Day 19
Monday 3rd March
Nundroo – Nullarbor Roadhouse
150kms
I woke up at 4am in the morning with a lot on my mind from some conversation I’d had with a friend the night before. I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep after waking, but I didn’t want to wake Harv just yet. I went and had a shower, and tried to go back to sleep but no good. I woke Harv at 6am and told him its time to ride.
Everything got packed up reasonably quick, and we were ready to go within another hour. Then we remembered that Harv had to change a spoke on his rear wheel. We thought it was all cool and we would just bend it in, but it wasn’t as easy as the one Tim had put in. It had to come in from a different side. So Harv made a phone call to find out if there is any way we could get the cassette off the wheel without the right tools, but no good. We decided to leave the spoke out, and pack everything up to leave. During this time I made a phone call to a friend, which for certain reasons really dropped my spirits and I didn’t feel like riding.
By about 8:30am we hit the road. We got away to a fairly early start but it was a bit disappointing considering the time we woke up. The ride was really hilly and we were feeling their presence. The water we were carrying was boiling hot, and it was hard to drink anything. I was still vomiting in my mouth after any drink of water, and wasn’t really feeling hydrated.
Around lunch time we met another bloke who was riding east over the Nullarbor. His name is also Rob and he is from England. We stayed for a chat while he ate his lunch and exchanged stories. He mentioned that he had quite an extensive toolkit with him, so we borrowed the right tools to pull Harv’s wheel apart. The wheel was easily fixed and Harv was quite excited. We also ate some food, said our goodbyes and hit the road with 80kms to go.
The main problem with cycling during the heat is that we had to carry any water we want to drink on board, and there is no way to cool it down. So the water just boils, and it’s very hard to drink. With about 40kms to go we ran out of water. We had 2 hours of cycling left till the roadhouse, which felt like an eternity.
I rode past a couple of Germans who’s car kept stalling and they filled my water bottle from the tank in their van. It was no different, boiling, and hard to drink, but better than nothing. Their vans kept over heating so they would pull over to cool it down and get it started again, then drive past and wave, and then another 5kms up the road we would ride past them again, and visa versa.
With the last 15kms to go I lost sight of Harv. He was really de-hydrated too, and when he’s close to town he usually takes off to get to food and water early. So he took off, and when I turned up to the roadhouse he came out the front with a big bottle of Lemonade, and gave me a drink.
I bought some water and a few more drinks and then we set up the tents while the sun went down. We bought 30ltrs of water, and a loaf of bread for the next day, and then made some phone calls back home. I took a bit longer on the phone than Harv, and he came back to the phone booth to tell me that some sort of animal had eaten the loaf of bread we just bought. The roadhouse was now shut, and we had to get an early start in the morning, so we couldn’t get any more supplies for the next day. We found some left over bread, and had some tuna sangas for dinner, then laid down for some sleep.
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