Day 292 | Back training: but do I really need to practise night riding?
Suddenly my world has changed, last week no decisions were required other than what to scoff for dinner and, err, what time to turn out the light. Such is the lot of those selling their labours and intent on saving in a mega way rather than blowing it completely each week like the preponderance of my workmates.
Now it’s Decision City.
Having some spare time for the first time this year I’ve been racing around town looking at things: maps, water bottles, new helmets, etc.
It hasn’t helped that I’ve started drinking coffee in my leisure, cranking up the breakfast and hacking my way through Mike’s 50th anniversary edition of On the Road, a dangerous read for a restless spirit like mine, I read it in my youth, which encouraged me to spend a year hitchhiking around Australia with my darling girlfriend of the time, it was before the days of Ivan Milat, or more likely in his heyday, (he knocked off at least 7 hitchhikers on the highway south of Sydney), I guess I’m finally working on getting that travel bug out of my system.
Coffee and Keroauc got me worked up, I roamed into town and missed one of my parcel deliveries, I hoped it was The Important one, tyre, chain, new jockey wheels, etc, but it was The Spares-that-I’d-like-to-have one instead, spare Ortlieb parts.
At 4 30, still a little hyper, I decided to charge out to Simpsons Gap, a 55km round trip on that superb little bike track, I went on Sunday a little earlier but it’s around sunset when the famous Black-footed rock wallabies make their appearance, thought some training would do me good, pushing it along the fantastic 3D sinusoidal path, the way back in the gloom, err, darkness.
There were a few rock hoppers about, chasing each other, enormous long tails, are they 3 times the length of the body?, must help with the balance as they spring around the boulders, oblivious to danger, no over-protective parent in evidence.
Suddenly it was 6 30, the sun going down, well, gone down, and 25km back into town.
One of those bright orange sunsets, no clouds in the sky, yes, now I remember, won’t be long and I’ll be back out here on a more permanent basis.
Gee, that was fun racing back in the rapidly dimming light, the sliver of moon providing illumination, you could sort of tell which way the path was turning, all at excessive pace.
Nice to ride uninhibited, without that full load aboard.
But that mountain accompanying me to Queensland is being assembled, soon I’ll have to start to whittle it down.