Hmm, I stopped writing my diary. Oh dear. The rest is fiction, I mean history.
OK, we rode in the rain to a railway station to meet the people who were going to join us for the last few kilometres. I'm on the trike with John, we have someone else driving the van. After much waiting about in the rain a few more people turn up, including Mike King on his Greenspeed trike. The group looks at it and decides that maybe trikes are not as silly as perhaps they'd thought from my one.
The ride into town is a bit of a mini-mass (Perth ride), we have 30-odd people riding so can take the lane and generally get along with the traffic on our own terms for a change. The Perth people are impressed, and I think have a new impetus to get Critical Mass happening again in their city.
We end up at city farm for a gathering and cuppa tea, which is cool. It's a kind of permaculture decorative garden in the centre of Perth, a bit more community-based than Hagley Park in Christchurch and very alternative, but a lot better than anything in Sydney, home of the car Park.
Then we ride to the official finish at the botanic gardens or something, outside Pangaeas offices or something. By coincidence it's some kind of big sports event day so nothing is happening down town. As a result we get to be the other thing that happens, and have three camera crews recording our arrival. We do streamers across the road and so on. Very exciting. Having bought more film I no longer worry about running out, and shoot a couple of rolls in a couple of hours.
We have a picnic lunch from the greenies which is nice, so John and me go into town to find food. I also chat to a photo shop guy about getting bulk development and take their card. We do group photos and chat to people.
Eventually the group gets organised and we ride off to Freemantle where we will be camping in someone's back yard for the night. No, really, we know who they are and it's pre-arranged, we're not just going to select one lucky winner for a night with CANC. This also affords us our official first sight of the Indian Ocean, and in fact it has been a while since we've seen the sea (Bidyadanga, I think). Nice to be riding again, but hard on the knees. We snap the chain on a somewhat gentle rise, I suspect it's feeling neglected and a little abused.