This was a long day! We left Port Macquarie about 11am after yoga, a swim, packing up, a great big breakfast at the Corner Restaurant (Thank you for supporting Bike the Earth by knocking a third off - home made baked beans - yumm). Chris meditating & me having a conversation with a 90 year old lady on a bench in the middle of town. It does seem to take us a long time to get out on the road but we also find that we often get some of our greatest connections with local people in the mornings.
The ride was out to Highway 1 (goes all around Australia for the non locals) which in this section is a mostly big two lane per side road for the much of it and luckily has a reasonable shoulder for us to ride along. What I can't get use to is the speed, size & frequency of the trucks. Cars flying past me at 100km (if they are keeping to the speed limit) less than 2m away is challenging enough but when the trucks barrel past with their huge trailers, wheels, engine, compression brakes & exhaust all roaring with the power of the engine & the friction of the different surfaces we are traveling on it really freaks me out at times. Especially after 4pm when the frequency at least doubles!
So this day was slow going. Chris was mulling over stuff in his mind and his motivation speed and spirit dropping radically. With his average speed while actually riding being about 18.5km / ph down from our record or 22km/ph. We got to Kempsey at 3 pm though which considering the 49 km we traveled means that we were stopped for a bit over 1 hour along the way. As we wanted to get to Grassy Head & had another 45km to go we chose to reconsider our plan. Motivating Chris we decided to give it a go and see how far we got with the intention of camping on the side of the road if needed.
We just got to the turn off at sunset after some nerve wracking near misses from some scary trucks, and I proposed that we strike camp. But this time Chris motivated me to carry on cycling up and down hills, even though it was about 14km to go, and soon very dark.
So off we rode into the night. Me with the good front light & Chris with the good back light (my batteries need charging) 10km later we get to the last turn before the road to the campsite. Looking up the road it was completely black but there was a pub just near the corner. Luckily we had decided to check with the campsite to see if there was any food there. There wasn't so we stopped for a meal and although I was concerned about having a beer with dinner we decided to have on anyway & I am sure that was the best tasting beer we've had! After dinner we went on to the site in the pitch black night. We got to the camp ground set up our tent & jumped inside to have a fantastic coaching call with our team member Tathra who is in Melbourne via skype. Finally the signal drop outs were coming to frequently we finished the call and were soon in rugged up in our sleeping bags in our new tent to sleep. the tent survived it's first down pour and kept us nice and dry but it was a noisy night with the roar of the surf and the rain waking us both at times. but i loved the sounds which reminded me of my years of camping and being by the sea for summer holidays.
Roland
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