Day 17
Saturday 1st March
Ceduna to Penong
79kms
Finally a bit of a sleep in. We stayed up late to update the journal the night before, so didn’t get moving to early in the morning. I had to change my rear tyre, and Harv had to replace a bolt that holds his bike rack on.
We were raving about how easy the day would be, only having to do around 80kms. After some Egg and Bacon action, we hopped on the bikes to realise, that the wind was strong, and the ride wouldn’t be as easy as we thought. We could only average about 15kms an hour in the wind, and the sun was getting really hot.
Finally we turned up to Penong to be greeted by a display of old rusty windmills, and dodgy looking cars at the towns entrance. We pulled up at the Penong Hotel for the nights accommodation, and I noticed I had broken another spoke.
We started with a beer in the bar, and then I tended to my broken wheel. I’ve never changed a spoke before, and to be honest we didn’t think we would break any during the trip. But stupidly we didn’t put any research into the technique of changing a spoke. I pulled the wheel off and after some bashing and bending I discovered that we didn’t have the right tools for the job. I told the lady at the bar what I was trying to do after handing back some tools I borrowed, and she suggested we give one of the local guys name Tim a call. She said that Tim is in a wheel chair, and he has tools to die for in his shed, so he should be able to sort us out. We called Tim and he was more than happy to help us out.
We rocked up to Tim’s house to find a yard full of 4wd’s, Utes, Tin Sheds, Boats, Motorbikes and dogs. It looked like Tim’s house gets more interest than the local pub. We found Tim and a big table full of blokes inside a big shed. They were sitting around drinking beers, and tying up some fishing trace’s for the next day. There was a huge fridge full of beers, and a heap of awesome looking old tools kicking around.
We said g’day to everyone, and Tim hopped straight into fixing the wheel. I’ve never seen anyone rip off a bike tyre so fast. After a short time I explained to him that I didn’t have the tools to take off the cassette on the wheel, so that I could get the spoke through the right hole properly. Tim decided that its all good and bent the spoke around some different bits and pieces until it went through the hole. I had no idea you could bend spokes, and I don’t know if you’re supposed to, but it was the only option, and it seemed to work. We got the tyre back on the wheel and pumped her up, good as new!
Tim is a happy looking bloke who gets around in a wheelchair these days. He looks like a hard worker, and you can tell he thrives off people’s company. He asked us to stick around, and offered beers, so who could refuse? We went back to the pub and got some more beers, and the guitar to play some songs. More people started to show up, and eventually some food was thrown on the barby. Fresh snapper and some grilled potato chips. Harv and I hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast, so we were so excited. The fish was so delicious, and there just happened to be enough so that we could absolutely stuff our faces to the point where we felt on the verge of exploding.
We had a good yarn with everyone, learnt a few things about the local fishing, we were introduced to Fru-chocs, and had a few to many beers of coarse. At one stage the whole room joined in to sing “I love to have a beer with …” using the names of everyone in the room, and making up reasons why they enjoy a beer with them in the verse. An absolute ripper night, but we had to ride the next day, so at some stage we left for bed.
After a Milo, it was sleep time.
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