I woke at 4:30am. It seems that going to bed earlier just means I wake up earlier. Hmm.
Bindi has cooked rice for me last night, so I had the remains of the group dinner for breakfast, plus rice and milk for my mid-morning snack. Bugger it, it's breakfast, and eaten at the usual breakfast hour, so breakfast it shall be called. Breakfast 2: the return? Anyway, I eat again after about an hour or two riding.
Todays goal is 70km to lunch, then 105-110km for the day. This is the important thing to know, because it looks as if I will often be at the front of the group. Oh, and the other day was a lesson too - if you're at the back you're at the back, and need to at least tell whoever you overtake that they're now at the back. I didn't do that.
Met a couple of cyclists travelling the other way. They've had head winds all the way up the coast from Perth. As expected, that's one reason we're travelling this direction. Also met the cuppa tea caravan, an older couple who stopped and offered me a cup of tea and a chat. They're very impressed with us riding all this way. I'll see them occasionally over the next couple of weeks as they speed past then camp for a couple of days.
The slight tail wind is helping, but I'm starting to feel more settled into the riding. Taking photos a little more now, panoramas are easy to get into out here where there's often a 360 degree view of flatness (which is a novelty for me).
Thursday I did support with Evan. Support means driving the van (well, Evan drives and I think about the virtues of having a license), plus doing meals and picking camping spots. We spend much time discussing the grocery drop that will arrive in Karratha shortly, possibly before we get there. Or maybe afterwards. Who knows. We try to plan the next few days to arrive there when the food is supposed to arrive. The van also has sick steering, so we want to get that looked at.
The problem is that the group is dependent on the van. Or, IMO, they think they are. I find it hard to take the idea that we must have the van with us at all times seriously. But we can't just drive off and leave them to ride while the mechanic and the groceries do their thing. I make copious notes in my diary showing what we might do, and various people contribute. We have a meeting, even.
The situations is this: we are at Pardoo roadhouse, maybe 150kms from Port Hedland. The groceries arrive in Karratha in four days time, but that's 250km from Pt Hedland.
My plan goes like this:
Another plan was that the van spent Friday (tomorrow) getting fixed, we ride and carry dinner and breakfast with us, the van comes out with a food drop on Saturday evening, leaves a water drop 100km down the road for the next day. Drops everything else at about the 150km mark and drives to Karratha to get the food. That's 800km of driving one day, so lots depends on the drivers.
The meeting turns into a discussion of the route in general. After much counting and discussion, with a huge contribution from Bindi, we decide to ride to Karratha and make more decisions there. The planned route takes us inland here, but we can turn inland at Karratha on either a mostly sealed road, or on the railway road that goes to Tom Price. We go inland to see Karajini and visit some proposed mines on the inland road. There's also the option of just continuing along the coast road (the original plan?) and detouring inland just north of Perth for a big loop ride.
In the end I think it was decided on distance - people were not keen on the loop because of the backtracking, so we'll probably turn in at Karratha. In the mean time it's off to Hedland in the morning.
Tonights camp is pretty nice - a river with sandy floodplain for us to camp on. The swimming is also good, albeit cold. Tali especially seems to swim at every opportunity, but I find the water is too cold unless I'm especially hot. Evan and me seem to have done support by delegation, we don't seem to have done a huge amount of work but everything seems to be done. Cool. As usual I slope off to sleep mid- evening, leaving the night owls to do whatever it is that they do.
The spoiler was the neighbours, a caravanner couple with a generator that ran continuously. They agreed that they'd turn it off about 9pm, and at about 9:30pm they actually did. So by popular acclaim I got to do the wake up call using my airzound, and do it when I got up. I piked out and did it as I left at about 6am, so it wasn't too bad.