merimbula (where we stopped for groceries) before pushing on out of town along a very nice off-road bike path, eventually reaching Eden that evening. We had a chat with a local council worked who pointed us towards a park behind the local sports grounds where we could put our tent up, and nobody would mind. </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #cc0000;"><span style="color: black;">Eden used to be a whaling town, and has an interesting history with Orcas herding the whales into harbour to assist the humans with hunting them (in exchange for the humans throwing the whale's tongues back for the Orcas to eat) but our principal interest was hunting for a screw to replace one which had fallen out of our gas camping stove. We spent the morning looking in hardware stores, then a jewellery store, who directed us to a fishing store, who directed us to a camping store, who directed us back to the fishing store, and finally we were in luck. Confident that our cooking equipment wasn't going to dismantle itself mid-meal, we set off through some very daunting hills, but beautiful countryside. We got close to the state border by evening but decided to camp at a roadside rest area. It was a bitterly cold night, and we made a fire in the barbeque area before making dinner. The morning was also icy, and we had to rekindle the fire before we could face making breakfast, but we did get to cross the state border in Victoria in daylight.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #cc0000;"><span style="color: black;">We had used up all our lunch supplies, and expected to get more food in Genoa, but discovered that the general store had closed, and there was no food to be had, save for a few packets of potato chips. We decided there as nothing for it but to press onwards to the next town, passing through the annoyingly mountainous Alfred National Park in the process. In the evening we reached Cann River, where we inhaled a couple of pizzas and settled into the local council-run campground for the night, seduced by the prospect of warm showers. In the morning we climbed out of the tent, and the first thing I noticed was an overpowering smell of eucalyptus - whch really drove home the fact that we're back in Australia. We stopped for lunch at a little hotel/tea room in Bellbird Creek where the friendly staff (and friends/relatives) listened to tales of our journey and advised us to avoid the highway on the way to Orbost due to hills and winding roads with logging trucks. They recommended that we take the longer but flatter detour past the mouth of the Snowy River at Marlo. We rode to the appropriate turn-off, tried to make up our minds about which route to take, tossed a coin, and headed to the coast. And very glad we were that we did - the road opened up into coastal grassland, we saw our first non-roadkilled kangaroos since getting back to Oz, and made it to the coast road running between Cape Conran and Marlo. In Marlo we settled into the local pub for a counter-meal, warmed ourselves by the fire, discovered that <i>Hey Hey It's Saturday</i> has returned to Australian TV, and had a delicious sticky-date pudding for dessert. The pub owner even allowed us to put our tent up out the back.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #cc0000;"><span style="color: black;">The next day we rode back inland along the Snowy River to Orbost, where we stopped to consider the option of moving onto the East Gippsland Rail Trail, to get off the highway. While the trail was quite pretty, it was also gravelly, so we ended up deciding to stick to the highway for the most part. At dusk, we stopped in the locality of Tostaree, where we knocked on the door of Glen and Jen, asking for tent advice. They pointed us to a spot along the path where we could put it up, and invited us in for a cup of tea, and dinner to boot. Some very good conversations were had before we trundled off to put up our tent and turn in for the night.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #cc0000;"><span style="color: black;">We got up and knocked the ice off our tent the next morning, then headed onwards through Lakes Entrance (where we had lunch), and on to just before Bairnsdale. We thought about pushing on, but came to the edge of the fruitfly-control zone, where we would have had to dispose of any fruit we were carrying. So instead we opted to find a place to camp for the night, use our fruit making dinner and breakfast the following morning, and then push on. </span></span><br />
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<div style="color: #0b5394;">By Yana:</div><div style="color: #0b5394;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="color: black;">Quite close to where the fruit fly zone ended, we found a driveway into a property. The house was empty, but there was a caravan with its lights on a little further in. When we investigated, we came across Peter, who turned out to be the owner of the land. Instead of having us put up the tent, he invited us into his spare bunk room, which we accepted. He refused our offer to share our dinner with him, and we ended up having a very nice chat, comparatively late into the night, by our standards. Early the following morning his partner arrived, and they took us along on an errand of buying some rams. If we had ever felt bad about eating sheep, we came away thoroughly cured of that. They're not exactly the sharpest tools in the shed.</span></div><div style="color: #0b5394;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="color: black;">We got going on our bikes a little before noon, and headed into Bairnsdale for lunch and a quick mechanical check of our bikes. Sundance's bottom bracket was starting to make some noises, but the local bike mechanic had nothing useful to say on the matter before closing time. During lunch, we came to the conclusion that we might deviate off the highway and pass through Maffra after all, so I called my rellies from Briagolong to ask if they wanted to catch up. As I had suspected, they were somewhat out of the loop, and had no idea about my trip, so we accepted their invitation to drop past Briag. We pushed our way a little bit past dark, and made it at a not too obscene hour. While Gill and Kline were busy with dinner guests, Frieda took us in very warmly - it was wonderful to catch up again, as it had been a while. It reminded me of the fact that I really want to set some time aside to bond with my extended family.</span></div><div style="color: #0b5394;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="color: black;">The next morning, we stuck around for a little bit to socialise, and Gill showed us her printing studio, which had been built since the last time we had been there. After some hugs and a group photo, we set off again, through the back roads. It turned out to be a bit of a short travel day, but we made it a little bit past Heyfield, where we ended up turf surfing on a dairy farm. While we were making dinner, the owner, Nick, came out for a chat. He trundled back inside when we were ready to eat, but invited us to come in once we were done. We did so, and ended up bonding with the entire household and a bunch of people who had dropped past. Definitely one of the more sociable groups we have dropped in on, and we left the next morning, feeling that we definitely should drop past to say hi again when we're in the area.</span></div><div style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="color: black;"> </span></div><div style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="color: black;">We got past Moe and Trafalgar, and turf surfed in the front yard of an elderly couple just off the highway. It was set to be a bit of a cold and damp night, but we did alright. The couple in the house invited us in for a cup of tea in the morning, and we warmed ourself while waiting for the fog that had come down to lift. It stayed pretty dense, so we ended up just riding off, and finding ourselves out of the fog pretty quickly. We agreed to make it to Healesville in the next two days, and that this day would be for getting a little bit north of Pakenham, and into the Dandenongs. We got off the highway a little past Warragul, and rode through the town of Drouin with a sense of deja vu - turns out we had stopped there last time we had been in that neck of the woods, to get petrol. We continued parallel to the highway, stopped in Bunyip for lunch, and finally got to go through the cutely named towns of Garfield and Nar Nar Goon, which was nice. Not that the towns themselves were necessarily that interesting, but we had both wanted to go through on account of the names.</span></div><div style="color: #0b5394;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="color: black;">We made it to Pakenham pretty much exactly at sunset, and pushed north a little bit. Things got pretty dicey after dark, as there was no shoulder, the road was winding and unlit, and there were some reasonably fast trucks going along it, so we decided it was time to stop for the night. We were just about to ride into someone's driveway when a car beat us to it - it happened to contain Paul, the owner, who happily gave us permission to put up our tent. He also remarked that it was going to be a bloody cold night, but we assured him that we had almost certainly camped through worse. As it was, we did take the opportunity to warm ourselves for a while at the fire he lit outside, and Sundance explained physics-related concepts which Paul was curious about.</span></div><div style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="color: black;"> </span></div><div style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="color: black;">It did turn out to be a fairly cold night, but nothing we couldn't handle. We did wake up to rain pattering on our tent, so we had to roll it up soggy again. Not to worry - we got ourselves ready to go before Paul and family were up, so we left them a thank you note, put on our wet weather gear, and got going. We rode through the rain for a little while, grinding up a few respectable hills before the weather cleared and the road flattened somewhat. It was a real relief - we had expected crossing the Dandenongs to be a lot worse than it actually turned out to be. We made it to Woori Yallock for lunch, at which point we were only another 16km from Healesville. We bypassed the town itself, and took the back way to Gary's place. We pushed our way up the steep rise of our last hundred metres or so, and were greeted by Gary and Teena.</span></div><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><span style="color: black;">By Sundance:</span> </span><br />
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Teena spotted us coming up the street, and Dad was waiting in the driveway to take a few happy snaps as we rolled in the front gate. It was a true delight to back at my Dad's place, settling into familiar surrounds, and sharing the company of my father and Teena again. From here on, everything will be familiar ground, and perhaps for the first time in the entire journey I feel physically connected to Adelaide, and the culmination of our trek. But for now, we get a couple of rest days. Today we relaxed, ate well, and went shopping for dinner and breakfast ingredients after talking travel, politics, and life. I've even got a few of my old clothes to wear that I'd left behind last time I was here. It makes the person in the mirror seem just a little more like a long-lost friend.Meandering Marsupialshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12501083587914140645noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6633910187288044016.post-70825753424096228912010-06-24T04:10:00.000-07:002010-06-24T04:10:04.177-07:00Wheee! of the Never-NeverDistance in Australia: 396.7 km<br />
Total distance: 7778.5 km<br />
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<div style="color: #cc0000;">By Sundance:</div><br />
Picking up from last time, I felt like adding a few of my own thoughts to Yana's recollection of our last night in Sydney, and the fantastic meal we had. At one point I found myself staring out of the restaurant window at the street below, and feeling very impressed that Australia had such wonderful things to offer, from food to natural beauty. And it felt in many ways like the rest of the world doesn't really get it. I was grateful that I live here. After so much time on the other side of the world, coming home to a place that's so familiar and yet so different from my reality of the recent past made me feel like a native of a fictional land, like Neverland or Oz, coming back to reexperience all that magical stuff I grew up with and had missed so much.<br />
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On Friday morning we got stuck into reattaching the remaining paraphernalia to our bikes - front panier racks, bottle cages, speedometers and so on. It took a little doing, but we managed to remember how most of it attached and make up what we couldn't remember. This (naturally) took longer than we'd hoped, but a little after lunchtime we bid farewell to Amanda and Eddy, and set off through Sydney. But first we stopped off for a bite of Thai food. Then we set off through Sydney, making our way eventually to the southern edge of town. We had a quick chat with a fellow at a 7-eleven who assured us we could camp in the nearby National Park, and made our way in that direction. It was after dark when we arrived and the park office was closed, but we found a ranger's house and asked where we could put up a tent - well apparently we were supposed to have pre-registered to stay in the park, and he gave us a bit of a talking-to about that, and eventually said we could pop up a tent out of the way in one of the picnic areas. So we found a spot, Yana popped up the tent, and I discovered that the stove was being temperamental. I fiddled with cleaning it a bit and trying to get it to work, but eventually Yana just made us some peanut butter sandwiches. Quite a contrast from the previous night's dinner!<br />
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We awoke the following morning just before the Sun peered over the hills, and took great delight in the light creeping through the treetops and the birds wandering around our campsite. After breakfast we took off to ride through the rest of the park, struggling up the hills and realising that we're a bit out of shape, and zooming down the other sides. We passed through the mix of eucalypts and palms thinking that it really gave Maui a run for it's money in terms of beauty, and eventually emerged at teh southern edge of the park to overlook the Pacific. A bit further on we rode into the town of Stanwell Park and grabbed some groceries to make lunch. We wandered down to the beach chatting with a fellow named Jim - who looked a bit dishevelled. We weren't sure if he was homeless or just a little lonely, but he seemed to enjoy having someone to talk with, and it made us feel good to obviously brighten someone's day. Stanwell Park turned out to be where Lawrence Hargraves did his experiments in the 1890s, being lifted off the ground by large box kites. These experiemnts helped him figure out how to stabilise an aircraft, and although he didn't fly any powered aircraft, his ideas certainly helped the Wright brothers design their machines.<br />
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Since it's winter in Australia, and very close to the shortest day of the year we wandered briefly onto the beach to have a look around, and then headed back onto the road, southwards once more. We passed numerous pretty vistas, and eventually found a bike path that promised to run all the way into Wollongong. Just short of there we checked at a caravan park on how much they charged for a tent site ($27! No thank you!) and headed further along. Not too much furtehr along we came upon a fellow walking his dog for the evening and asked him if there was somewhere cheaper to camp for teh night, and he offered us his backyard. Milton was his name, and Tasha was his very friendly German Shepard. Milton turned out to be renovating his house to make it a nice beach house for his kids to stay in when they visit, and despite his numerous apologies about the mess we had a very pleasant evening chatting with him - he even put on a video for us so we got to watch The Men Who Stare at Goats. That was an amusing film, and it reminded us of the place we rode past in Indiana that was selling fainting goats.<br />
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The next morning we headed off along the bike path, and after only about 400 meters wound up having an extended chat with a guy who'd done a bit of bike touring himself, including a ride from Alice Springs to Canberra. The path wound its way along the beach, past downtown Wollongong (which seemed pretty nice actually - we stopped off in the main street to get some toiletries and thought it was a nice little place) and then continued along a slightly circuitous but verdant path down to Shellharbour where we had lunch, and Kiama. The whole coast is just brimming over with beautiful little towns, and we couldn't help noticing that everything seems very new and vital compared to the USA. It was clear when we were there that a lot of American infrastructure needs a fair bit of re-investment and repair, whereas everything looks pretty modern and well-maintained in Australia. Although it was starting to get dark, we pressed on through Gerringong, eventually finding a place to ask for directions to a nice cheap campground or a spot to turf-surf. The couple who lived there offered us the spare accmodations where there kids stay when visiting, which included a bed, bathroom, and stove to make our dinner on. So we got a hot meal and an episode of Dr Who before turning in for the night. In the morning we chatted with Malcolm about his dairy farming and then took off along the bike path beside the road. We took a brief detour to look at and wander along the beach at seven-mile beach national park.<br />
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<div style="color: #0b5394;">By Yana:</div><br />
We continued on our way to Nowra, where we made a quick stop at the tourist information centre, mostly for a few minutes using the internet, for some of our basic and necessary bits of communication. That done, we headed to the supermarket to top up our food supplies, then found a nearby park to have our lunch. Taking into account the rate at which we were going, we decided to aim to do 70km that day. We reached the town of Wandandian around sunset, at a little bit shy of 60km. The plan was to ride on to the other side of the Conjola National Park, and then find somewhere to pitch our tent, but that didn't eventuate. We had made a small stop at the local general store, and while we were making various phone calls, the guy running the place offered us the spot next to the shop to set ourselves up for the night. We ended up accepting. The guy, Mick, was actually very generous, and wouldn't take payment for a few items of canned fare we planned to use to supplement our dinner. Of course we always appreciate that kind of kindness, though it is also a slightly embarrassing thing when it happens, as there are times when you do want to pay. We got ourselves fed and bed ready fairly quickly, and turned in at a reasonable hour.<br />
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The following morning, we packed ourselves up only just before it started to rain lightly, which was a bit of luck. Mick arrived shortly before we were done, so we said our goodbyes, and left a few dollars and a note explaining that this was us buying him a beer - we didn't give it to him directly, as we suspected he wouldn't accept, but we wanted to give something.<br />
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We set off through the National Park, and found that as time went on, the rain slowly got heavier, until we were quite damp and cold when we reached Yatte Yattah, on the other side of the National Park. As there wasn't much going on there, we ended up pressing on to Milton, where we had a really nice lunch at a local vegetarian cafe, followed by some fish and chips, as we were also craving some hot greasy protein. At least it warmed us and dried us a bit, but the rain continued, so we got ourselves more properly decked out in our wet weather gear and pressed on despite the ickiness of it all. We headed through Ulladulla, and stayed cautiously hopeful that we might be able to make it to Batemans Bay that day. We ended up falling a little bit short, but achieving a little over 70km for the day, and stopped in a tiny little place called East Lynne for the night. It seems to be little more than a servo, but it does boast some apparently award-winning home-made pies. We arrived in time for some sausage rolls and Bundy ginger beer, then got ourselves set up in the back paddock. The owner of the servo even helped us light a fire to warm ourselves a bit, which was a bit of luxury before we crawled into our increasingly soggy tent.<br />
<br />
The morning dawned foggy and a bit damp, and we had to accept that we'd have to roll our tent up wet. We got ourselves packed up, tried the award-winning pies fresh out of the oven, had our usual muesli breakfast as well, and rode the last 19km or so to Batemans Bay. We made a quick internet stop at the library, then took the more coastal tourist route towards Moruya. It ended up taking the better part of the day. The weather was decent, although it briefly bucketed down on us while we were having lunch, luckily sheltered under a pavilion. We waited out that squall of rain, then headed off again, and managed to stay dry. It was already getting dark when we got to Moruya, and we decided to head down the road a little further, as we weren't terribly enamoured with the idea of passing the night in an overpriced caravan park, which our map indicated was nine kilometres out of our way. We ended up going another 8km or so onwards, then stopped at a pair of houses a little off the side of the road. Stewart, the owner of the property, was happy enough for us to put up our tent, and came out for a quick chat before it started to rain again. Luckily, by then, the tent was up and there was a roof we could shelter under while making dinner. We said our goodnights when we came up to use the toilet. One of Stewart's kids was having a sticky beak under his arm, heaved a theatrical sigh, then wandered off, which made us chuckle. Apparently he wanted to ask us about our trip, but was a bit shy to talk to us.<br />
<br />
We woke up to the sound of rain pattering on our tent, which meant that we'd be rolling it up soggy yet again. Oh well. When we were almost fully packed up and Stewart and family left for their various daytime pursuits, Stewart's mum Jan came up from the other house and offered us a shower. We gladly accepted, as we hadn't showered since Gerroa. As it happened, the TV was running, and we learned that just then, there was a Leadership Challenge happening. The upshot was that apart from having a shower and a cup of tea, we got to watch Julia Gillard become the new PM of Australia. Very cool. This did mean that we didn't get going until the early afternoon, but luckily, we were only heading for Narooma. The weather had turned sunny by then, so it was quite a pleasant day to be riding. We arrived in Bodalla for lunch, and figured it was only right to consume cheese in some way, shape or form. We decided to go for a very tasty piece of cheesecake, as well as another excellent lunch. Once we were done with that, it was past 4pm, so we had less than an hour before sundown, so we headed off on our last stretch to Narooma. We got there a little bit after dark, and found the house of some friends of Sundance's family. It's a nice change to sleep in a bed rather than the tent, I guess.Meandering Marsupialshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12501083587914140645noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6633910187288044016.post-15179985841467052902010-06-17T19:38:00.001-07:002010-06-17T19:38:48.959-07:00Soaking up Sydney<span style="color: #0b5394;">By Yana:</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;">We've spent the last week hanging out here in NSW, revelling in the joy of being back in Oz. On the Sunday of the long weekend, we went for a drive to the Blue Mountains, to be tourists in our own country. We got started a little late, so we didn't end up having the time for a walk, but it was still good fun. We stopped in one of the little towns at the edge of the national park, where we had hot chips with chicken salt for the first time in who knows how long. It's funny how those tiny little things really remind you that you're in Oz. When then drove on to the town of Katoomba, where we went and had a look at the Three Sisters. For those of you who haven't heard of them, the Three Sisters are one of the rock formations in the Blue Mountains, three pillars which are connected to an Aboriginal dreamtime story about how a sorcerer turned three sisters into these rock pillars to protect them while a war raged around them, with the intention of turning them back into their human selves when it was over, but he died before he could do so.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;">We spent the Monday partly in the city, which was when we discovered just how freakishly expensive parking is in Sydney. Yikes! Luckily, after a bit of driving around and having to deal with the horror of Sydney's abundance of one-way streets, dead ends, and forbidden right or left turns, we found a free parking spot, and went for a wander through Sydney's Botanical Gardens. The ones in Adelaide and Melbourne are much better, if you ask me, but it was still pleasant enough, and we got to see a couple of cockatoos, which was nice - we'd forgotten what cute faces they have! When we got back in the evening, we found that Tony, Amanda, and Eddy were back, and Tony had another magical meal happening. The man is a wizard in the kitchen.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;">On Tuesday, we decided to check out the Australian Museum. I think we spent easily four hours wandering through there - Good thing we'd at least had one of our sandwiches beforehand, because my stomach was growling quite insistently by the end of it. There were a few absolutely amazing photos of scientific phenomena and crazy insects, which, predictably, was probably my favourite part of the whole thing. There was an extensive collection on Aboriginal arts, crafts, and history. Honestly, I could only be so interested in the spiritual side of it, although I was riveted by the little videos of various indigenous folk walking through the bush, explaining various native foodplants and medicines. And to think it's probably only a tiny fraction of the original knowledge - who knows how much as been lost due to the Stolen Generation. Actually, there also was a framed print-out of Paul Keating's speech in Redfern, which was quite interesting to read, as you can see the bits of it that were incorporated into the song "Redfern" in the musical "Keating!".</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;">Past the Aboriginal exhibits, we got onto the various fauna-related stuff, looking at various urchins and crabs, as well as some info about the insanely deadly critters Australia has to offer. I am glad to say that I now know what cone shells look like, so I can steer clear of the things - apparently there is no known antidote for that deadly venom of theirs. Eek! There was lots of interesting stuff on Aussie fauna, including on various extinct species. It really drives home what a shame it is about the thylacine - although I would have loved to see live versions of the various extinct megafauna Australia once had. Apart from the obligatory dinosaur skeletons, there was also a detailed catalogue of stuffed bird species and creepy crawlies.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;">Wednesday, we decided to enjoy the beautiful weather by going for an extended walk. We stopped for lunch at a cafe which had the most amazing chicken and leek pie ever - we have decided that we must learn to master pastry, simply so we can make our own pies. We wandered through various pretty suburban streets and parklands, until we hit Circular Quay, where we met up with my friend Ben and his lady, Alanna. We even managed to find some decent food under the price of $20, which is really saying something for that area. Once fed, we headed to the Opera House, where there is a night-time lightshow of crazy colours and motifs projected onto it. Honestly, I thought it was nowhere near as great as the Northern Lights display in Adelaide a few years back, but it was still nifty in parts. We wandered back to the train station, grabbed some gelati, and then headed home, saying our fairwells to Ben and Alanna when we had to get off the train.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;">We spent Thursday fairly productively, getting provisions for the next leg of our trip, that kind of thing. We also spent a bit of quality time window shopping, before we headed to the bike shop to collect our bikes and take them back to the apartment. By then, we had to hurry, as Tony had made us a reservation at Bilson's. Miraculously, we made it on time, and sat down for possibly the best meal of our lives to date. I'm not going to go into huge detail right now, as there were nine courses involved, each of them exquisitely detailed little works of culinary art, but let's just say that we went home in a daze. Wonderful stuff.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;">Today, we've been getting a few of those fiddly little bits of work before heading off done. If all goes well, we'll be getting to Wollongong tonight. </span>Meandering Marsupialshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12501083587914140645noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6633910187288044016.post-72327800065254208132010-06-12T04:43:00.000-07:002010-06-12T04:43:07.344-07:00My Island Home<span style="color: #cc0000;">By Sundance:</span><br />
<br />
Part 1: Yana in Hana<br />
<br />
Total distance on Maui: 183.12 km<br />
Total distance: 7381.8 km<br />
<br />
What with our change of plans and flight schedules, we decided to unpack our bikes and take a tour around the south-east part of Maui, to get out of Garrett and Crystal's hair, and take advantage of the extra time we had up our sleeves.<br />
<br />
But first, Yana's birthday. On the Monday, we headed out to the Emerald falls again in our rented car to wander through the bamboo groves and frolic in the water. After that we drove back through Paia and went to Mana foods in search of vegan key lime pie to serve as Yana's birthday cake. They were all out, but instead we got an amazing little ginger cake which went down extremely well.<br />
<br />
On Tuesday the rental car had to be returned, so we headed to kite beach in the morning, and I got in some more kite surfing practice before returning the car, then wandered back to the beach for some more kiting. I actually managed to stand upright for about 25 seconds, which was a great feeling, and made me think that I might be getting the hang of it.<br />
<br />
Wednesday and the early part of Thursday were taken up with unpacking and reassembling our bikes, and by Thursday afternoon we headed off from Makawao through Pukalani (to get some supplies), then uphill towards Kula. As it was a late start, we didn't go very far, and hunted around a little in Kula for a place to camp for the night. We settled on a local church, where we were given permission to set up our tent for the night. The next morning we set off again through pleasant bushland, to the south coast of the island. The road started off nicely but eventually deteriorated into broken pavement, coupled with a persistent headwind (which we expected, given the prevailing wind direction on Maui), dry terrain, and frequent hills. It wasn't fun, especially as the broken bitumen stopped us from building up speed on the downhill stretches to tackle the uphill stretches with. Eventually we made it to Kaupo and a general store where we made lunch and purchased a couple of frozen fruit icy-poles. We were even treated to a view across the sea to The Big Island, and a rainbow (visible below the horizon!) letting us know that we were entering the wet, lush side of the island. We rode on further and a dirt road (which we agreed was better than the broken pavement) and eventually found a place to turf-surf about 10 km south-west of Hana, on a property with a dog who's bark was worse than her bite, and a horse that didn't belong to the owner of the property, but just seemed to like hanging around there.<br />
<br />
On Saturday morning we made our way into Hana, scouted around for more supplies at the two general stores in town, and hung out a bit drinking a smoothie to recharge our batteries before heading onwards. A little way past Hana we detoured to a local state park so that I could take a dip in the ocean at a black sand beach, as I felt we had better enjoy being by the beach, what with the weather being hot and tropical and all that. A bit further on we pulled into a roadside food stand, to discover that we'd been leapfrogging a pair of hitch-hikers who we'd noticed in Hana. We chatted a bit with them and then settled down to a plate of chicken, while they caught a ride further ahead. After riding onwards, we found ourselves more and more surrounded by beautiful rainforest and vistas overlooking the sea. At one point we stopped to look at a gorgeous waterfall cascading to the side of the road, and refill our water bottles from the water running off the nearby rock faces. As it was starting to get dark, we looked for another turf-surf a couple of kilometers further along the road. Selecting a friendly-looking house, Yana knocked on the door, and we were welcomed in by Charles, who told us that he and his wife, Linda, were avid travellers too (though they tend to go kayaking in South-East Asia), and would be glad to put us up for the night and share traveller's tales. We had a fantastic evening chatting with them, a comfy night sleeping on a futon in one of their numerous spare rooms, and after breakfast Linda showeed us around her studio where she does wonderful paintings of beach scenes.<br />
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The rest of the day we wound our way along the Hana highway, back into familiar territory. We stopped at Ho'okipa beach to watch the windsurfers playing, then made our way into Paia for a gelati (finally using the $5 I'd been given as a birthday gift for its intended purpose!) and dinner at the delightful Des Amis cafe. They have a limited menu, but their Greek platters are amazing! After dark we headed back up the side of Mt. Haleakala to Garrett and Crystal's place, and after making a start on disassembling the bikes, turned in for the night.<br />
<br />
Monday was taken up pretty much completely with packing. We re-boxed the bikes, then fiddled with the remaining luggage, trying to make our carry-on and checked baggage fit within the size and weight allowances. By Monday evening we were ready, and headed to the airport to drop off our checked baggage before heading to the Whole Foods Market in Kahului to have an all-too-quick sit-down dinner with Garrett and Crystal. Then it was back off to the airport for our flight to Honolulu. We collected our bags upon arrival, loaded it on a trolley, and found ourselves a moderately comfy-looking couple of benches in the vicinity of the JetStar check-in counter to wait out the night. Our flight was fairly early Tuesday morning, so thankfully we didn't have to sleep too much (we couldn't have if we'd tried!) before it was farewell America.<br />
<br />
Thanks America. We had a great time. Despite your often bad reputation in the rest of the world, we can honestly say that we found Americans to be among the kindest, friendliest, and most generous people we've ever met. It's been a delightful experience. But, by the same token, there's no place like home...<br />
<br />
Part 2: No matter how far, or how wide I roam, I still call Australia home.<br />
<br />
It's a ten-and-a-half hour flight from Honolulu to Sydney. A pretty uneventful one at that. We watched some videos on the inflight entertainment and our laptop. We crossed the International Date Line (and the equator) and Tuesday became Wednesday. And eventually we spotted a sliver of land that we knew to be the coast north of Sydney. There was a mixed feeling. It was nice to be so close to home, and yet, at the same time I'd hoped so much to be seeing that sliver of land from the deck of a sailing vessel, instead of a seat in a passenger jet, that I couldn't fight off a twinge of disappointment.<br />
<br />
Land. Gather bags. Disembark. Present customs arrival cards. Collect baggage. Collect Bikes. Wait in line at customs/quarantine inspection (we even met a guy who worked there who is planning to ride from Vancouver to San Diego later this year). And then we were through, officially back on Terra Australis.<br />
<br />
My favourite part of Sydney airport is the ramp into the public arrivals lounge. Over the ramp are a series of banners, half of which bear the slogan "G'day. Welcome Home". Those three words mean an awful lot.<br />
<br />
It was 5:30pm and we were both ravenous. We threw ourselves at the nearest eatery, marvelling at the absence of Burger King and other now-familiar American brands, and the profusion of roasted vegetable foccacias, meat pies, and fruit salad with real yoghurt - and not a drop of high-fructose corn syrup in any of it! The food tasted glorious, and we decided that yes, everything really was as good as we remembered it. Eventually we had to get organised, and we got a taxi-van ride out to my uncle Tony's place where we're staying while we get under control for the ride back to Adelaide. We slept soundly. The following day we got a lift into town, and caught up with my mate Stewart (from my PhD days) for lunch, then wandered around Darling Harbour until sunset, and upon returning home were treated to a lamb roast that Tony whipped up which had to be tasted to be believed. On Friday morning we started reassembling our bikes, and Tony and family took off for weekend away (it being a long weekend). We have spent the rest of Friday and Today taking care of small necessities - getting a new Australian mobile phone number, dropping our bikes off at a bike shop to get some worn parts replaced, lunch with Yana's uni friend Ben, and wandering around soaking up the atmosphere of Sydney, with its slight sheen of pre-World Cup excitement. Tomorrow we may head out to the Blue Mountains and be tourists. But whatever we do, it's nice to be woken by the sound of kookaburras in the trees outside. Meandering Marsupialshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12501083587914140645noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6633910187288044016.post-39564035518805131622010-05-30T00:02:00.000-07:002010-05-30T00:02:33.218-07:00Maui Wowie<span style="color: #0b5394;">By Yana:</span><br />
<br />
Yes, it has once again been embarrassingly long since our last post. So let me fill you in on the last little while, in a large nutshell:<br />
<br />
We spent a few more days in San Francisco, which included highlights such as riding some borrowed bicycles to and past the Golden Gate Bridge, and checking out the very nifty Musee Mecanique, which is crammed full of awesomely antique and totally functional coin slot machines. We also tried out the local "Japanese" bath house, which was fun, and went to see <em>Iron Man 2</em> with Kate, which was gratuitously violent. The day before we left San Fran, we were also treated to the sight of a bunch of army helicopters landing on the lawns of Crissy Fields. As it turned out, Mr Obama himself was scheduled to visit a few days later, and this was a practice run with the copters. We looked up his schedule, to see if there was any possibility of actually seeing the man. Upon deciding it was unlikely, we stuck with the flights we had, and got up at sparrowfart the following morning to fly to Maui.<br />
<br />
The flight and airport time was uneventful, though it was a very strange feeling after having been so in charge of our own transport for so long. Well, we whiled away the time by watching some episodes of <em>Heroes</em>, which did the trick.<br />
<br />
We actually arrived a little early, and enjoyed the balmy weather while waiting for our friend Garrett to pick us up. As we were arriving a short time before the Mai Tai, a big kite surfing event here on Maui was to start, we knew we would be in for a crowded house soon enough, as Garrett is hosting some kite surfers. We did spend a bit of time at kite beach over the next few days, me only flying the trainer for a bit before opting to just hang out in the sand, and Sundance occasionally getting to body-drag through the water with the big kite, and then moving up to the actual board. As public transport on Maui sucks, we rented a car for a day and drove down to Little Beach, to see if any of the friends we made last time were still around - many of them weren't, though we did get to have a chat to Frank, a fellow who seems to be a permanent fixture there. We also spent a little time wandering along the Iao Valley before returning the car.<br />
<br />
After two days, the other two Mai Tai folk (Erin and his friend Steve) came along, and Garrett took us to a few of the social events there. We also managed to slot in a game of Catan, which Garrett didn't win for a change. His lady, Crystal, is immune to his methods of winning.<br />
<br />
As I had little to do with myself when everyone was kite surfing, we ended up renting a car again, this time for a few days. We made another trip to the Iao Valley, this time walking along one of the ridges, up to a little clearing where yummy thimbleberries grow. Ah, wet tropical forests.<br />
<br />
Today has been a kite surfing day for Sundance, during which he discovered that he has a much easier time with the double-ended board rather than the uni-directional one. I went and did my own thing, doing the walk (and swim) up to the top of the Golden Emerald waterfall. It was every bit as beautiful as I remembered it, and then some, as the weather was nicer this time round, and the water wasn't so cold.<br />
<br />
We are also going to hang out on Maui a little longer, mostly because we missed the window period in which we could get a cheap flight, so we booked the next one of the same price out of here, which is a few days later. We may decide to stick up our tent somewhere, in the name of not imposing on Garrett and Crystal beyond the time we said we would. Meanwhile, there is more kite surfing and walking through wet rainforests to be done. Hooray!Meandering Marsupialshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12501083587914140645noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6633910187288044016.post-33126792354286432262010-05-19T21:14:00.000-07:002010-05-19T21:14:53.614-07:00Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair<span style="color: #cc0000;">By Sundance:</span><br />
<br />
Yes, we're still here! And still blogging (sporadically). So here's the very short version of the last couple of weeks...<br />
<br />
After our boat ride to the Marquesas fell through, we did a little shopping around online on various crew-finding websites. We went and met a fellow who was heading from San Diego to Australia (which would have been perfect) but he eventually decided to take along a different person as crew, so we have found ourselves essentially boatless, and given the time, effort, expense and energy we have expended to find a boat ride - to no avail - we've decided to not bother. We spent our last few days in San Diego accommodated on the boat of Mike, the son of Gayani and Rob whom we'd met on our first trip to SD. We also found a fantastic Greek restaurant to have lunch at, and the owner was nice enough to drive us out to the Old Town section of SD to see the Drinko de Mayo festivities. We got a ride, via craigslist, up to San Francisco, and are now staying with my cousin Kate, whom I haven't seen in about 18 years, as well as her partner Jeff, and their son Shepard. We've been cruising around looking at stuff, including parks, the Golden Gate Bridge (of course), took a family car trip out of town to a beachside town north of San Fran, and saw Wicked. We also found out just how foggy SF can be, and Kate pointed out a nearby rockclimbing gym to us, so we went along there and got to do our first climbing in months. We've been walking along the waterfront between the Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge quite a bit, since that's the area where Kate lives, and recently ran into a couple of guys just heading off on a cross-USA bike journey, which stirred a bit of envy and nostalgia within both of us. You can catch their blog at <a href="http://lostgators.blogspot.com/">lostgators.blogspot.com</a> and follow their exploits in the reverse direction to ours. We also hung out in Palo Alto for Jeff's dad's birthday (and en route discovered a pizza restaurant called 'Pi' - actually spelled with the appropriate Greek letter, and open from 3.14pm every day!). We've also been past the Palace of Fine Arts, which is a gorgeous building, and dropped in on the LucasArts building to see various Star Wars related stuff.Meandering Marsupialshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12501083587914140645noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6633910187288044016.post-58007206152697313942010-05-02T11:20:00.000-07:002010-05-02T11:20:53.975-07:00Back to square one<span style="color: #0b5394;">By Yana:</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;">Quite a bit has happened since our last entry, but if I write one of our patented day-by-day descriptions, this entry is going to be another huge monster, so I'll skip that. We spent our last few days in Ensenada up to our ears in work dealing with our bicycles. We decided that our best option for getting them back to Australia was to ship them from LA, and Jim and Ann conceded to let us transport the bikes on the boat to San Diego, which would be our first stop.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;">Through a coincidental bit of luck, we ran into a fellow bearing a box which was pretty much the perfect size and shape for our purposes. As it turned out, he works for a company which sells flat screen TVs, and we ended up purchasing a box off him into which we could fit both bikes, actually saving quite a bit of space.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;">From then on, we spent almost the entire time until we left taking apart our bikes and cleaning the tiny fiddly bits very thoroughly. I suspect the entire process probably took 24 hours or so. By the time we had them packed, it was 4am on the morning we were going to leave. We got a little bit of shuteye, and then set about getting our big bad box to the Cactus Wren. Juergen, the guy who had first introduced us to the folks around the marinas, was nice enough to drive us, which made the whole thing infinitely easier. We also got to say goodbye to Daniel, as he had gotten back from LA a little early, so that was nice.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;">Once we had wrapped the box up in rubbish bags and a sailcover to protect it from the spray, we loaded it onto the boat and were pretty much ready to go. It was the afternoon by the time we set off, though. With the wind against us, we ended up motoring all the way to San Diego. Both Sundance and I got to spend some time at the wheel, and we went through the night. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;">Sometime after midnight, when Ann was at the wheel, the self-steering rudder broke off, and we had to fetch Sundance and Jim to haul the thing aboard. Good thing it had been tethered by the ropes, otherwise we almost certainly would have lost it. After that, Jim steered us the rest of the way to San Diego, where we arrived at about 4am on Monday.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;">Shortly after arriving at the Police Docks on Shelter Island, we were in for a rude surprise: the visa waiver program, under which we had been travelling in the US all this time, does not cover travellers on private boats! The reason for this is unclear, especially as it's just fine if you're in a car, on a bike, on foot, or on a plane. The upshot was that we had to pay a "fee" (a pretty way of saying "fine") of $540 each in order to be allowed into the US. Heading back was not an option, due to the broken rudder and a bad weather system coming in, and Ensenada being the nearest port at 13 hours away. All the options we tried to think of were against the rules, and we ended up just having to cough up the money, much as it hurt. It'd just be nice to actually be informed of expensive trivialities like that before you blunder into them, but it's unclear how we possibly could have known.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;">On the bright side though, we did end up having a nice chat on the phone with our friends from Kentucky, Clint and Valerie. For those of you who don't remember, Clint is the State Trooper with a fondness for harrassing possums in courageous ways. We had hoped that some of Clint's connections might be able to help us weasel out of our predicament with the $540 fine, but no dice. Still, we got to catch up a little, and found out that their daughter Taylor had recently won two academic awards, which was great to hear. Took our minds off it for a bit.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;">We got stuck into getting some of the mundane things, like laundry, done. In the midst of that, we started to make some local friends, at a smoothie bar called The Point. Sarah, one of the girls who works there, ended up taking us up to the Farmer's Market at Ocean Beach after her shift, which was a very fun afternoon. We spent the next day or so getting groceries and such.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;">On the Friday, Jim and Ann informed us that they'd had a talk amongst themselves and decided that we weren't "boat people", and probably wouldn't fit into the routine of living in the confined quarters of a boat for several weeks, so they'd decided to withdraw their offer to take us to the Marquesas. That was obviously a bummer, and put us into a bit of a spin trying to figure out our next course of action, and our other options for getting back to Australia. So we spent most of the rest of the day figuring out whether we could find another boat, how much it would cost to fly back, and so forth. Saturday was basically taken up by getting our stuff packed and off the boat, and Sarah was nice enough to let us crash at her place overnight. We now have a couple of other boat options to explore, and the next few days should determine how we make our way off the North American continent.</span><br />
<span style="color: black;"> </span><span style="color: #0b5394;"> </span>Meandering Marsupialshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12501083587914140645noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6633910187288044016.post-4272116411100293132010-04-21T23:07:00.000-07:002010-04-21T23:07:03.896-07:00Not Tawawi!<div style="color: #cc0000;">By Sundance:</div><br />
Okay it's been a while since we updated the blog, so we'd better get on with it or we'll be bogged down with months of stuff to remember and recount. Over the couple of days after we arrived in Ensenada we looked around and talked to various boaty people about the prospects of getting rides. Actually, a lot of this took place in the latter part of the day because we also registered on several online discussion groups and crewfinder lists, and checking email took up much of the morning. We did eventually visit all the marinas in town, including one a few kilometers north/west of town, attached to a hotel. On the Wednesday of that week Daniel's mother Jenny took us out to play tennis. Daniel's younger brother Eric (who I think looks like a very young Antonio Banderas) is learning and takes proper lessons, so Yana and I got to tag along. It was quite good fun - I haven't played in ages, and Yana hadn't ever played before. We also got quite a surprise when Jenny initiated a conversation about religious beliefs, and we found out that she, Daniel, and Eric are atheists. That really knocked out socks off because Latin America is a real stronghold of Catholicism. We don't really want to use this blog as a platform to advocate or trash one particular world-view or another, but Mexican atheists are rare and noteworthy critters indeed. Well, later that night we cooked up some green chicken curry and had a great chat with Daniel over dinner about not being religious.<br />
<br />
On Thursday the Canadians (Tom and Kim and family) took us out for a shakedown cruise on their boat, the Tawawi. We can't fit on their boat, but it still seemed like a good idea to get some boating experience. We had quite a good time, felt a little iffy on some of the rolling waves but nothing serious, and got to throw our backs into it helping out with some of the lines and sails and hoisting the spinnaker and all that stuff. When we got back to the marina we were invited over to the Iron Barque, a boat owned by an Aussie couple, for dinner. More atheistic science-nerdy conversations ensued, and much roast chicken was had by all. As we rode home, we actually encountered Daniel who had been out looking for us. We felt a bit sheepish because we hadn't intended to be out so late and he'd gotten worried that something had happened to us. <br />
<br />
Friday morning we decided to head back to the Baja Naval marina and talk to Jim and Ann again, about whether they were still saying "maybe" we could come to the Marquesas with them, or they had made a definite decision. They said yes, on the proviso that we ship our bikes back to Australia seperately, as their boat is a little too crowded for bikes as well. Well, that seemed like a fair compromise, although it means modifying our plan of hopping off a boat in Oz, reassembling the bikes, and riding from that very spot back to Adelaide. But still, we've got a boat to sail on! <br />
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<div style="color: #3d85c6;">By Yana:</div><br />
Saturday, we got stuck into doing some of the things which need doing before we board the Cactus Wren. The morning got consumed by the usual inefficiency that afflicts us, but we spent the early afternoon talking to shipping companies about sending our bikes to Australia, which turned out to be a bit of a wild goose chase in broken Spanish, with little progress for that day. More productive was our quest to end our status as illegal immigrants. Yes, we have spent the better part of two weeks as illegal immigrants in Mexico, which just tickled us. The reason for this is that upon entering the country via the US, nobody even acknowledges your presence. You can just waltz in without a scrap of ID on your person, and nobody tells you what you need to know. We actually had to hunt down the information. The upshot of this was that we headed to the nearest immigration office, got our passports stamped, and paid for a six-month tourist visa. Luckily, us pointing out to the cranky immigration guy that it's not like anyone actually told us what we needed to do, and acting sufficiently benign about it, was enough to convince him not to fine us.<br />
<br />
Saturday was also the day of an apparently rather famous bicycle race, wherein thousands of amateur cyclists of varying degrees of seriousness hop on their bikes in Rosarito, and ride the 80km to Ensenada, completely clogging the town's roads. Once we had finished our formalities for the day, we decided to merge in with the steady stream of cyclists, and rode across the finish line with them, which was fun. There were various fun costumes, including a medieval knight on a bike, and a guy with a Darth Vader helmet. We hung around the finish line for a bit, taking in the various stalls and noisy bastardised musical performances ("Achey Breaky Heart" in Spanish - it burns us, precious!), and then decided that we'd had enough for the day.<br />
<br />
Sunday morning, Daniel headed off for LA to enjoy a well-earned holiday. We said our goodbyes, as we probably won't see him before we set off on the next leg of our trip. We then headed down to the Cactus Wren, where we did what we could to help out a little. Sundance helped out with getting the GPS wired up to the radio, which was turning out to be a rather convoluted task involving him wriggling into lots of confined spaces and attaching wires to other wires, and I ended up heading back to the apartment to make myself useful in more domestic ways. In the evening, we found out that sending our bikes with a shipping company would incur all sorts of crazy charges for the various customs processes they'd go through. Shell-shocked, we decided to figure out what to do the next day.<br />
<br />
On Monday, upon establishing that the customs charges are specific to shipped items, rather than something sent in the mail, we decided to have a chat to the various relevant companies, only to find ourselves hit with quotes of well over $1000 per bike. Apparently, they don't do surface freight, so it's expensive express air freight or nothing. We spent the next several hours in alternating levels of shock, angst, and indecision. The bikes are worth only a fraction of how much it would cost to send them, so the logical thing is to leave them behind and just get new ones, of course. However, we have both grown incredibly attached to our steeds, as they have faithfully stood by us on one heck of an adventure. I'll admit to welling up at one point, imagining leaving my bike behind. We decided there had to be another way, and got stuck into all sorts of research, partially with the help of the awesome people at the Tourist Information Centre. Another inconvenience was the power button on our laptop breaking, so we were without internet access for a day while the thing was getting repaired.<br />
<br />
We also went on a journey to various cheap grocery places with Jim and Ann, where we got the bulk of our provisions for the boat trip. It's kind of spooky to find that Costco in Ensenada has the exact same layout as Costco on Maui.<br />
<br />
Tuesday, we spent some more time with Jim and Ann, who have started referring to us as "the kids". We also found some other possibilities for shipping the bikes. The tourist info people had found a local company who over the phone quoted us $280-something per bike, which was an insane improvement. Once we had picked up the laptop from the repairs, we headed to their office, to verify this quote. Unfortunately, they hadn't calculated in the volume of our bikes, which jacked up the price to $800 per bike. Still not as bad as the other companies, but we figured we'd still aim for a better price elsewhere. In the evening, after many phonecalls, we established that there are various cheaper options in LA. As the first little leg of the trip on the Cactus Wren will take us up to San Diego, this might turn out to be doable, as Jim and Ann have conceded that for that little while, we should be able to stash the bikes on the boat, although they would be in the way in the long term. It will involve some hoop-jumping, but hey, it'll save several hundred dollars to do it this way.<br />
<br />
We've spent most of Wednesday packing, getting all fired up for the boat trip. We still have plenty to do before our departure, but things are slowly coming together. We still have to do some very thorough cleaning of our bikes though to get the mud off them, which would involve disassembling the things and cleaning each part individually. Fun. Still, Australian quarantine regulations are anal retentive for a reason, and I can live with that.Meandering Marsupialshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12501083587914140645noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6633910187288044016.post-83012818989222797702010-04-12T10:35:00.000-07:002010-04-12T10:35:33.308-07:00Oooh, I'm looking for cruise...Total distance: 7198.7 km<br />
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<span style="color: #cc0000;">By Sundance:</span><br />
<br />
The search for a boat to take us back to Australia continues. Last Thursday, after we bid farewell to Lucana who was setting out for the US-Mexico border, Molly drove us down to Ensenada for a few hours while she was running errands, and we started looking around and locating the harbours where we could seek boats to crew on.<br />
The highway down to Ensenada is a toll road that bikes aren't allowed on, so this was our chance to see the coast, including many scenic views across cliffs, beaches, and Tuna fisheries. In Ensenada we spotted someone who looked like they spoke English, who turned out to be named Jurgen. He was a very enthusiastic fellow with a can-do attitude who directed us to find a Canadian called Tom at the harbour where the cruise ships came in. We bluffed our way past the guard at the front gate, and after a bit of asking around found Tom's boat, and his wife and kids although the man himself was in San Diego for the day. Tom's wife Kim was amazed that we'd managed to get through the security at the front gate, and that they'd even shown us "the all-hallowed list" of which boats were docked where.<br />
<br />
The following day we rode out from La Mision through the hills along the free road to Ensenada. It would have made much more sense if bikes were allowed on the toll road, since it was flatter, had no blind corners, and actually had a shoulder to ride on, but alas common sense and bureaucracy are immiscible. Still, the countryside along the free road was quite pretty - reminiscent of parts of Gippsland in Australia. When we got to Ensenada we headed out to Tom and Kim's boat again, but Tom was once again not around, so we sat and chatted with his family instead. We started to joke that Tom doesn't really exist. Then we headed off to meet with Daniel, our couchsurfing host in Ensenada, and headed back to his apartment and met his mother and brother, Eric. The next day we finally found that Tom really did exist, so we chatted with him a bit. He suggested another couple we could talk to who we went and tracked down. Jim and Ann are an older couple whom we had a really nice time chatting with. They're heading to the Marquesas, although they were intending to do the trip just by themselves. They suggested a get-together at a local bar we could come along to to meet some more local sailors, which we did. Yesterday we again wandered down to the harbour and started randomly talking to anyone who had a big boat. We're basically just going to persist in meeting people, introducing ourselves and making sure people know we're out there looking until we find someone who's willing to take us, or we exhaust our options. Although we did take a bit of time to chill out with Daniel and Eric last night, by going to the cinema. Given the small choice of options that were screening in English at a convenient time, we wound up seeing Date Night, which was entertaining enough, and the first movie we'd seen in a cinema in about eight months.Meandering Marsupialshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12501083587914140645noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6633910187288044016.post-71844858376338049272010-04-07T22:31:00.000-07:002010-04-07T22:31:04.116-07:00Baja hahaha!<span style="color: black;">Total Distance: 7147.4km </span><br />
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<span style="color: #0b5394;">By Yana:</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;">Well, the Pacific coast of North America has been fun so far. We've been doing various fun things, hanging around San Diego and the surrounding area. On our second day in the bustling metropolis, our host, Chrystina, spirited us off to a very pretty beach indeed, where we spent a bit of quality time frolicking, although the water was still a bit too cold for a swim. Later that day, we found ourselves at a mansion full of stimulating New Age types who twirled poi and staffs and other similar performance implements, and met all sorts of great people. Some nice conversations were had. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;">The next day we sought out a bike shop in the vicinity and rode out to it, as we had some repairs to take care of. Sundance's wheel was still warped from that spoke malfunction we'd had just before the 7000km mark, and I had a buckled disc brake which was rubbing and making a nuisance of itself. It took a little bit of time, but we got everything fixed at a very reasonable price. Sundance's bike was still making odd noises, but we were reassured that those would go away once the water in the works from when the mechanic had so thoughtfully washed the Arizona mud off the wheel dried out.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;">The following day, we took our first stab at trying to find a boat which might take us across the big blue. As we found out, asking at the front office of boat clubs is not the best way of doing it, as they just tell you you're not allowed near the boats without a membership, thus we couldn't stroll up and ask people. We spent most of the daylight hours that day trying to find crew network type things to sign up with, which all didn't seem terribly promising. By the time 6pm rolled around, we decided to call it a day and went back to hang out at the mansion for some yoga.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;">On our second boat-hunting day, we decided to take a different approach, instead just riding our bikes along the harbour, and striking up conversations with pretty much every person on a boat we could find. To start with, the effectiveness of that method seemed doubtful as well, as the first few people we found weren't actually locals and had little knowledge of the area. However, we eventually bumped into a fellow who is heading for Hawaii soon, and is keeping an eye out for potential inexperienced crew just in case his current people flake on him. A start, at least. After that, it seemed like we weren't going to find much more, and we decided to call it a day again. It was at that point that a random person on the marina saw our bikes, noticed the panier racks, and asked us about our journey. Obviously, the racks don't even need the bags on them. We got into an animated conversation, and it turned out he has a friend heading for NZ. During this conversation, we were joined by another lady, who happened to have an Aussie friend who apparently goes back and forth a reasonable amount. We exchanged phone numbers with both of them, and rode away feeling much more optimistic.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;">The next day, we hitched a ride with Chrystina and took a jaunt up to LA, to spend some time with Sundance's cousin Jamie. Getting to LA turned out to be a reasonably involved process, and it was starting to get a little bit late by the time we got there. We met Jamie and his other half, Kim, at a cafe close to where they live, and had a very tasty dinner. I leapt at the option of a grass-fed burger, as we've been very careful with beef here, what with the feed regulations not being as reassuringly anal retentive as they are in Oz. We all had a very nice chat over dinner, and then headed back to Jamie and Kim's place, where we were shown to our sleeping quarters and collapsed pretty quickly.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;">We woke up fairly late, and after a laid back sort of breakfast, Jamie and Kim took us to Venice Beach. It was okay, as far as beaches go, though I think the conversations we had as we walked were much more worthwhile than the beach itself. It was also kind of fun walking back along the stretch with the shops - it vaguely reminded me of Malaysia, actually, for a reason I can't quite put my finger on. We stopped for a bite to eat, took a few photos, stopped to take in the more interesting sights (like a fellow spinning a bola in fun and interesting ways), and other such fun things. At one point, Sundance and I got trapped by a young rapper whom Jamie and Kim had managed to evade: the fellow pulled us in with two sets of headphones connected to an iPhone, and a handful of CDs to sell. He actually had a pretty good sales pitch going, but we broke his routine by telling him we were somewhat impoverished, and explaining our bike journey to him. The rapper was impressed, and let us go with apparently no hard feelings.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;">As we had jointly decided on fish tacos for dinner, Jamie and Kim took us to Trader Joe's to get some groceries, which was an experience in itself. I think I still prefer the huge halls of food, like WholeFoods and Central Market, but at the same time, I appreciate the way smaller places truck on despite the presence of those huge chain monsters. We got back and consumed our tasty tacos, after which Sundance and I introduced Jamie and Kim to <i>The Middleman</i>. Interestingly, despite their relevant professions, they had never heard of the series, which says just how obscure it is. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;">We got up a little earlier the next morning, and Sundance made the final contact with some people we had found on craigslist to car pool with in a bid to get back to San Diego. That done, we all took a trip to the La Brea tar pits. We spent some time looking at an oily lake which would occasionally boil in some places as bubbles of gas released the sweet aroma of tar. Perhaps not the top thing on my list of favourite smells, but it was still pretty interesting, especially considering all the prehistoric critters which have gotten stuck there over time. When we checked out the museum on the grounds, aside from all sorts of oversized extinct mammals, we also got to see a wall sporting no less than 404 skulls of dire wolves. Yow! Yep, quite a rich source of well-preserved fossils.</span><br />
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<span style="color: black;">After wandering past various pieces of modern art and tar-slicked earth, we headed back to the house. Our ride showed up not long afterwards, and we said our goodbyes. I'm really glad we at least made it to LA - both Jamie and Kim were very interesting to talk to, and LA reinforces my feeling that I really could happily live on the USA's Pacific coast, theoretically. Sundance found it to be much less crowded a high-paced than he'd expected.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;">Back in San Diego, we got stuck into getting all our gear packed. We had one day left to chill out before our visa waivers expired. We spent most of that day packing, pausing for lunch on the balcony. The reason this detail is worth mentioning is because while we were eating, the doors started to rattle. After a moment, it became clear that the building was shivering and swaying. It took us a few moments to realise that we were having an earthquake. It only lasted for maybe a minute or two, and it stayed pretty gentle, but it was enough to be an experience.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;">After some more packing, we decided to call our friends from the harbour. Gayani, the lady who had joined the conversation after we had already been accosted that day, actually invited us onto her boat for dinner, which we gladly accepted. We got a lift to the marina from Brian, one of Chrystina's housemates, and got to meet the rest of Gayani's family, consisting of her hubby, Rob, and their kids, Mike and Eddie. We weren't the only guests, and it was a merry little dinner party, crammed into a fairly small space with all sorts of delicious food. It was a very nice way to spend our last evening in San Diego. It's always nice to randomly make friends with people, and come away thinking that yeah, they were really cool, and really our kind of folk.</span><br />
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<span style="color: black;">We fell into bed, mostly packed. It took a little doing to get going in the morning, as Sundance still ended up spending some time plotting our way to La Mision, as there were plenty of wiggly roads and city mazes to navigate through. We ended up leaving around noon or so.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;">Just before we crossed the border into Mexico, the skies opened on us, and it actually rained heavily enough that we had to dig out our wet weather gear. After a bit of uncertainty, we managed to get our bikes through the revolving doors which the pedestrians are supposed to take, and entered Tijuana. Once again, our border crossing into Mexico went unacknowledged, and it actually took a reasonable detour to find some US border officials we could hand our green immigration cards in to, as we found out last time that the onus is on us to do that. They don't exactly make that clear, or make it easy to do, but there you have it. We broke a few rules getting where we needed to get to and back, but it worked out all right.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;">That done, we got stuck into getting out of Tijuana before dark. The place seemed perfectly pleasant, and Sundance noted that his sketchiness radar wasn't pinging at all, but we weren't about to test that. We did have people strike up conversations with us though, which reminded us of just how friendly your average Mexican seems to be. I found myself wondering if perhaps many Americans treat that friendliness with suspicion, or interpret it as some sort of creepiness. Don't know.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;">There was one cute moment in all of this though. As we were making our way up some ramps to take us up to a foot bridge, we found a little boy of maybe five years goggling at us from a higher level. Sundance greeted the kid, and we headed further up, where another random fellow struck up a conversation with us. While I was paying attention to the conversation, I was startled by someone touching my hand. I looked down to find the same little boy looking up at me. Now that he had my attention, he walked to the back of my bike, and rested his hand on the Barbie I had strapped to it. I'm not sure we mentioned this when it happened, but during our stay in Piedras Negras, one of the gifts we received was that Barbie, and I had strapped her to the paniers as a sort of travel mascot, figuring I'd give her to a random little girl along the way. I was mildly surprised that the boy was interested in her, but I detached the Barbie from my pack, and offered her to the kid. He almost snatched it, maybe a little worried I might change my mind, and ran out of sight, which I had to chuckle at. Through a gap in the various stalls, I could see him standing with his mother, pointing at me. I waved to both of them, and got back to the conversation, reflecting that it was fitting that Barbie would return to Mexico.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;">When we finished our chat and wheeled our way past the proud new Barbie owner, we found the mother holding out a tray of chewing gum to us, apparently offering us a freebie. We declined, and went on our way. We briefly stopped to get some lunch at a taco joint, which was extremely tasty, and then laboured our way up one of the hills we needed to get past to leave Tijuana. It was well into the afternoon by then. Luckily, after a few treacherous bits, we got to some nice broad flat bits, going vaguely downhill, so we finally were making some decent progress. Quite a few people cheered, waved, or just grinned at the sight of us. I also received no less than three wolf whistles, which was kind of funny, especially as they were of a decidedly good natured sort. We could also see the sea to our right, which was nice. Eventually though, the sun went down, and we had to keep going through the dark. Irritatingly, we were having trouble with the public phones, which made it all the more difficult to contact our couch surfing host, Arthur. Eventually though, we made it to the La Fonda Hotel, which was close to where we wanted to be, and they let us use the phone. We got in contact with Arthur, and from then on, it was all pretty easy. We arrived shortly afterwards, were shown into the casita, where we would sleep, and were presented with some Ezekiel pizza for dinner. We actually spent quite a bit of time chatting to Arthur before bed.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;">The last couple of days have mostly consisted of chilling out. We had some delicious pancakes for breakfast with Arthur, his wife Molly, another couchsurfer, Lucana, and a fellow who was doing some work around the place and whose name escapes me. Arthur told us about a film he is making about one Garry Davis, who was the first World Citizen, having given up his USA citizenship after World War II. The idea behind it is to encourage the world to unify more. We might write about this in more detail in a later post.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;">Arthur took us for a walk along the beach, and we headed towards the La Fonda Hotel again, where it was Taco night. As the tide was quite high, we had to clamber over a lot of rocks, and Arthur actually had to go back, as one of the dogs was having trouble with the terrain. Sundance and I continued on our way though, and made it to the hotel, where we partook in some very tasty tacos, and I accepted the offer of a margarita. Powerful stuff, Ihate to think what effect it might have had on an empty stomach. We did get to have a nice chat with all sorts of folk who were at the same table, friends of Arthur and Molly. I am mostly glad to have gotten to talk more with Lucana, who is a very talented <a href="http://www.lucanaart.com/">photographer</a></span>.<br />
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We headed back to the house after a small grocery run consisting mostly of avocados, as we have grand plans of making some key lime ice cream at some point. Yum! Today we met up with the local couchsurfing ambassador, Rob, who led us on a taxi ride out to a local waterfall which was nestled in some very pretty countryside a way back from the coast. In the next few days, we plan to head for Ensenada, to see about finding a boat there.<br />
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<span style="color: black;"> </span><span style="color: black;"> </span><br />
<span style="color: black;"> </span><span style="color: black;"> </span>Meandering Marsupialshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12501083587914140645noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6633910187288044016.post-41957616786273521372010-03-30T01:10:00.000-07:002010-03-30T11:46:04.890-07:00Salt water, oh how I miss your misty kissesTotal distance: 7073.2 km<br />
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<span style="color: #cc0000;">By Sundance:</span><br />
<br />
At last, we have arrived.<br />
<br />
Right up until we glimpsed the Pacific it was hard to believe that we wouldn't simply keep riding, onwards, eternally, that we had actually crossed an entire continent. As we left Brawley on Wednesday, we could see mountains ahead of us, and we knew that the ocean was just on the far side of those mountains, but it still seemed unbelievable. We pressed on, as we have for the past six months, simply focussing on dodging traffic, looking at the scenery rolling past, keeping hydrated and fed, getting to the next place to pitch our tent... We headed along the road around the southern shore of the Salton Sea, and made a few attempts to find a side road down to the shore (an accidentally created artificial inland sea isn't something you see every day) but were thwarted by private property signs enough times that we decided we couldn't be bothered. We passed unimpeded through a Border Patrol checkpoint (I guess we didn't look like drug-smugglers or illegal Mexicans) and turned our trusty steeds west towards Ocotillo Wells. The Sun began to sink towards the mountains, and just short of town we encountered a Border Patrol officer who told us there was a campground just off the road. He also told us it was full of people in RVs, and people hooning around on quad-bikes, which didn't really appeal to us, so we rolled back to the east about a kilometer and pulled off the road into the deserty scrub to camp. At first we aimed for a large tree, but upon discovering that someone had dumped a heap of garbage under it (what is wrong with people!?) we found a flat patch further from the road, put up the tent, and enjoyed a meal of pasta before turning in for the night.<br />
<br />
Ordinarily we have found that the wind drops overnight and gets stronger in the afternoon, so we try to get up and get moving early. But that night, the wind picked up and started blowing through the wee small hours of the morning. We arose, packed up the tent and had brekkie, and rolled into town where we grabbed a fruit juice from the local store, then pushed on into Anza-Borrega State Park. Something was slowing Yana down, and we stopped for a while to fiddle with the disk brake on her bike's front wheel. By the time we got moving again, our worst headwind of the whole trip had picked up and pounded us for the whole 30 km stretch through the park, and the climb into the hills beyond. The hills did little to afford protection from the wind, instead acting as a wind tunnel that just seemed to unsure that no matter which way the road curved, we always had a headwind. Poor Yana had to stop at one point and let out a primal scream of frustration at the suckiness of the riding conditions, and I can't say I felt much happier. The scenery was beautiful, and we were lucky enough to see the cacti starting to flower for spring, but we were far more focussed on making it past the stupid wind and closer to San Diego. We had been aiming for the town of Julian, but instead made it to Banner just before sunset, by which time I had to stop, sit down by the side of the road for five minutes, eat a cereal bar, and just tell myself that my leg muscles weren't really going into meltdown. A little further up the hill we found a store/office in front of an RV park where we were able to buy some cans of food for dinner and the owner said we could pitch our tent beside the building. As we were about to set the tent up, a fellow wandered up and asked if we were German, on the basis that only Germans would be crazy enough to do what we were doing. We quickly informed him that while Yana speaks German and was born there, we're both definitely Aussies. Volker (for that was his name) invited us to sleep on the floor in his RV, and provided us with dinner, drinks, and conversation, and even insisted that we watch the start of the Australian Formula 1 Grand Prix in Melbourne on TV. He was a talkative fellow, with somewhat different political views from our own, but we enjoyed his hospitality and the chance once again to meet someone who lives in this wide, surprisingly windy country that we've grown so fond of.<br />
<br />
On Friday morning we resumed our assault on the mountain pass. Yuma lay well behind us at 43 metres above sea level. Julian lay ahead, at 1288 metres. We did more than half the climb to that altitude in the last nine kilometres, slowly, with plenty of breaks to catch our breath and enjoy the scenery. At one such stop, we met another pair of cyclists just heading off on their own trans-continental adventure, Luke and Jeremy, and took the opportunity to exchange road maps and advice about what lay ahead.<br />
<br />
Julian was a welcome port of call, not just because it was the highest point of the road to San Diego, but because it used to be the hub of a gold mining area, and when the gold ran out the locals decided to sustain the local economy by making and selling apple pies. Nom, nom, nom! Just the thing for a couple of hungry cyclists. We tucked into lunch with apple pie for dessert, logged into a local Wi-Fi network and grabbed directions to our accommodations in San Diego from google maps, and then pressed onwards, sure that we would see the sea soon.<br />
<br />
Boy, were we wrong. The coast was insanely misty. The visibility sucked. Since before we left Canada I'd been looking forward to the moment we crested the mountains and saw the world's greatest ocean spread out before us. Instead what we got was a bright blue sky above a grey murk from which more and more and more foothills emerged, as if to mock all our efforts. We enjoyed the descent, the fact that gravity was working for us, for once, but we saw no sign of the Pacific. We passed through the town of Santa Ysabel, past paddocks of cows and horses and even dromedaries. We began to climb again! We descended again. And on it went, again and again and again. We stopped at one point in Ramona to grab some food from a health food store, then pushed on further wondering if we would actually reach the sea that day.<br />
<br />
And then disaster struck. Descending a hill, I heard something on my bike give way. At first I though a brake cable had snapped, but as I stopped to examine the problem I realised what had really happened. Just 1.2 km short of the 7000 km mark of our journey, after no spoke trouble at all, one of the spoke nipples had finally failed, splitting clean in half. The spoke itself was fine, but with uneven tension on the rear wheel rim, the wheel had buckled sideways, and now refused to turn cleanly between the rear forks. <br />
<br />
It could have been a lot worse. Fortunately all we had to do was take off the tyre and tube, replace the spoke nipple, and tension it properly to get the warping out of the wheel rim, at least enough to be rideable. But that took time. Yana and I worked pretty well as a team, as you'd expect after six months on the road together, but we only just managed to get to the bottom of the hill and commemorate covering 7000 km with a photo before it was too dark to see anything. Plus the tube in my rear tyre had managed to loosen one of its patches and now had a slow leak, so we started looking for a turf-surf in a rather hilly, somewhat industrial area. We pushed our bikes up an insanely steep driveway to two houses where the lights were on but no-one was home. We found another house where the owner refused to open her front door, and spoke to us from behind a window in the door - a far cry from the friendly folks we'd become accustomed to from Ohio to Arizona. Talk about the land of the home, free of the brave! But the fourth house we tried was a luckier choice. The owner, Jeremy, was in the midst of whipper-snipping his lawn when we found him, and let us tweak spoke tension and change tyres in his garage, as well as cook food, while we told him about our journey, then let us put our tent up in his front yard.<br />
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We woke up, ate breakfast, and hit the road before Jeremy awoke on Saturday, packing the tent down together somewhat reverentially. It's been our home for six months, and we knew that that was the last time, before the psychological end of our journey, that we would be sleeping in it. As we rode through the northern reaches of San Diego we enjoyed the warm weather, and the knowledge that we had almost achieved our goal of crossing all the way from Ontario to the west coast. We wound our way along unfamiliar streets, cursed at the hills we struggled up, joked that there was just an empty hole in reality where the Pacific was supposed to be, as if The Nothing from <i>The Never-Ending Story</i> had swallowed it, and laughed with disbelief whenever we passed yet another patch of imported Australian plants - eucalypts, pigface, even golden wattles in bloom. Eventually we found ourselves rolling downhill, past buildings painted with aquatic scenes. The road signs advising us that "Bridge Ices Before Road" had disappeared now, at last, and instead we were warned that we were "Entering Tsunami Danger Zone". And yet we couldn't actually see the Pacific until we were a couple of hundred metres from the beach. We rolled past a statue of a guy with a surfboard, and onto the sand. And there we were.<br />
<br />
A friendly black fellow named Aaron almost immediately asked about our bikes, bags, and journey. We told him a bit about ourselves, and then asked him to take some video of us arriving at the sea. And so he kindly took our camera and videoed us riding our bikes the last few metres across the sand and into the waves, as we stopped, shouted with triumph, and let the salt water wash around our feet and our wheels.<br />
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After that, we chatted with Aaron some more, got changed into our togs, and I went for a rather brief swim/body-surf (it may be California, but it's also early spring and the water is still chilly), and then headed down the waterfront in search of gelati. We found ice cream and frozen yoghurt instead, and ate that as the sun set over the water. Then we pedalled back inland and found the apartment of Chrystina, a friend of Yana's who said we could stay with her. And that was the end of part one of our excellent adventure.<br />
<br />
For our next trick, we shall attempt to find passage on a boat or boats back to Australia. But I think we can be pretty happy with what we've achieved so far. Last night, out of curiosity, we tried to figure out some distances equivalent to how far we've come. It turns out that we've ridden the equivalent of the straight-line "as the crow flies" distance between Paris, France and Ulan Bator, Mongolia! That of course includes a lot of wiggliness in our path, and the occasional back-track. But I think we've earned a few days rest at least after an effort like that, and maybe having the wind push us along on a sailing boat would be a nice change from all those damn headwinds we pedalled into.Meandering Marsupialshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12501083587914140645noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6633910187288044016.post-54736381926295805872010-03-27T22:35:00.000-07:002010-03-27T22:35:30.820-07:00The ocean is a desert with its life underground...Total distance: 7060.3 km<br />
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<div style="color: #cc0000;">By Sundance:</div><br />
HOLY SHIT! We've run out of land!<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUs_qNslBcg9SxP6yNCEf8a3PHQDfw7oesTUQB_-fq1n4G34RSXsPOes7OMvI0aCOLoo7439_e78in-MSj5r4lYRDaHpZmqh-UhZ2NR2MEIPYiScvt19-ioBlO2aprMbJdTRSKw0kR4Sk/s1600/IMG_3037.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUs_qNslBcg9SxP6yNCEf8a3PHQDfw7oesTUQB_-fq1n4G34RSXsPOes7OMvI0aCOLoo7439_e78in-MSj5r4lYRDaHpZmqh-UhZ2NR2MEIPYiScvt19-ioBlO2aprMbJdTRSKw0kR4Sk/s320/IMG_3037.JPG" /></a></div><br />
Okay, we owe a few more details, and photos from the past few days, but for now, let's just say that we have reached San Diego, and our bikes have dipped their front wheels in The Pacific!<br />
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Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!Meandering Marsupialshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12501083587914140645noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6633910187288044016.post-21010658428307456392010-03-24T14:06:00.000-07:002010-03-24T14:06:17.050-07:00On a dark desert highway...Total Distance: 6796.2 km<br />
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<div style="color: #0b5394;">By Yana:</div><br />
It's been surprisingly long since we last had the opportunity to post a blog entry. Still, we are getting so very close to the end now that we kind of want to post one more before we actually hit that west coast.<br />
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Leaving Sally's place in Tucson turned out to be one of those convoluted departures, where all our gear has exploded out of our bags, and it takes hours and hours to repack. It's a crazy phenomenon, really. But finally, we did get going. It was early afternoon by then, but we had a sweet tailwind, and the weather was otherwise glorious, as well.<br />
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Conveniently, Sally lives quite close to the spot where we had been picked up the last time, so it was a fairly minor matter to ride back there, and then continue our journey from there. With the wind at our backs, we coasted through Tucson, realising that it really is quite nice for cyclists. Plenty of bikelanes, and they're quite wide to boot! Nice! You can quite comfortably cycle along the main roads there. The town also has a slightly Adelaide-ish feel to it, though Sundance reckons it's more like a scaled-up version of Alice Springs.<br />
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Once through Tucson itself, we made our way towards the interstate, as we had established that the I-10 has a cushy frontage road which leads all the way up to Casa Grande. However, when we headed towards the spot where we planned to get onto the road, we found signs telling us the frontage road was closed, due to roadworks. Bother! We resolved the matter reasonably quickly though by asking the advice of a cop who was standing by a pair of crashed cars. The cop was nice enough to take a moment for us, and tell us where the next point of intersection with the interstate was. We headed off, and I briefly noted that one of the two crashed cars had managed to snap off one of its front wheels! Yikes!<br />
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It took a little bit of weaving around some slightly hilly bits, but we made it to our intersection. The sun was starting to sink a little bit, and the saguaro-covered hills were bathed in that pretty golden light - at that point, I actually felt like I might be able to warm to those saguaros, after all. At one point, we almost went off in the wrong direction, but Sundance flagged down a young lady in an SUV, and she pointed us in the right direction. Once on that coveted frontage road, we only had maybe another hour of daylight, and discovered that we hadn't come anywhere near as far as we'd thought we had, to boot. Still, we weren't going to let that get us down, as it felt good to just get out of Tucson and be moving again. Just as the sun was setting, we took note of our surroundings, and decided that right by the side of the road would be a fine place to put up the tent, as the strip of land between the interstate and the frontage road had widened into a fully fledged paddock. We got ourselves set up in the fading light, and had a very nice comfortable night indeed, as the temperature remained pleasant and balmy. Amusingly, hearing the coyotes howling in the distance was also somewhat comforting, as we've become so used to it.<br />
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The next morning, we got up pretty much as early as we ever do, and got ourselves packed and breakfasted very efficiently. It was a good feeling to be on the road within an hour and fifteen minutes, and we found ourselves with another glorious tailwind, as well! Arizona really was working out very nicely for us. We also found that the scenery on either side was bursting with colourful wildflowers, which gave us that wonderful feeling that spring is on its way. In fact, it was shaping up to be quite a warm day, as well. As we drew level with the little town of Red Rock, we decided to find a petrol station and use the toilet. However, what we found was one of those new developments, which we think of as ghost towns that have not yet been populated. Still, we managed to find the older, inhabited parts of town, and a nice lady talking over the fence with her neighbour let us use her toilet, once she had locked away her overly excitable dog. Once we had used the facilities, we found ourselves presented with bowls of yoghurt and berries, which we gleefully devoured. We ended up sitting at the dining room table with our host, Josefina, and another girl name Christie (Kristy? I didn't establish the spelling), and we spent well over an hour chatting. It was one of those wonderful gregarious moments which this trip is all about.<br />
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Before we left, we also got to meet Josefina's son, Clancy, who has spent some time in Wagga Wagga. This kind of tickled us, especially as Clancy had apparently discovered that yep, Wagga is not so different from southern Arizona. We all exchanged contact details, and Josefina stuffed our pockets with toaster pastries, fresh fruit, and a bag of absolutely delicious candied pecans. We said our goodbyes, and headed back onto our frontage road. It really turned out to be a pretty good travelling day all round, as least for the first half of it. We stopped for lunch in Eloy, and then got moving again pretty quickly. <br />
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It was just before we reached Casa Grande that disaster struck: Sundance rode over a screw which promptly embedded itself in his rear tyre, and resulted in our first puncture since Fort Davis, Texas. Not even the extra-thick uber tubes could withstand that screw, and it did quite a number on the tube. We found ourselves a nice shady spot to sit, and Sundane set to patching the tube, which had been run right through on one side, and punctured in multiple spots on the other side. I had a reasonably hard job getting the thing out of the actual tyre as well. It was definitely one of those doozies which chew up insane amounts of time. <br />
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We headed on into Casa Grande, and during a quick grocery run, discovered that the tube had gone down again. Upon closer investigation, Sundance found that the patch hadn't held, and we ended up going for one of the normal tubes we still had floating around in our packs. By then, the sun had started to set, but we were determined to at least leave Casa Grande. We got pretty close to doing that, as in the end, we found ourselves a turf surf at a house which was pretty much right on the city limits. We got ourselves set up and fed, and ended up doing a bit of socialising with the family. Ken and Katie turned out to be a friendly and helpful pair, and quite adept at keeping their little tribe of kidlets from completely swamping us with attention, which was cute in many ways. We got to top up our water supply, and they ended up slipping us some extra money for the road, which gave us that very humbled feeling which you get from great hospitality. It was also interesting to note that the whole money thing had not happened since Louisiana. Actually, we have decided that Arizona is probably the first place to truly give Kentucky a run for its money in terms of hospitality. In fact, Arizona might well win in those stakes.<br />
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We got ourselves going at a reasonable time, despite having spent part of the morning chatting with Ken and Katie. We had a reasonably smooth run into Maricopa, which turned out to be a much larger town than expected. We stopped by a Wal-Mart to make some peanut butter and honey sandwiches, and purchase extravagances like Clif bars and the like. We got going again quite swiftly after that, and also crossed paths with a large ute containing a driver who honked and waved - I'm pretty sure it was Ken, as the baseball cap and goatee looked familiar, but I couldn't be completely certain at so quick a glance.<br />
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Once turned out of Maricopa, we found ourselves smacked with a headwind. As it had been a while since we had encountered one of those, it made us a little grumpy, especially as the little road we were on turned out to be a popular route for ridiculously large trucks and semis. At least most of them were polite drivers and gave us a wide berth, though a few of them buzzed by us rather closer than necessary.<br />
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Due to the wind, we were definitely not going to make it to Gila Bend that day, we figured. We stopped in the tiny little town of Mobile for lunch, at a Primary School, of all things. When we asked for permission to do so, we generated some interest, and ended up having a bit of a chat with one of the teachers, Kara. It was a nice little lunch break, made all the better by the fact that we were in some nice solid shade and got to fill up our water bottles, as that sun was nothing to be sneezed at. Spring in southern Arizona already has a bit of force to it, I can believe the stories of how stinking hot summer gets there!<br />
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After we had ridden on into that stupid wind for another decent stretch, Sundance found himself afflicted with yet another flat tyre - the normal thickness tube we had put in to replace the uber tube had not held up for very long. As Sundance had made a point of cutting up an old normal tube to make a super-patch for the uber tube, we got stuck into putting that one back in. However, when Sundance started to pump up the tube, we discovered that the makeshift super patch wasn't super enough, and had to admit that the tube was unfixable. Frustrating. I got out another spare tube and patched the freshly punctured one, and we took a few moments to wallow in the sheer craptasticness of it all.<br />
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We actually ended up getting within eight miles of Gila Bend that night before pulling off and finding a nice sheltered spot between some trees to camp. The railroad was a little bit closer than we would have liked, but that had been the situation for a while, so it didn't really bother us. It was still a balmy, comfortable night, and we shot into Gila Bend relatively promtly the next morning, especially as we had decided to defer breakfast until we were actually there.<br />
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Luckily, we found ourselves a shelter to make breakfast under, as there was a bit of a squall of rain in the middle of it, though not enough to be worth worrying about in the long run - it was really just enough rain to make the hot bitumen smell kind of feral. Funnily enough, I had kind of missed that smell. I guess it speaks of hot places.<br />
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It took us a bit of time to get out of Gila Bend, partly because the grocery options were rather woeful. We also filled our water to full capacity for the first time, as we were supposedly about to head into the desert, and we were told that the stretch between Gila Bend and Yuma was kind of desolate, with the towns in between being little more than signs with names. Sundance had plotted out an alternate route which would keep us off the interstate the whole way - no mean feat, as this was one of those stretches which was very interstate-oriented.<br />
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We got stuck into going along the course Sundance had plotted, once again battling a wind which was against us. A decent distance along our chosen road, we found ourselves at a confusing intersection, and eventually established that the most direct route to where we wanted to go was for a 15km stretch along a reasonably gnarly dirt road. We decided that it was preferable to heading back, and after all, we had done dirt road stretches before. For a while, it was just fine, and even the first puddle was okay to ride through. It was when we hit a big succession of road-spanning puddles that things became problematic. We soon found ourselves having to get off our bikes and drag them through ankle-thick viscous mud. Desert indeed! After the puddly stretch, we had to take some time out to wash shoes, socks, and brake pads, as all sorts of crud had gotten caught in there. A passing driver also told us that the Gila river was currently running, which meant that our chosen route to Yuma was most likely cut off.<br />
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We made it to the end of the dirt road, which luckily became much better after the puddly stretch. We ended up deciding to turn towards the interstate, as that was the direction the wind was pushing us into, and we didn't feel like struggling another 15 km into a headwind for the uncertain possibility that we'd be able to cross the dam which was supposedly blocking off our route. We found a house by the interstate, where a friendly Latino fellow let us use his phone and topped up our water. Sundance calle the Highway Patrol to check bikes were allowed on this stretch of the insterstate, and got no useful answer, because the people didn't know themselves. In the end, judging by the fact that the Cycle Arizona map described the riding conditions along the interstate, and also finding a sign asking cyclists to keep to the shoulder, we came to the conclusion that it had to be allowed. As our escapade through the mud had taken up a lot of time, we didn't have much daylight left, so we ended up pushing on in the dark a little bit until we hit Sentinel. There we stopped at some tables outside the local petrol station, made ourselves some dinner, and then found ourselves a camp spot about 1km outside of town, in the so-called desert.<br />
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The next morning we packed up and breakfasted, and then headed into Sentinel in hopes of using the toilets as the petrol station. This turned out to be a no-go, as the owner quite rudely advised us that the water wasn't working. Once she was gone, the owner's daughter suggested we just use their own toilet rather than the public one, but we didn't want to get her in trouble, plus we knew there to be a rest stop only two miles further down the interstate. We set off with another one of those wonderful tailwinds, and reached the rest area very quickly. The drinking fountains weren't working, but the toilets certainly were, which was all we really needed. Back on our bikes, we cruised along at an easy 30+ km/h, and very soon came to the town of Dateland, named not for people going on dates there, but for growing dates, much to Sundance's pleasant surprise, as he loves eating dates. We shared an absolutely delicious date shake, and also got a slice of date pecan pie to serve as Sundance's birthday cake, as that was coming up very soon indeed. Sundance had been in a bit of a low mood all morning, despite the headwind, and he took the time to do some handstands, cartwheels, and even a handspring on the grass, which made him feel a bit better. He'd been missing doing gymnastics and is looking forward to getting back to it when we return to Adelaide.<br />
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We headed onwards to Mohawk, and headed into a closed rest area, where we sat on the tables and made our lunch. Good thing we hadn't counted on anything being in Mohawk, because there really was nothing to speak of. I'm not even sure I saw a sign, let alone any buildings telling us what spot exactly was supposed to be Mohawk. We made a quick stop in Tacna to refill our water and share some orange ice cream/sorbet stuff, and then headed onwards to Wellton, where we found out that there was a public library, so we stopped for some Wi-Fi access to see if there were any warmshowers hosts in Yuma, as it looked like we'd be able to still make it there that day. We found nothing useful though, and ended up spending quite a bit of time at the library. Still, we managed to make 100km before sunset that day, and ended up finding a turf surf a few km out of Wellton. The people we stayed with, Gary and Nancy, certainly went above and beyond our request for a spot to put up our tent: we found ourselves presented with a plate each of delicious chicken curry, followed by dessert. One more point for Arizona! Gary actually mentioned that he'd seen us in Sentinel that morning, and was impressed at the distane we'd covered. We did cook ourselves a second dinner though, simply because we needed the extra carbohydrate for our crazy energy output. We spent that time chatting with Gary and Nancy, before eventually turning in for the night.<br />
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The next morning, Gary and Nancy spirited us off to one of the restaurants in Wellton, where they treated us to breakfast. Nice of them. Once again, it's a reminder of how many good deeds we have to pay forward when we get home. It was also a nice treat since it was tehnically Sundance's birthday, as by then, the date had at least clocked over to the 22nd in Australia.<br />
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It ended up being a slightly slower morning than it had been lately, probably partly because we had the chance to have a shower, and Sundance wanted to just relax and have a calm, happy day. It was pushing noon when we got going, and we said our goodbyes. We ended up going on a bit of a zig zag trail on our way to Yuma, in order to avoid the mountain pass. There were quite a few different fields on either side of us as we rode along, and we could smell all the fresh produce. We stopped for lunch at the intersection of our zig zag road and the road which would actually lead us into Yuma itself. It was getting late into the afternoon as we approached the town, at which point I could hear a curious rhythmic fapping coming from my bike. A moment of inspection revealed that my rear tyre had developed a small bulge in the side, which smacked against the brake pads with each wheel revolution. Not good. Sundance let out a little bit of the tyre pressure and we rode a little further, in hopes of finding a servo where we could look at fixing it. However, the problem got worse quite rapidly, and just before we hit a sports bar on the outskirts of town, the whole arrangement gave a loud pop as the tyre gave out and the tube burst. That's two of the uber tubes down.<br />
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Luckily, Sundance managed to get a lift from a nice lady who had just dropped off her husband at the sports bar, and she drove him to Wal-Mart to get a quick fix el cheapo replacement tyre while I removed the old one. I found to my surprise that in this case, the tube looked fixable, so I patched it while I waited. Sundance returned with the new tyre, and we decided to put in the new uber tube we had received from Gary, as a sort of birthday present for Sundance. I twiddled my thumbs for a bit while Sundance fiddled with the new tyre, and we got talking briefly with one of the fellows hanging out at the bar. I eventually went in and asked him for various local advice involving where we'd be able to set up a tent in town, as the tyre incident had completely blown our schedule. The fellow, Bob, ended up offering to put us up for the night and give us a lift in his truck, bikes and all. We accepted, and I packed the gear into the truck while Sundance continued to wrestle the tyre - as we had established before, the narrow rims of my Canadian bike, combined with those Wal-Mart tyres are just horrible when it comes to working the things on and off, and the uber tube was making it all the worse. Poor Sundance ended up getting badly frustrated by the whole thing - the tyre was such a tight fit that he actually snapped two tyre levers! - and we decided that we'd just have to find a bikeshop the following day to take care of the problem.<br />
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We dropped off our gear at Bob's place, and Sundance took a bit of time for himself to defuse all that negativity from the tyre wrestling - not a good way to spend part of his birthday. I spent that time socialising with Bob, and when Sundance re-emerged, Bob took us out to dinner, which was really nice of him. We discovered that IHOP is so much more than just a pancake joint, and actually serves quite reasonable quality food. They also let Sundance use their phone, so he could call both his parents and say hi for his birthday. It was a little bit of a process, but we got back eventually, and fell into bed.<br />
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The next day, once we had breakfasted and showered, Bob packed us back into his truck and drove us to the local bicycle shop. There I took my rear wheel into the shop, explaining the way the valve stem of the tube wasn't protruding far enough for the pump to grab onto it properly, and the way we now couldn't get the tyre off because it was too tight. One of the bike shop guys got the thing sorted out quickly enough, and pumped it up. We had intended to get a different tyre, as Wal-Mart is really far from ideal, but then, we have less than a week to go before we hit the coast. Bob came in briefly to say his goodbyes, we exchanged contact details, and he headed off. After having a quick chat about it, Sundance and I agreed to stick with the Wal-Mart tyre, and learn a few tricks about getting the stubborn thing off, should there be another puncture. I'm reasonably confident that we are in a better place to handle it now.<br />
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Once that was done, we headed back to the sports bar, as that had been the point where we had left off. We then went in search of the nearest decent supermarket, and I did a quick grocery run while Sundance was on bike guard duty. We made ourselves some lunch there, and I had a random encounter with a drink vending machine, where leaning against it and inching down it to sit on the ground resulted in me accidentally pushing a button and getting a free orange-flavoured soda for my efforts. It was an amusing moment of startlement, but still, kind of cool. Hooray for free soft drink, in all its High Fructose Corn Syrupy goodness!<br />
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We did have a brief chat with a postal delivery lady who thought our adventure was the coolest thing, and a passer by had also handed Sundance some money, which was another one of those nice things. It makes us feel a little bit like bums when people do that, but it's still appreciated. With lunch done, we headed to the banks of the Colorado River, dangled our feet in so Sundance could feel like his birthday hadn't been entirely swallowed up with the effort to get back on the road, and then checked the Yuma tourist info for California maps. There weren't any complimentary ones, so we shrugged and just headed across the state border, making state border crossings a thing of the past for this trip! California, hooray! We have now also crossed two entire time zones by bicycle.<br />
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That being said, California wasn't being so great. The road surfaces we found ourselves on were absolutely terrible, to the point of giving Louisiana a run for its money in that department, and Louisiana is supposed to have the worst roads in the USA! How California, which has a larger economy than most countries, can have such lousy roads is just beyond me. The frontage road along the interstate was just shocking, which we proceeded to rant about with another cyclist we met, Phil, who was coming from the other direction. Phil is heading for Austin, Texas, as it turned out, and he was happy to give us some advice on the roads ahead.<br />
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We rode on to the next intersection of note, and found ourselves a nice sheltered desolate spot to put up our tent. We had our dinner and looked up at the darkening sky, and also stuck four burning matches into Sundance's slice of date pecan pie, as the four corners of the square, as this is a square number birthday for Sundance - 36! Sure, it was a tiny little birthday party, but kind of nice in its own right.<br />
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The next morning, we decided to opt for the direction which would take us away from the interstate, even though it would be a decent-sized detour. To our chagrin, about 15km along the way, the very slight tailwind we had started out with turned into an absolute demon of a headwind. Lovely. But there was nothing much we could do but push on, as our dwindling water supply was not going to make it an extra day. At least there was a little cut-off road which would shrink our detour somewhat, although our suspicions of it being a dirt road turned out to be extremely well-founded. As we had gone around 35km by then, and it was early afternoon, we stopped under a tree for lunch before tackling that road in ernest. Honestly, it wasn't even a road at all, but a few tyre tracks through a cross-country landscape. Good fun, but also quite tricky and at times frustrating. I'd still say it was worth it though, especially as we encountered a decent-sized tortoise lumbering its way across the road. Nifty! It did retreat into its shell when it noticed us, though it ended up sticking its head and front feet out far enough again for us to get a decent picture.<br />
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Back on the bitumen, we found ourselves dealing with all sorts of winds, mostly cross. We rode through the Imperial Sand Dunes Recreation Area, noting a bunch of people hooning over the dunes on quad bikes to our left. It was a bit hilly, but still a pretty landscape. Not a huge area, but still worthwhile. We rode on between wheat fields, date and orange orchards, and sheep paddocks before finding a house to ask for a turf surf at, about 15km shy of Brawley. The people in question offered us their caravan to stay in, which certainly goes above and beyond the need for a spot of earth to stick up a tent on. So we spent the night safely tucked away and got to cook dinner on a double-burner gas stove, and have a shower this morning. Afterwards we headed into the town of Brawley and had a huge Chinese meal for lunch, so big that we couldn't finish it all. And that's saying something! Still, the leftovers will make a good dinner tonight. Then we found a Wi-Fi hotspot at a supermarket to post this blog entry, before hitting the road again. We have another big day ahead of us today, and one more set of mountains to cross before we get to the Pacific!Meandering Marsupialshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12501083587914140645noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6633910187288044016.post-70475124609874223992010-03-16T10:17:00.000-07:002010-03-16T10:17:08.516-07:00Arizona Rocks!Total Distance: unchanged.<br />
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<span style="color: #0b5394;">By Yana:</span><br />
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After Sundance dropped his bike off on Tuesday at a bike shop to get the rear gears and bottom-bracket looked over, and some faffing around on Wednesday morning at Chuck and Cheryl's place, we managed to get ourselves a rental car with Enterprise. It's funny though, you can tell that they vary a little from state to state - we immediately found the customer service in El Paso way better than it was in Tucson. We did manage to arrange to get picked up though, and the fellow who picked us up in the little yellow beetle we were going to rent was very friendly indeed. In fact, Dave was the friendliest Hoosier we had ever met, and he very quickly earned himself a place on our list of people we at least mean to write postcards to along the way.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHF13OWlHefI7_EpNF6OASMbWRmv9l1MGEl7O7yh4A0bQtjpFQ0xox0FBfb4Lt6zS0oJiELKQ3UIvwhhpGdyFXRk1hSoHs0nyBsDSnvSs1BEGcVcXQvuDviHyY_VYSG1GqckIEl4QpKdY/s1600-h/IMG_2089.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHF13OWlHefI7_EpNF6OASMbWRmv9l1MGEl7O7yh4A0bQtjpFQ0xox0FBfb4Lt6zS0oJiELKQ3UIvwhhpGdyFXRk1hSoHs0nyBsDSnvSs1BEGcVcXQvuDviHyY_VYSG1GqckIEl4QpKdY/s320/IMG_2089.JPG" /></a></div><br />
Once we were decked out with our fabulously cute little rental car, we headed north. The idea was to make it at least to Sedona, where our friends Jeff and Annette had some friends who might be able to put us up. Unfortunately, that didn't end up eventuating, as the people in question were in the midst of a frantically busy couple of days. By the time we had established this, it was reasonably late, and the hotels prices were inflated, what with us being in a tourist town. We ended up going for a drive in hopes of finding somewhere to park and and just sleep in the car. We did find such a spot, but it was basically on the outskirts of Flagstaff. Oh well, at least we were closer to the Grand Canyon that way. Our night in the car was reasonably comfy as well, as the seatbacks actually wind down quite far. We did wake up in the morning with a layer of ice on the inside of the windows - the frozen condensation of our breath! Eek! That took a little bit to clear up.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaKnzkMBFc9DdlRRZZWyAPKjPsnBGVRSFNYHc7uWgmUvYSaXco4BnQ2-P9ZItcq4yEt25qMK89JeA3sD0tZeh3f4hTYPEIRLM4pDf0v1zGlwsS8ty3P7ZpTnvXUl7eut1kTXksEZa3MvQ/s1600-h/IMG_2098.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaKnzkMBFc9DdlRRZZWyAPKjPsnBGVRSFNYHc7uWgmUvYSaXco4BnQ2-P9ZItcq4yEt25qMK89JeA3sD0tZeh3f4hTYPEIRLM4pDf0v1zGlwsS8ty3P7ZpTnvXUl7eut1kTXksEZa3MvQ/s320/IMG_2098.JPG" /></a></div><br />
After a quick brekkie at Denny's (which was more for the sake of my long-standing curiosity than anything else), we headed through Flagstaff to the Canyon itself. It was, of course, breathtaking. The snow along the rim of it only enhanced the beauty of the place.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg53grCvSrSOCAEch-Wu_sWvFNWimpchHpfy34ubTaGWxud8uQ7UDRdn6zjn-7z4Mgv19nVUdyMjLBiYa8Awjym4ofjvRkHAnBcNAKbpV2eXJQ1e8AFL0DJ8YA2GWgQnwCXsI4qLtcpFfI/s1600-h/IMG_2141.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg53grCvSrSOCAEch-Wu_sWvFNWimpchHpfy34ubTaGWxud8uQ7UDRdn6zjn-7z4Mgv19nVUdyMjLBiYa8Awjym4ofjvRkHAnBcNAKbpV2eXJQ1e8AFL0DJ8YA2GWgQnwCXsI4qLtcpFfI/s320/IMG_2141.JPG" /></a></div><br />
We did that first look into the canyon itself from the rim, like all tourists do, and then pondered what to do with the rest of our time there. It was early afternoon by then, and we decided we had time to do at least part of one of the little day walks into the Canyon itself. We decided on the Kaibab trail, which first took us through some thick snow and some steep slippery bits - but we managed just fine, even without the crampons which we had been recommended to attach to our shoes - we were glad we didn't bother with those, as we would have had to actually buy them, and we're already lugging enough gear with us as it is.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHXz-ERZ-jrZAfQaeASjDvF4M7z_9aZZQwjbGKo1w8TQTJBJI1O8WhxEArXw50IFD4m795Vss9xS-iy0PQ4tH8UG_ah4AFEXCh03OLkKKvws79w4CcVE-9_T9dNla2NYe5Wo3OLDU7zU8/s1600-h/IMG_2167.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHXz-ERZ-jrZAfQaeASjDvF4M7z_9aZZQwjbGKo1w8TQTJBJI1O8WhxEArXw50IFD4m795Vss9xS-iy0PQ4tH8UG_ah4AFEXCh03OLkKKvws79w4CcVE-9_T9dNla2NYe5Wo3OLDU7zU8/s320/IMG_2167.JPG" /></a></div>Once past the snow line, the beautiful vistas opened to us even more, now in more detail, as we were a little closer to it all. We watched several ravens sail past us quite close, as we were actually still pretty far from the bottom of the Canyon. Of course, we knew that we were doomed to only scratch the surface of the place that day, but we are already determined to come back for probably at least two trips: one hiking through, the other one kayaking.<br />
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Once out of the Canyon, we headed to the Desert View point, as we had been told the sunsets over the Canyon are just amazing. Honestly, that part was a bit of a disappointment, as it basically just got dark inside the canyon, and we just sort of watched the sun set over the darkness. It was also really cold by then, so we fled back to the car, and headed back to Flagstaff. We went in search of the Thai restaurant which Jeff had recommended to us, but ended up finding a different one instead, and opting for that, as it was getting late. We then drove back to Sedona, found ourselves a more convenient parking spot, and had a somewhat warmer night in the car, what with our elevation not being quite as high any more.<br />
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The next morning, we went for a drive through Sedona and the surrounding area, as we had only seen it in the dark on our previous run through. The trip back had definitely been worth it, the place is absolutely beautiful. A tourist trap, yes, but still very charming. There were some beautiful mountains and rock formations around the place, as well as a bunch of mountain bike trails - another thing we shall have to come back for, it seems. Yes, there was a certain irony in our not having our bikes with us on that part of the trip.<br />
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We also went on a brief jaunt through the town itself, admiring some of the cute shops and eclectic sights.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcN4bIAuqJlDAHuuFH6igPq2btWA37rOLDY7jrCpEJyPR_Hx5g1jgA-clecf9JL6S8YtTd_SmCx3nr1EUebMqBfflSAB8xq-E5PM5H8K54Q76vwuN3-zj5IW96jyuUP-MaIdpoKe27Iok/s1600-h/IMG_2263.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcN4bIAuqJlDAHuuFH6igPq2btWA37rOLDY7jrCpEJyPR_Hx5g1jgA-clecf9JL6S8YtTd_SmCx3nr1EUebMqBfflSAB8xq-E5PM5H8K54Q76vwuN3-zj5IW96jyuUP-MaIdpoKe27Iok/s320/IMG_2263.JPG" /></a></div><br />
Once we had had our fill of Sedona, we headed back up to Flagstaff, stopping briefly to actually find the correct Thai place and have lunch there. Then it was off eastwards towards the Meteorite Crater. We arrived just in time for one of the guided tours, which was quite informative in terms of the history and geology of the place,<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGNtgnFxP45zSU3pSu8-nLYKOrMokQQ4IjmHtjfeHzPiDHtzmBPRt9OCYmvcqn85WZXrm3QSMuktkHyC-ND4fXi0V8RVCCrJ2GXh4HGMIjBX-F0caco9Z-g8IpvzRfd_ULZI2CXMBV0cg/s1600-h/IMG_2303.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGNtgnFxP45zSU3pSu8-nLYKOrMokQQ4IjmHtjfeHzPiDHtzmBPRt9OCYmvcqn85WZXrm3QSMuktkHyC-ND4fXi0V8RVCCrJ2GXh4HGMIjBX-F0caco9Z-g8IpvzRfd_ULZI2CXMBV0cg/s320/IMG_2303.JPG" /></a></div><br />
After the tour, we had a look around the museum, which boasted a video game in which you could manufacture a meteorite impact, as well as chunks of meteorite and other informative displays. The gift shop was a bit of a blast from the past for me, as it had several fossils for sale which my parents had bought versions of on their own trip through this neck of the woods 20-odd years ago.<br />
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By the time we were finished with that, it was too late to still check out the Petrified Forest and Painted Desert, so we left that for the next day, headed onward to Holbrook, and found ourselves the cheapest motel room yet. Apparently stand-alone businesses owned by Indian (dots-not-feathers) folks are the way to go. We also rang Chuck and Cheryl to let them know when we'd be back, and were informed that they'd made plans to be out over part of the weekend, so we'd have to hurry back the next day to collect our stuff and find alternate accommodations. We rang another warmshowers host, Sally, who said she'd be glad to host us, then set about cooking dinner on the path in front of our hotel room. We also, conveniently, discovered that pretty much the most cost-efficient way of getting fuel for our camp stove is to go for the kerosene pump at petrol stations - 67 cents for the bottle.<br />
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The next day, we extended our car rental over the phone, and found that because the place is closed on Sundays, we had to rent the thing for one day more than we wanted it. Annoying and money-sapping, but there wasn't much we could do about it. We headed on to our next sight-seeing destinations. Conveniently enough, the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest are part of the same National Park, and right next to each other. We checked out the Painted Desert first, and discovered a ranger showing off some flint-knapping skills.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3TQ7gw0UE1iNMGFy1yt8WAmNUtwG-2bFNLxHqx3T00ncEt1BhsOJpDEszmJs7n8aAnlGA8913mjRifPDyL0-C6rPhN_wraztdNP8f9PmepSbUJgthV5I3N-HsLTR-C4WXLqFFqglzHmQ/s1600-h/IMG_2331.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3TQ7gw0UE1iNMGFy1yt8WAmNUtwG-2bFNLxHqx3T00ncEt1BhsOJpDEszmJs7n8aAnlGA8913mjRifPDyL0-C6rPhN_wraztdNP8f9PmepSbUJgthV5I3N-HsLTR-C4WXLqFFqglzHmQ/s320/IMG_2331.JPG" /></a></div><br />
Unfortunately, he was about to pack up, so we couldn't give it a shot ourselves. Crying shame, although we did learn a little bit about it, as he was nice enough to explain some of the theory behind it to us. We then headed into the desert itself, which admittedly wasn't as colourful as I had expected, but very spiffy nonetheless.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0x3773KGxrh02al-lUT9Ev5KEkV96GGZV_YxQiyDxfkbJHK_73YxSz4pmp_9gHmVpyr8jmWzwnUfMmEbWgucYSgit-LNKynQDO8ioo_PFjAoUYblFb1HvKXrrvay8LWPut04byL8XIlk/s1600-h/IMG_2387.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0x3773KGxrh02al-lUT9Ev5KEkV96GGZV_YxQiyDxfkbJHK_73YxSz4pmp_9gHmVpyr8jmWzwnUfMmEbWgucYSgit-LNKynQDO8ioo_PFjAoUYblFb1HvKXrrvay8LWPut04byL8XIlk/s320/IMG_2387.JPG" /></a></div><br />
The nifty thing about that place is that there aren't actually any paths per se, and you can meander pretty much any way you like. Pretty unusual for a wilderness area, as people just wandering all over the place tends to be a problem when it comes to preserving a bit of untouched nature.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRHyZcWE-WJqA-nzGdW61sCYMMdsqrIo7xfMLLsIoeYt-LPS8dCU75ZWUOATTtk5m0kaeupMGlJZkYJEjfi5zQ5zWWncZ4pplzGbgFPH4vaObIJuw1wq6a5gZ6iOHgGrFwcjpQjSiftT0/s1600-h/IMG_2408.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRHyZcWE-WJqA-nzGdW61sCYMMdsqrIo7xfMLLsIoeYt-LPS8dCU75ZWUOATTtk5m0kaeupMGlJZkYJEjfi5zQ5zWWncZ4pplzGbgFPH4vaObIJuw1wq6a5gZ6iOHgGrFwcjpQjSiftT0/s320/IMG_2408.JPG" /></a></div>There were all sorts of pretty rocks which we found, and that's aside from the chunks of petrified wood which littered even this part of the park.<br />
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We headed into the Petrified Forest itself, making stops along various points of interest, and then taking walks through the actual "forest" parts.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgskbPd_lLiqibwnxYoH-Q2KsdQnKcZEtJvTvi3jyS_0UG8O20F2X6jZrhrHuxapOoTfLeEhTtcuTNgvlGceGUATwEjWI6L7CW8K-sh6KhBNalI3x6-RXsoq2FH9OBO1MDNlR6HXUZeTHE/s1600-h/IMG_2471.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgskbPd_lLiqibwnxYoH-Q2KsdQnKcZEtJvTvi3jyS_0UG8O20F2X6jZrhrHuxapOoTfLeEhTtcuTNgvlGceGUATwEjWI6L7CW8K-sh6KhBNalI3x6-RXsoq2FH9OBO1MDNlR6HXUZeTHE/s320/IMG_2471.JPG" /></a></div><br />
It's really quite amazing what a variety of minerals can seep into an old log of wood. We found ourselves thinking that a slice of one of the larger logs would probably make a beautiful coffee table, if you have that kind of money to fritter away.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ1v61e5pASLyZK_52d5HFAkuLFB9VcmRJCmzxHraUAr7E-Zz1bLGAdYhzQmnHX5XmfvSAi9LmNjgx_QhbFYlpDX4Ky3TB_NqNGw51yyakcuk4NAB_P8rAozb7VwctHfhKhbqq896mJu0/s1600-h/IMG_2472.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ1v61e5pASLyZK_52d5HFAkuLFB9VcmRJCmzxHraUAr7E-Zz1bLGAdYhzQmnHX5XmfvSAi9LmNjgx_QhbFYlpDX4Ky3TB_NqNGw51yyakcuk4NAB_P8rAozb7VwctHfhKhbqq896mJu0/s320/IMG_2472.JPG" /></a></div><br />
Once finished with the Petrified Forest, we headed back to Holbrook, and let our hosts in Tucson know our status. It was late afternoon by then, and we would be able to make it back to Tucson somewhat, but not too ridiculously, late. Unfortunately, a wrong turn tacked two extra hours onto our itinerary, which Cheryl and Chuck were not going to put up with, so we collected our gear and opted for the sleep in car option again, this time very late, as it took us a while to find a spot where nobody was going to run us off. It was a pretty embarrassing incident, as it's not fun to realise that you're the chump. But that's how it goes sometimes.<br />
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Luckily, we had already contacted our next host, Sally, as we knew Cheryl and Chuck had other places to be anyway. Sally was quite accommodating, and had left the gate to the backyard open for us so we could dump our gear, and then explore a little bit of Tucson. We ended up checking out the Saguaro National park, which is just on the outskirts. Yep, more cacti than you can shake a stick at.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgNdO_PtXsK6mMhqMpwTf6DO-Dho_wKVK7l_iP1z1kUEz7gXpBVsMli6S5KicCCP1DHk1_aTgnzC3WcCXU0NL7qhUaMblfeuZFQ4qhj1FxwN6nZwRBDgQ_QoThZJHnVP650CrWy6JYibA/s1600-h/IMG_2524.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgNdO_PtXsK6mMhqMpwTf6DO-Dho_wKVK7l_iP1z1kUEz7gXpBVsMli6S5KicCCP1DHk1_aTgnzC3WcCXU0NL7qhUaMblfeuZFQ4qhj1FxwN6nZwRBDgQ_QoThZJHnVP650CrWy6JYibA/s320/IMG_2524.JPG" /></a></div><br />
I must admit that I still haven't really warmed to those Saguaro cacti. While I admit that they are kind of cool, I find them somehow aesthetically unpleasing. Still, their vaguely anthromorphic appearance makes for some amusing photo opportunities, which we of course took:<br />
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Hiiiiiiiii-yah!<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9rSvtoXF-v-rQhMs4f9-B3jwvl1uCXjFVKChgc2sjM0sHYEgZhKe2Z7ZPy1S5P82JcaRGS_ZXYUcyCMN7aFMmpFtEI7lBvSi3b5E8a9qdAbyNVBMHQ_qxKdOb-PRjgcpCjObKvERspm4/s1600-h/IMG_2533.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9rSvtoXF-v-rQhMs4f9-B3jwvl1uCXjFVKChgc2sjM0sHYEgZhKe2Z7ZPy1S5P82JcaRGS_ZXYUcyCMN7aFMmpFtEI7lBvSi3b5E8a9qdAbyNVBMHQ_qxKdOb-PRjgcpCjObKvERspm4/s320/IMG_2533.JPG" /></a></div> Oh-way-oh?<br />
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After the park, we decided to go for a drive along the way through the mountains we had taken to Tucson, as we had gone through there in the dark, and thus missed the scenery. We got to appreciate just how far we had come that day, but also realised that we hadn't really missed that much scenery-wise. It was getting reasonably late in the afternoon by then, so we just stopped at a grocery store for some melon slices, and then headed back to Sally's. On the way there, we stopped to examine the ghost bike I had spotted there earlier that day:<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEE73q_dqY9Hq96ufOWTpX6IBu1AxBoC5vSMoUanVdgkLO7FTGJiralA_36DQzSi7Vh0tqwOnyy_LJLVR4SBkgk_ZvUJG0qjDo3G3m2-01dAP_lArNarH9wcVPyaBamA9hHWuoLqxUOJ8/s1600-h/IMG_2542.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEE73q_dqY9Hq96ufOWTpX6IBu1AxBoC5vSMoUanVdgkLO7FTGJiralA_36DQzSi7Vh0tqwOnyy_LJLVR4SBkgk_ZvUJG0qjDo3G3m2-01dAP_lArNarH9wcVPyaBamA9hHWuoLqxUOJ8/s320/IMG_2542.JPG" /></a></div> For those of you not in the know, there has been a worldwide Ghost Bike project going on for several years now. Whenever a cyclist is killed, their bike is painted white and left as a sort of tombstone on the side of the road where they were killed. I saw my first one in Melbourne, actually, though it was removed after a few weeks, probably because it had been chained to a piece of public art. Since then, I hadn't seen any more of them, until this little one. It's chilling as it is, the thought of having one's own bike painted white and left as a monument, but it's also especially saddening to see this particular one, as it is obviously a child's bike.<br />
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Sally wasn't home yet from her errands when we got to her place, so we plonked ourselves down in her lovely eclectic backyard, and had a look at the various magazines she had left for us to pass the time with. Sally arrived not too long after us, so we finally go to meet her in person. She turned out to be absolutely lovely, and sort of reminds me of some of my great-aunts, but more so. The kind of lady I hope to be somewhat like when I hit my grey-haired years. We all cooked dinner together and had a very nice chat. I also found out from Sally that the ghost bike we had spotted had belonged to a ten-year-old boy who had been hit a year ago by a drunk driver, who was now in jail. I guess some manner of justice had been served, though it won't bring the kid back. According to Sally, there are several ghost bikes dotted throughout Tucson - not too surprising, I suppose, as Tucson is a pretty bike-aware community.<br />
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We spent the next day picking up Sundance's bike from the repair shop, returning some maps to Chuck and Cheryl, returning the car, and doing general getting-ready-to-leave things. That night, we made some of our home-made pizza to have with Sally, which she enjoyed immensely, and Sundance also baked some more bread.<br />
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And today is the day to leave, with still a little more packing up to do. It's not so much further to go now, and that west coast is really looking quite attainable now.<br />
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<div style="color: #cc0000;">Addendum by Sundance:</div><br />
Just as a side-note of trivia, we've passed through a couple of places I'd only heard about in songs during this jaunt. One of them is Benson, Arizona which pops up in a song on the soundtrack of the extra-low budget science fiction movie <i>Darkstar</i>. The other is Winslow, Arizona from the Eagles song "<i>Take it easy</i>", as in;<br />
<i> Well I'm a-standin' on a corner in Winslow, Arizona</i><br />
<i> such a fine sight to see.</i><br />
<i> It's a girl, my lord, in a flat-bed Ford,</i><br />
<i> slowin' down to take a look at me...</i><br />
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It's kinda interesting to experience these places as real locations, not just abstract names, and know that people really do grow up, live, work, and love in these places.Meandering Marsupialshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12501083587914140645noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6633910187288044016.post-4045255845311081382010-03-09T13:25:00.000-08:002010-03-09T13:45:24.189-08:00We just smiled and gave him a vegemite sandwich.Total distance: 6202.6km<br />
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<span style="color: #0b5394;">By Yana:</span> <br />
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We sailed out of Douglas on Saturday morning, enjoying a fine tailwind. After about 24 km, we hit the 6000 km point of our journey. We stopped to enjoy the sense of achievement, and of course took the obligatory photo that came with it.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6079OVqyNgpXJ2xapr90iKhV8VVLzLqlSAcTYRhquX1ZyrG9yBhtZMaaHBhn60e1774eDao4Nq7dlezbKcTOTatrkZVsNesZgLBHJI3s870PmGNv-QJqWj3IQEhg5iIwYtki_5sJSbNQ/s1600-h/IMG_2055.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6079OVqyNgpXJ2xapr90iKhV8VVLzLqlSAcTYRhquX1ZyrG9yBhtZMaaHBhn60e1774eDao4Nq7dlezbKcTOTatrkZVsNesZgLBHJI3s870PmGNv-QJqWj3IQEhg5iIwYtki_5sJSbNQ/s320/IMG_2055.JPG" /></a></div><br />
That done, we headed uphill towards the town of Bisbee. Despite the tailwind, we were going a bit slower, mostly due to the altitude messing with my performance levels like crazy - I still haven't really adapted to anything higher than 4000 feet, it seems. We did find ourselves cruising past a gum tree though, which made the place even more reminiscent of South Australia. It would have been nice to go over and give the tree a hug, but it was on private property.<br />
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We got into Bisbee a little after midday, and really intended to just shoot through. Admittedly, the newer version of Bisbee wasn't necessarily that interesting, although the surrounding rock and earth was an absolutely brilliant shade of red. Turns out it's a big copper mining area.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBvQnEKcLerFxhiRoBkipWe0d2kKo2uBSAO7TwTmQ_9LGg7gJaLAFgmENflvuEdOYL2jwNNO0wvnjFjSYSsDvzG9fws7DpId4TSvBYn_WT5D-qVOXgRF-j8lS8mcZljt3UolbP7CcuMH0/s1600-h/IMG_2056.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBvQnEKcLerFxhiRoBkipWe0d2kKo2uBSAO7TwTmQ_9LGg7gJaLAFgmENflvuEdOYL2jwNNO0wvnjFjSYSsDvzG9fws7DpId4TSvBYn_WT5D-qVOXgRF-j8lS8mcZljt3UolbP7CcuMH0/s320/IMG_2056.JPG" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiL_p3ZaDMfaX53sfmm_rAcHCyYybmj4kqt7zQv5rXx0VPRAWi-GJZ9TfCz8MAe2X4ypPrSGNpMVRQBM1StSfE0RDwUqcUf5Rew2I-CwnOV4ZfMWH4cgvuAROHjlRCHVtY-5tpkblcPMDs/s1600-h/IMG_2059.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br />
</a></div> Once past those spectacularly colourful cliffs, we made it into Old Bisbee, which turned out to be an incredibly cute and charming little town - this eclectic little community nestled in the mountains. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiL_p3ZaDMfaX53sfmm_rAcHCyYybmj4kqt7zQv5rXx0VPRAWi-GJZ9TfCz8MAe2X4ypPrSGNpMVRQBM1StSfE0RDwUqcUf5Rew2I-CwnOV4ZfMWH4cgvuAROHjlRCHVtY-5tpkblcPMDs/s1600-h/IMG_2059.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiL_p3ZaDMfaX53sfmm_rAcHCyYybmj4kqt7zQv5rXx0VPRAWi-GJZ9TfCz8MAe2X4ypPrSGNpMVRQBM1StSfE0RDwUqcUf5Rew2I-CwnOV4ZfMWH4cgvuAROHjlRCHVtY-5tpkblcPMDs/s320/IMG_2059.JPG" /></a></div><br />
While I got stuck into making lunch, Sundance hit the library for internet access, so that we could contact our Warm Showers hosts in Tucson. There were also some phone calls to make, and as we were low on options, we had to go in search of phone cards, and deeper into Bisbee. This proved to be our undoing - as it turns out, Bisbee is one of those towns that people get stuck in, because it's just so nice. We got talking with various local folk, including a lady who runs a honey shop, specialising in unpasteurised honey derived from Africanised bees, which are the prevalent bee population in Arizona. The honey we sampled was absolutely delicious, and we actually ended up buying one of the more interesting varieties. We also walked away confused about the bees, as we had always heard that the Africanised bees, the lab-grown hybrid of European and African honeybees, are a particularly aggressive and ferocious kind. However, according to the honey lady, is is actually the pure-bred African honeybees which are nasty, and hybrids are just fine. Looks like we'll have to do some research.<br />
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We also came across a wonderful little cafe, and stopped for a smoothie and some tasty baked goods.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWPkmIn3GL8YeuaRgPqfS7_02wex8MX__XhRx1OiHTdw2nqF6cW-mbxKzGT_OuHuXPXx1YpvRjtrtW6D3GFFcDsc6yjU6aMuvYdnmuyT4Gh_AijW0a82iWqMMGpRY2D7U_qKijrbO1oF8/s1600-h/IMG_2057.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWPkmIn3GL8YeuaRgPqfS7_02wex8MX__XhRx1OiHTdw2nqF6cW-mbxKzGT_OuHuXPXx1YpvRjtrtW6D3GFFcDsc6yjU6aMuvYdnmuyT4Gh_AijW0a82iWqMMGpRY2D7U_qKijrbO1oF8/s320/IMG_2057.JPG" /></a></div><br />
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By then, we were already incredibly tempted to spend the night in Bisbee, even though we had only come a little over 40km that day. Quite a few people were curious about us and our heavily loaded bikes, and one friendly couple who lived a little further off, Jeff and Annette, offered us a place to stay sometime in the coming days, if we felt like it. They were a little off our path, but it was an interesting possibility, so we exchanged addresses.<br />
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We completed our mission for a phone card, and by then decided to search for a turf surf in Bisbee, as this was one of those towns which made this whole trip memorable. We headed back to the honey lady to ask her for turf surf advice.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFtBSFhkK7VrwjIphbWKvSal3PGsAiBT2vtQy-M2qJsoVyh5fybBP64w8BI0HRzDl5wbJMSTe5use4iOWXg5BTfO5jcwyy2c72RzaAc23y8Mu2f786TN7zXqTYy4na3QqNHpNNs3rlm1c/s1600-h/IMG_2060.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFtBSFhkK7VrwjIphbWKvSal3PGsAiBT2vtQy-M2qJsoVyh5fybBP64w8BI0HRzDl5wbJMSTe5use4iOWXg5BTfO5jcwyy2c72RzaAc23y8Mu2f786TN7zXqTYy4na3QqNHpNNs3rlm1c/s320/IMG_2060.JPG" /></a></div>As it turned out, not a whole lot of people in Bisbee seem to have a backyard for vagabond cyclists to put a tent up in - not that surprising, I guess, considering how mountainous the area is. There were some other options, but we were a little leery about them, for fear of having someone filch our stuff while we were off exploring. We were actually just about to give up on the idea of staying in Bisbee, and just going to visit Jeff and Annette instead, but we found we couldn't reach them on the phone. Undaunted, we decided to ask some locals for some directions, and they ended up offering us a place to stay the night instead, so we stayed in Bisbee after all. The trio we met consisted of Margaret, who lives in Bisbee, Margaret from Ireland, and Lynn from San Diego. We followed Bisbee Margaret to her place, dropped off our gear, met her progeny, and went to explore the town some more on our unloaded bikes.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgA0_XquDVtTBVrbcvNXDT0CnLWQGpfFNj7-apH0oxS8aEJptHDjWbbkyMeoKzjxA7NTfc4TycoNCAcQ6hG47w__iAbjHNBOVLConybuDUEaZ4AjHc_Csi3eQB6fzUply9KaOFhWy8mL74/s1600-h/IMG_2061.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgA0_XquDVtTBVrbcvNXDT0CnLWQGpfFNj7-apH0oxS8aEJptHDjWbbkyMeoKzjxA7NTfc4TycoNCAcQ6hG47w__iAbjHNBOVLConybuDUEaZ4AjHc_Csi3eQB6fzUply9KaOFhWy8mL74/s320/IMG_2061.JPG" /></a></div><br />
Something about Bisbee reminds me of my childhood, so I wonder if it is somehow the town that time forgot a decade or two ago, or if it perhaps reminds me a bit of something European. It's hard to say. There is certainly some very eclectic stuff around which I'm pretty sure I hadn't seen before hitting my 20s:<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkzn6VQdCJN6xMcgoWNb6rsewszpoZ5skLVO2yZ_3vmVvb6ONy_QDhshYpVJo4BdqJ4FnxqLuRn1P8czoY4CHSEy7TIRfJ0bLFFt8sM3qMusG8WkKkQ6UJofoorTwIWAgorK_igmn9Poo/s1600-h/IMG_2058.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkzn6VQdCJN6xMcgoWNb6rsewszpoZ5skLVO2yZ_3vmVvb6ONy_QDhshYpVJo4BdqJ4FnxqLuRn1P8czoY4CHSEy7TIRfJ0bLFFt8sM3qMusG8WkKkQ6UJofoorTwIWAgorK_igmn9Poo/s320/IMG_2058.JPG" /></a></div>In any case, our exploration of Bisbee encountered a little hiccup: while we were riding up and down the hills, I suddenly found that I was no longer able to change gears, and quickly established that my gear cable had snapped!<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYcJMoY5Vj0ib58sn7MhaolbmmeyKRtvHAioaG2JSsTE__nvK4Y-p6cKyNa8D_Dql1BOdr5qdwmD8_0ryPtYAlzBurcpXs0Hrrl2WPvh8OYP_He37-h-hTsrM_wSL-DTXDPqiMRYoN21o/s1600-h/IMG_2062.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYcJMoY5Vj0ib58sn7MhaolbmmeyKRtvHAioaG2JSsTE__nvK4Y-p6cKyNa8D_Dql1BOdr5qdwmD8_0ryPtYAlzBurcpXs0Hrrl2WPvh8OYP_He37-h-hTsrM_wSL-DTXDPqiMRYoN21o/s320/IMG_2062.JPG" /></a><br />
Luckily, we were reasonably prepared for such an eventuality. We had been carrying a spare gear cable and a spare brake cable right from the beginning of the trip. Unfortunately, we didn't happen to have them on us just then, which was a small problem, as the lack of gear cable tension meant that the derailleur kept the chain in seventh gear. That was not going to work, as we had to ride uphill 2km to get back to Margaret's place, so we wheeled my bike to somewhere safe, and Sundance came up with an ingenious little temporary fix by clamping the loose end of the cable in the quick release of my seat, thus keeping the bike in fourth gear, which was quite workable.<br />
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We did a little bit more exploring of the town, sticking our heads in the various little art gallery type places. We actually bumped into Jeff and Annette again, and made vague plans to visit them the following evening. We caught sight of various strange things, including a life-size donkey statue made up of all sorts of rusty junk, with large sinister-looking red marbles for eyes, and a car covered in all sorts of colourful sparkly paraphernalia. Crazy. We then had to head back to Margaret's place, as dinner was going to be happening soon - turns out Margaret has a reputation as an excellent cook, and for liking to entertain large groups of people. As she was making enchiladas, and some fajitas for Sundance, we decided to contribute something ourselves, as we had just sort of dropped in so randomly. Sundance made his sopa de lima, which went down very well, and it seems that my guacamole was quite well received as well. It was a very successful evening, and Margaret's neighbour Bill busted out his guitar and sang a few songs in payment for his supper. We had also brought some raspberry cabernet sorbet we had acquired at the cafe we had briefly stopped at, which turned out to be very nice as well.<br />
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As Margaret already had a house full of guests, we all came to the conclusion that it made more sense for us to stay with Bill next door, as he had a little guest house for such purposes. Perfect! Not only that, but we were greeted with an absolutely amazing spread for breakfast. Margaret presented us a mountain of thick slices of French toast, crisp bacon, sausages, cinnamon-laced proper whipped cream, and bowls of fresh fruit. After that, it might have been more efficient for us to just roll our way towards our next destination, rather than riding our bikes! Still, we opted for the bikes, and spent a little time replacing my broken gear cable before getting all packed up again.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEha0Kc0GCwy9Ifc1KRB3Dw-h3p1TINg7yYkOY7D1LCUMc39e9KFWKHEn89ccB-EgfMOFKLpPP3z-xovksfMKbqp0WUmOwb8zJ6KtBg8u9OyMWyyUOSe-incWpGf95e3gwaQnNiA5V0NJ1w/s1600-h/IMG_2063.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEha0Kc0GCwy9Ifc1KRB3Dw-h3p1TINg7yYkOY7D1LCUMc39e9KFWKHEn89ccB-EgfMOFKLpPP3z-xovksfMKbqp0WUmOwb8zJ6KtBg8u9OyMWyyUOSe-incWpGf95e3gwaQnNiA5V0NJ1w/s320/IMG_2063.JPG" /></a></div>We said our thank yous and farewells, and got stuck into running a few more little errands before actually leaving Bisbee for good. Among various web-access-requiring tasks, we also had to drop past the local bicycle shop in order to get a replacement gear cable, so we'll be prepared for when the next one snaps. Unsurprisingly, the local bike shop is just as memorable as the rest of Bisbee.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-ckwBNGvgrbLhozb8r_bgKENCQCLU7eon6-gmWj4nfXlVwhS3fU0cIu0RBo9ZCqL7-gdL98PA8zMj5ae7IfvjG9HPe9H-7A50VEH9a7ajK2J9HmvWpgqaIkJzwAOAkaUztZXVgl0LN7I/s1600-h/IMG_2065.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-ckwBNGvgrbLhozb8r_bgKENCQCLU7eon6-gmWj4nfXlVwhS3fU0cIu0RBo9ZCqL7-gdL98PA8zMj5ae7IfvjG9HPe9H-7A50VEH9a7ajK2J9HmvWpgqaIkJzwAOAkaUztZXVgl0LN7I/s320/IMG_2065.JPG" /></a></div>After some internet monkeying and a slice of apple pie, we were finally ready to make our way to the next town, Tombstone. We had a reasonably steep uphill climb to contend with, which meant that it was a bit slow going for a while.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg71BdYj6aqCBFC7hft5_Sh_TlQkL6pim6qKUhwJSj8fKw-sTSE1wU5caIrCMm1To710BXlszAKhv2hw6TwPRPZbzUwUMtt_Q-9HE0giDHi2zJ3gJkp7gfBZWnC41m79wOAM3IKd4z86hQ/s1600-h/IMG_1960.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg71BdYj6aqCBFC7hft5_Sh_TlQkL6pim6qKUhwJSj8fKw-sTSE1wU5caIrCMm1To710BXlszAKhv2hw6TwPRPZbzUwUMtt_Q-9HE0giDHi2zJ3gJkp7gfBZWnC41m79wOAM3IKd4z86hQ/s320/IMG_1960.JPG" /></a></div>Still, once we reached the top of the hill, we were rewarded with a long descent, albeit with some nasty crosswinds which could sometimes blow us right into the middle of the road. Yikes! Luckily, the drivers in the area seem pretty aware of cyclists, which we certainly appreciated. Sundance actually hit 53km/h going down that hill, and couldn't go any faster, as he had hit terminal velocity! Impressive. I, on the other hand, don't have the courage and co-ordination to go speeding down a curvy windy hill like that, so I kept at a more sedate maximum of 30-odd km/h.<br />
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Once at the bottom of the hill though, we found ourselves with the sweetest tailwind we had ever had on this trip. Cruising along the flat, with a straight smooth road ahead, I found myself going at 52km/h, pushed by that wonderful tailwind. Who knows how fast Sundance went - he sped right past me shortly after I hit 52. It really seemed like Arizona was apologising to us for some of the nasty weather it had thrown at us.<br />
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We got to Tombstone as the temperatures dropped and some ominous-looking fronts approached. We ducked into one of the little shops in the touristy "original" part of town, which is all decked out in western-style stuff.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUcB62hbMzNHyp4xgoEW2lbPOlyjuhFY00rGu4VWLUbe2RT9NvqmxvV_pLZIaHwcnq-Vuryy3BHOZfWroHpfVUBvkzSLjyK8AvtGyZM86xNg81KnyjvLH287QCsLbYYP3avYy7MNan8sM/s1600-h/IMG_2066.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUcB62hbMzNHyp4xgoEW2lbPOlyjuhFY00rGu4VWLUbe2RT9NvqmxvV_pLZIaHwcnq-Vuryy3BHOZfWroHpfVUBvkzSLjyK8AvtGyZM86xNg81KnyjvLH287QCsLbYYP3avYy7MNan8sM/s320/IMG_2066.JPG" /></a></div>Sundance cajoled the owner into letting him use the phone so we could call Jeff and Annette to give them our status while I eyed the selection of lollipops with horror and fascination: they were actually tequila worms and scorpions set in a sugary matrix! Oh, the tourist attractions.<br />
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As we were really a bit too far to make it to Jeff and Annette's that night, Jeff agreed to pick us up from a certain junction along the way. As the rain started to prattle and the shop owner ushered us out, we put on our wet weather gear and got back on our bikes, which seemed to impress the locals who saw us. Our sweet tail wind had turned into a crosswind which blew icy rain onto the exposed parts of our faces, but we rode on in reasonably high spirits, especially amazed at the progress we were making once we had to turn into the wind. The rolling hilly landscape gave us some wonderful momentum. Unfortunately, half-way there, we found ourselves presented with a constant climb. About 8 miles from the junction we had agreed to meet at, Jeff found as pedalling through the wind and rain. We rode to the next mile marker, so we'd have a landmark to come back to, and then packed our gear into Jeff's truck.<br />
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After a rocky drive, punctuated by a mild dispute Jeff had with a tailgating Border Patrol vehicle, we made it to Jeff and Annette's abode, and Annette greeted us with a wonderful African soup, rice, delicious corn bread, and apple pie. We also had a stimulating conversation over dinner about politics, Robert Pirsig's <i>Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance</i>, and other things in a similar vein. It was quite late by the time we got to bed, but we got to sleep very comfortably. With the daylight the next morning, we got to see some of the nice surroundings, including a pond full of koi in the backyard.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_5kcXkoRshe6KmlWhUDAAZWckbMwrOiljBTLqkYdwto4SbriEoOh1XYKne6EvpByDZNOnOg0b5rqv8-rfrIlGnTV2xaSuGI1IvIMuCpHLZYUf4pJ4eQX5WgCbNgbkiJTws2vZfVi94p4/s1600-h/IMG_2067.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_5kcXkoRshe6KmlWhUDAAZWckbMwrOiljBTLqkYdwto4SbriEoOh1XYKne6EvpByDZNOnOg0b5rqv8-rfrIlGnTV2xaSuGI1IvIMuCpHLZYUf4pJ4eQX5WgCbNgbkiJTws2vZfVi94p4/s320/IMG_2067.JPG" /></a></div><br />
Apparently as long as the water is deep enough, there's not much the various fish-eating birds can do. Good to know. In any case, after a breakfast of cereal and scrambled eggs, we said our farewells to Annette, and Jeff bundled us back in the car, and took us back to the spot where he had picked us up. Just before parting ways, in order to satisfy Jeff's curiosity, we also fixed him a vegemite sandwich. He had wanted to know what precisely vegemite was, so we educated him. The jury seems to be out on whether he likes the stuff or not.<br />
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As we had known we would, we got smacked in the face with another revolting headwind as we headed towards our next destination. We were reasonably determined to get to Tucson that day, so we pushed like the fools we are. We stopped for a very late lunch in the town of Sonoita, where we bumped into Brad, a friend of Jeff's, who as it turns out has a friend in San Diego who owns a bunch of boats, and who might be a good contact when it comes to finding a boat across the Pacific. Yes, the connections one makes can come in very useful indeed.<br />
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With not a whole lot of daylight left, we turned north, and climbed our way up the hills between Sonoita and Tucson. More slogging at high altitude, which was frustrating, but we were eventually rewarded with a long downhill run, pretty much all the way to Tucson. Bliss, though it was fully dark by then. Still, being a bit closer to sea level and getting adequate oxygen lifted my spirits, and we powered towards the abode of Cheryl and Chuck, our Warm Showers hosts. It was going to be another case of getting picked up part of the way, as they are a bit further north. Still, it ended up being a very long day, over 100km. We found a place where we could use a phone several kms north of the Interstate, and called Cheryl. We agreed that we'd keep powering along, and she'd sort of find us when she'd find us. When she did, we were apparently another 17 miles from their place, so we were certainly grateful for the lift. It was quite late by then, so after some reheated soup, we collapsed into bed.<br />
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This morning, we got to fully appreciate that we have now officially entered Saguaro cactus country.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNTRFH3at0MsFQVWUcM_Bgd1jY5uEemKI-7zDPumJCe4Foda9HifhIDljviI0vd3IHB5UTsokURSSMpqS_AEu3cyc4wkIoMAtoUXiftRb0lg9EOZrxZPiEV_3w-ZpgyBV8fCpaI1dIzmc/s1600-h/IMG_2068.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNTRFH3at0MsFQVWUcM_Bgd1jY5uEemKI-7zDPumJCe4Foda9HifhIDljviI0vd3IHB5UTsokURSSMpqS_AEu3cyc4wkIoMAtoUXiftRb0lg9EOZrxZPiEV_3w-ZpgyBV8fCpaI1dIzmc/s320/IMG_2068.JPG" /></a></div>They are really pretty ominous things, when you get right down to it - at least, they are to us, as we happened to find a postcard of a photo with a fallen Saguaro cactus which had completely crushed a car. Yikes! Of course, it should be no less scary than a normal tree, but I suppose it is the unknown that is more likely to make you a little uncomfortable. I guess we'll get used to the things as we ride on, but man, right now, they still look a bit alien.<br />
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Anyway, today will be a bit of a rest day, other than hopefully cooking some good dinner for our gracious hosts, and then we plan to rent a car again for a little side trip up to the Grand Canyon, which should be all sorts of nifty. Arizona is certainly still pretty cool, all-round.Meandering Marsupialshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12501083587914140645noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6633910187288044016.post-72621943672127625382010-03-05T16:24:00.000-08:002010-03-07T13:08:14.076-08:00Shedding the Southern Tier<div style="color: #cc0000;"><span style="color: black;">Total distance: 5976.8 km</span> <br />
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By Sundance:</div><br />
Since approximately Kerrville, TX we've been inadvertently following something called the Southern Tier bicycle route - not because we wanted to but because the roads out here are a bit sparse, so we inevitably wound up on a course recommended by the American Adventure Cycling Association. When we left El Paso, departing from Charley and Kamala's place, we finally left it behind and started blazing our own path again.<br />
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Saturday saw us powering through the outskirts of El Paso. With a decent tailwind and Charley and Kamala's advice about what roads to take, we made it through in three hours. Much better than the hellish five hour ordeals some folks had warned us about. We toodled past the Mexican border, adjacent to Ciudad Juarez (the most dangerous city on Earth. Officially) and crossed into New Mexico in the town of Sunland Park, pausing to call my mum and wish her happy birthday (paying careful attention to timezone differences) as the evening encroached. Shortly after that we met an Italian fellow called Luca coming the other way. He was carrying very little gear and was clearly a fast-and-light style cyclist, heading from California across to New York. We turned into the locality (a name on a map, not an actual town) of Mastodon, and refilled our water bottles at a Border Patrol station. We also informed them that we'd be camping out by the roadside that night so please don't come checking to see if we're illegal Mexicans, then headed on another 16km west before setting up camp.<br />
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The following morning a rainstorm blew in just as we were about to head off. Fortunately, a fellow who'd been stopped mistakenly by the Border Patrol let us sit in his SUV to eat breakfast and wait out the bad weather. After thanking him we set off into a preposterous headwind, and another 20km later decided to give up, set up camp, and wait out the weather. We found a nice sheltered spot on an embankment by the road, between some mesquite bushes which wee prickly but did block the wind, set up the tent, gathered rocks and wood for a fireplace, and made a campfire while cooking dinner. I also got to do something I've been intending to for several months - it's no secret that I disliked living in Waterloo, Ontario, and all this time I've been carrying a map of Waterloo with me. That night, I had the pleasure of using it to start the campfire, and watching the town I despise symbolically burn to ashes. That made me feel better.<br />
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The next day we bumped into another couple, Dan and Mary, riding their bikes in the opposite direction to us, stopped to chat for a while and exchange estaurant recommendations, then pushed through to the town of Columbus, famous for being raided by Pancho Villa in 1916. We met a delightful couple called Chris and Larry, who let us turf-surf at their house, and were probably the last people we'd have expected to be fans of Japanese animation and manga. We really enjoyed chatting with them about our travels and shared a fine breakfast with them the following morning. We spent the whole day riding, paused to recharge our batteries at Hachita, where the owner of the grocery store apologised for not having anything in stock (he's just opening and doesn't have the water connected yet), but gave us some canned juice in any case, then pushed on to Animas. It as dark by the time we got there, but along the way we crossed the Continental Divide, the point where rivers start to flow to the west, so hopefully we'll have a more downhill run from now on. Animas proved to be a hard place to find somewhere to stay - nobody we spoke to owned their home, so they weren't willing to let us turf-surf in case the landlord got angry, ad the back of the Community Center was covered in hard gravel and broken glass - not ideal for a tent. Eventually we ran into the sheriff who recommended a disused paddock to the east of town.<br />
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From Animas, we headed through some pretty countryside towards the Arizona border. In the town of Rodeo we found a reptile-themed museum (which was mostly giftshop and art gallery) which had some snakes and lizards in glass cages, and a lot fof good stuff to look at. We pushed onwards, grabbed a delicious pizza for lunch (and while eating met a fellow called Armonda who poffered us a place to stay in Douglas, Arizona), then crossed into Arizona. Around nightfall we approached a house to try for a turf-surf. The owner, Bill, was amazed that we were Aussies, declaring that he'd never expected Mick Dundee to show up at his house on a bicycle! He and his wife Michelle were wonderfully welcoming, shared their dinner with us (while Yana contributed bean and rice stew with avocado), and told us a bit about the history of the area (quite close to where Geronimo surrendered to the US army.<br />
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On Thursday we pushed off from Bill and Michelle's place (which was adorned with many cool sculptures they'd acquired in Mexico) into a fierce headwind. A really fierce headwind. One of our worst ever. We had to make 67 km to reach Douglas that night, so we just stuck with it. We went past the monument erected where Geronimo didn't surrender (he actually surrendered in a canyon several kilometres from where the monument stands), and made it to Douglas before sunset. We found a bike shop, got anew chain for my bike (the old one was getting squeaky), rang Armondo, and the bike shop owner let me use his workshop to change the chain while we waited for Armondo to arrive, and take us to our accommodations (a house owned by his father).<br />
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Today has been a bit of a lazy day, eating big breakfasts to recover from our exertions, writing blog posts, and planning our next move towards Tucson.Meandering Marsupialshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12501083587914140645noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6633910187288044016.post-60869948791310215492010-02-26T10:19:00.000-08:002010-02-26T10:19:56.177-08:00...Brought to you by the Eagle Hand laundryTotal distance: 5568.3 km (Unchanged since previous post)<br />
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<div style="color: #cc0000;">By Sundance:</div><br />
We are back from our little motorised side trip loop throughout New Mexico, hooray!<br />
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Where to begin? Well, last Friday our hosts Charley and Kamala were heading out of town for an extended weekend, so they dropped us off at El Paso airport to rent a car, which turned out to be a nifty little red number. We hopped in, made our way out of El Paso and into New Mexico. Stopping for lunch in Las Cruces we eventually made it to Silver City and the road to the Gila cliff dwellings and hot springs. It was a slow drive through snowy but scenic hills to the park where the cliff dwellings were to be found. By the time we got there the park was closed, but we found a campsite a little further back on the road, and Yana made a fire while I cooked up some pasta. When we awoke the following morning the tent was covered in a substantial layer of frost, and we spent some time brushing it off before it had a chance to melt, in an effort to keep the tent reasonably dry before packing it up.<br />
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<div style="text-align: left;">The Gila cliff dwellings are a series of stone structures built into a cliff side by the Mogollon people who migrated down through this area around 1276. The dwellings were only occupied for about 24 years, but it's believed they were used during a drought that made it difficult to sustain a farming lifestyle further north. We got to the visitor's centre, looked at some exhibits, then drove up to the start of the walk to the cliffs. There was a bridge that was out, and was only open to pedestrians an bicycles (the one time we have a car! Oh, the irony!), and a short walk beyond that got us to the cliffs which were spectacular. We met up with a ranger who was giving a guided walk through the dwellings so we got to hear all about what they think the various rooms were used for.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: left;"> We also met another pair of cross-country cyclists, Adam and Dwight, who are heading east along the Southern Tier bicycle route. Their adventures are being blogged here. After looking at the cliff dwellings we walked back to our car, drove out past Adam and Dwight pedalling eagerly up a hill, and eventually stopped for lunch in Hillsboro. And then onwards, to a place I've wanted to visit for ages, on account of its totally messed-up name. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KE7yHRr3Edw">Truth or Consequences</a>.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
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T or C actually turned out to be a really nice little town, where we found a little organic cafe, had a delicious Italian meal for dinner, and then stayed in a hotel with hot mineral spring baths. We also got to see some episodes of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_vs._Wild">Man vs Wild</a> on the TV in our room, which was highly entertaining, and since one of the episodes was about survival techniques in Copper Canyon, Mexico we now feel all enthused about finding a dry yucca flower stalk and making a fire by rubbing sticks together, just to see if we can! After a good soak on Sunday morning, we drove out north through Socorro to the Very Large Array radio telescope facility.<br />
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This is an array of 27 radio telescopes that are linked together to work as a single collector about 20 kilometres in diameter. The dishes can be repositioned to create a larger or smaller array, for greater resolution or sensitivity. It was also the site where significant parts of several movies including <i>2010</i> and <i>Contact</i>. Like most Hollywood stars, it looks smaller in real life... But I grew up watching Carl Sagan's wonderful TV series <i>Cosmos</i>, and seeing the VLA as a source of some incredible insights into the Universe we live in, and I thought it was pretty neat to see it with my own eyes, and see that it's not just a special effect, and it made me pretty proud of how clever humans can be that we can build such things.<br />
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"Look at me, I'm a radio telescope!"<br />
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Following our trip to the VLA we drove back through the evening, past the site where the world's first atomic bomb was detonated, to Alamagordo.<br />
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The following morning we headed out to the White Sands National Monument, with a short detour to the Museum of Space History. White Sands lived up to its name - an expanse of gypsum sand in a huge basin that used to be a lake bed during the last ice age, and now sand dunes stretching for miles in each direction, ringed by mountains.<br />
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We did a nature walk along the edge of the dunes, where there were various plants, then drove a bit further in and did a walk to the alkali flats, where the gypsum sand blows from to form the dunes themselves (and also a backup landing site for the Space Shuttle). It was scenic, but windy, but awe-inspiring.<br />
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As the weather was looking unpleasant, we decided to drive onwards towards Carlsbad and the Carlsbad Caverns. As we headed up through the mountains east of Alamogordo it began to snow, which made the town of Cloudcroft quite pretty, but also slowed us down. Contrary to my expectations it didn't stop snowing as we descended on the other side of the mountains, but snowed all the way to the next big town, Artesia. Yana did a fantastic job of driving on the slippery white fluffy stuff, although it did take us five hours to get to Artesia, whereupon we found a moderately-cheap hotel, and collapsed into bed. The next day we got up and chipped the pack-ice from the wheel hubs of the car, and drove to Carlsbad, and then to the caverns. The caverns turned out to be very spacious and impressive.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>The various stalagtites and stalagmites and things are formed from limestone deposits created by a reef that existed in south-east New Mexico and western Texas when the whole area was the edge of a shallow inland sea during the Mesozoic era. Unfortunately, the limestone is dissolved (and hence redeposits itself into interesting shapes) by sulfuric acid that percolates through the rock, so the whole area from Artesia to the caverns smells of rotten eggs.<br />
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The caverns were nifty, and impressive for the size of both the caverns and formations in them, although we've both seen stalagtites and stalagmites before.<br />
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It would be great to see some more unusual formations like those in Lechugilla. And we didn't get to look around the whole cavern because they were closing off part of the walk, since it was getting close to closing time.<br />
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Afterwards we decided to find a place to camp, but the local campground charged $22.25 just to put up a tent, which we considered absurd, and the public land off the side of the backroads was a bit too rocky and rough to comfortably put up our tent. We also encountered a longhorn in the public land, and decided we didn't feel like having our tent potentially stepped on.<br />
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So we headed back to Carlsbad. We ducked into a Mexican-Chinese restaurant (which we initially thought was two restaurants side-by-side) for dinner. We dubbed this style of food con-fusion cuisine. After a bit of chatting with the staff about our journey the owners offered to let us pitch our tent behind their restaurant, so we got to turf-surf even without the bicycles!<br />
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Come Wednesday morning we awoke, got a free Mexican breakfast at the restaurant, and then drove to Guadalupe peak, the highest point in Texas. We considered going for a bushwalk, but decided we'd be doing this amazing place short shrift if we didn't stay overnight, so instead we headed onwards, through the outskirts of El Paso, and back to White Sands to view the sunset Sunsets at White Sands are supposed to be very beautiful, and since it had been overcast (with impending snow) the first day we went there, we took the chance to see a better sunset as the weather had improved. It didn't disappoint.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIOtWfoyVOjYkcr_1YGwk2E9RV7xt1MpfuJyZjO4Fv_4GcEVXixnbbx6Unc_0WzkszqG7sRP47sVeXILqJSXsXU5yJ-_1iBdZ1L_aaPhtqIw0l-wNChfaUrmkpmzjtBLqHEQil8LK76zI/s1600-h/IMG_1590.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIOtWfoyVOjYkcr_1YGwk2E9RV7xt1MpfuJyZjO4Fv_4GcEVXixnbbx6Unc_0WzkszqG7sRP47sVeXILqJSXsXU5yJ-_1iBdZ1L_aaPhtqIw0l-wNChfaUrmkpmzjtBLqHEQil8LK76zI/s320/IMG_1590.JPG" /></a> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyOJa2fxJIAN7BvtkfI00DLFMABscwX9vnxLboinyongRe8mtdp8zvMQ0vwIMNbIfN9biU9qlIGdwHpMG8PvYLv_lcK0dM6xWstU4jJ3hTdb8YTVsE1x7RPMvpYYpFC076HS7OcHOSyeU/s1600-h/IMG_1591.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyOJa2fxJIAN7BvtkfI00DLFMABscwX9vnxLboinyongRe8mtdp8zvMQ0vwIMNbIfN9biU9qlIGdwHpMG8PvYLv_lcK0dM6xWstU4jJ3hTdb8YTVsE1x7RPMvpYYpFC076HS7OcHOSyeU/s320/IMG_1591.JPG" /></a></div><br />
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Afterwards we headed back to Charley and Kamala's place for a scrumptious dinner, and a good night's sleep.<br />
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Then on Thursday morning we returned the rental car, and our hosts drove us around to get a new quick-release axle for my bike, and some groceries so that we could cook dinner for them. Plus Charley provided me with a front panier rack for my bike, so Yana and I are both equipped to get some more of the weight out of our backpacks when next we travel by pedal power.Meandering Marsupialshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12501083587914140645noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6633910187288044016.post-85611345263623594282010-02-18T21:20:00.000-08:002010-02-18T21:20:40.468-08:00Van Horn to be w-i-i-i-i-i-l-d!Total distance: 5568.3 km<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cc0000;">By Sundance:</span><br />
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Tuesday was productive, and that's about all there is to say about it. While Yana wandered off to get groceries, post blog updates, and be useful in such fashion, I took care of my axle problems. It took all day, but I wound up buying a whole new rear wheel from the local hardware store, extracted the axle, extracted the old broken axle, sorted through the collection of old and new parts I now had, cleaned and quality-checked them, and built a new rear axle from the bits. In the midst of it all, I managed to discover that the store nearby where we'd had pizza for dinner the previous night also sold non-dairy, non-chocolate, carob-coated oatmeal cookie rice-milk icecream organic frozen sandwich thingies. Yummy. That night we made the rice and bean soup we'd had for lunch in Valentine again, and slept in Russ' motorbike shop once more.<br />
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The following day the new axle got a real workout. We headed out of Van Horn (after I sold the remains of the wheel I'd bought to the local second-hand dealer), looking for a road that would take us towards El Paso without following the Interstate. A border patrol officer, a worker at the local Ramada hotel, and a group of roadworkers all told us there was an access road beside the interstate, but they didn't agree about how far the entrance to the access road was. After about 8 km of riding on the shoulder of the I-10 we found the access road we wanted and leapt upon it. It proved to be an easy, flat, straight run almost all the way. In fact, we didn't really need to make any turns and could probably have ridden with our eyes closed for about 40 km. This would have meant missing the beautiful wide open scenery, though. We rode past the settlement of Allamore, which is basically a talc mine with a few residential buildings, and eventually stopped for lunch at a service station in Sierra Blanca. After stuffing sandwiches in our faces we pushed onwards, guided by advice from a local and the instructions from the Adventure Cycling Maps which <a href="http://dandgtour.blogspot.com/">Dani and Greg</a> had let us photograph back in <a href="http://meanderingmarsupials.blogspot.com/2010/01/meep-meep.html">Brackettville</a>. We came to a teepee-themed roadside picnic area, crossed under the I-10, and continued along the access road. After an abrupt uphill climb, we hit an extended downhill glide, and didn't really need to pedal for several kilometers. By the time we turned off onto a smaller road and ran through the arid countryside near the US-Mexican border we had given the new axle a thorough initiation. In fact, by the time the Sun sank behind the mountains, we were only about 1.5 km short of 100km for the day.<br />
We pushed on in the dark, feeling accomplished but gradually more hungry. The local deputy sheriff pulled up to talk to us at one stage and said that we could camp at the Ft Hancock civic centre, so we pushed on into Ft Hancock. By this time I was really getting the hunger-grumps, and Yana was passing muesli bars to me in a bid to keep me from going psychotic with hunger. We found a Mexican grocery store, and eventually had dinner at the only restaurant in town, Angie's, where the service was slow but the orange juice was tasty. We even got to watch some of the Winter Olympics on the TV in the restaurant. Then we bedded down for the night in our tent.<br />
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This morning we set out, with a light tailwind. The sun was shining, the road was flat, but I was in a strangely upset mood. We rode along for about 30km, and met another pair of cyclists heading the other way from us. They are an older couple, <a href="http://brucedana.wordpress.com/">Bruce and Dana</a>, and this is also their first big bike tour. They'd started out in California, and had been going for almost three weeks. We talked for about an hour about what we'd seen where we were going, and what to expect on the way. Then we parted ways, and continued on to Tornillo where we made lunch. It was remarkable that Bruce and Dana had only been on the road for 19 days, as we'd been realising ourselves that we're getting very close to reaching the west coast. Depending on how much we dawdle and sight-see, we could be dipping our front wheels in the Pacific in under a month!<br />
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By the time we finished lunch the wind had swung around to a headwind, and we struggled into it the rest of the way to the outskirts of El Paso. We were only a few blocks from our warmshowers hosts' house when they found us, having come out to see if we had run into trouble (Nope, just conversation and headwinds). It did make a nice change to arrive at our intended destination before nightfall though, and after showering we were treated to a yummy dinner of Aloo Gobi.<br />
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Over the next few days we intend to rent a car and check out a few sights on our list that are a bit too far out of the way to access readily by bicycle.Meandering Marsupialshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12501083587914140645noreply@blogger.com1