Day 42
Wednesday 26th March
Preston Beach Road Stop – Fremantle
102 kms
“Hey Rob there’s some dude out the front in a ute that looks to be some kind of road side patrol” Harv called from outside the tent. “Just tell him it was late and your chain snapped dude, we’ll be right.” I packed up my things and crawled outside. The guy was just sitting in his car and didn’t seem to be of any threat. We packed up our things and tended to Harv’s broken chain. Frustration kicked in when it took us at least 40 minutes to snap the chain back together with a recycled chain pin at early hours of the morning. Eventually we got moving.
My legs weren’t excited about pedalling again, and nor was my backside excited about spending hours on the bike seat. The ride was slower than ever as we both knew we were reaching a major destination, and it meant we had days off. We stoped at a servo feeling dehydrated after not drinking enough water the day before. We filled our water bags up and drank a heap of water and got moving again.
Eventually the city started to reclaim the beautiful countryside I had been enjoying so much. A head wind made its way into our final hours of riding, and every hour seemed to last at least a week to long.
I felt some form of depression cycling along the freeway making our way to Fremantle. The air stank. I couldn’t take a full gasp of air with out feeling sick. My ears filled with the sound of cars hammering past carelessly. I eventually pulled off the road onto the footpath to try and relax a bit. I felt overwhelmed with the presence of the buy lives now surrounding me. Everyone had somewhere to be, and not enough time to get there it seemed. We kept moving at what felt like slower than ever.
We stopped for some lunch at some sort of shopping complex. After sitting down it felt hard to get motivated to get up and keep moving again.
We cycled, and cycled, and then cycled, and after that we eventually made our way into Fremantle past a monstrous looking industrial estate and a sea of houses. A few nice downhills came our way to finish off the ride, but at the same time traffic lights made there way into existence to start slowing things down again. We were to stay at a friends house in North Fremantle and we were almost there when I looked back to see Harv once again yelling out to me. He was off the bike and I soon realised that his chain had snapped. Time to walk. Harv waited for the lights and picked up his chain off the road. We laughed about it all and walked our way to our friends Suzette and Doug’s house. They didn’t know we were coming but fortunately whilst crossing a bridge to North Freo we ran into Doug and he gave us some keys get into the house and have a shower. We arrived at the house and sat down on the couch. Oh the feeling of a couch. You’d think the last thing you want to do after sitting in a bike seat for so long is sit down. Sitting down is the best, as long as it’s not on the bike seat.
We had a quick show and made our way to Scarborough to play a gig with Loren and the Grow Your Owns. It was nice to meet up with some friends from home. I felt really tired at the gig but it still felt great to play. I also ran into some mates from QLD and it was great to be able to share some stories from the trip with the audience. Harv and I had a few to many beers and a bowl of wedges for dinner to celebrate our Australian crossing by bicycle. Loren’s parents kindly let us stay at their house for the night. Harv passed out snoring on the couch and helped myself to some vegemite on toast in the kitchen.
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