Action in Mt Magnet which turned out not to be anything unmissable. I'm in the van full time now, it's not worth trashing my knees on the trike. So I get into Magnet late, relative to the group. They're having a stall but there's not much life to be political at. The group peters out 80km from Magnet to a bush camp. Feels good to be in the bush again after days in Meekatharra.
Meeting was interesting, Tanya and Jonas have taken bits of what I've suggested so it must be good. Or at least, obvious :) Their idea is
Watch the sparks fly. People don't seem to grasp that if the group can't express a clear preference then whatever we decide we will have people happy and some people not happy. And the means of making the decision is in that sense unimportant, what counts for many of us is that there is a clear process and that it acts quickly. Just to stir it up I suggest that people speak for themselves only. Own their comments. Naima agrees by saying "we think that's a great idea". "We" just don't get it.
Tried the proposed process on the shopping question and managed to kind of follow it. A bit of random discussion, then we got the circle. And several things to vote on came out of that.
We are completely in the dark about how much money we have. Either Evan is playing it very close, or he's completely lost track. We may be anything up to $2000 in surplus, maybe $1500 short or anything in between. Maybe. Hence the talk about spending up large, and the resistance to it. We are starting to talk about what to do with any surplus cash after the ride, more pointedly, which green groups to give it to. The talk of surplus has some people thinking that they would be the ideal recipient, in the form of luxuries now. Same people, oddly, who were all for a week of slack days as soon as it looked as though we had time in hand on the ride.
At lunch talked to Erin, she was quite hurt by my comments at the Meeka meeting about who is valuable in terms of the purpose of the mine visit. She wanted to go and didn't agree that by not going she would achieve anything positive. There was also stuff with Jonas etc, she seemed to feel that "her friends" had turned on her. I decide to be politic rather than honest, even though that in itself annoys me. We now have the traditional girly friendship based on lying to each other, yippee! But for the record, that attitude sucks. I suspect that a few others felt the same way, meaning that we could conceivably have isolated out the few completely selfish people who wanted the rest not to go, and played even more heavy moral games at them. Although that does sum up the major stumbling block in the group - people do not feel responsible for their actions. "the group is so big, what does it matter if I act like a selfish prick, group inertia will hide that". Perhaps each person needs to think "what if everyone did what I'm doing", hey look, maybe they are.
That meeting actually did bring out the big guns in some ways, we talked a lot about morality and doing right things. Jonas and me especially, and I think it demonstrated how differently we all think of things. Doing that hurt the people we could relate to, and left the people we wanted to get to completely out of the loop. They really don't think about things that way at all.
We are now talking to people in Perth, the meet and greet at the end of the ride is coming together. We're joining some greenies to ride into the city, starting 8:30am at Guildford railway station, leave for the Esplanade at 9am. I should contact the recumbent guys too I suppose.
Tali and Sunny are on support, and today saw a new all-time record: we left the lunch spot after dark.