Day 116 | The Pines: not actually pines of course, they are Casuarinas

89 km | zzOz total: 5,825 km

The road is, well what can I say, average, about what was expected.

There’s two things going for me: it’s downhill for most of the day and there’s a mighty tailwind.

I occupy myself with the usual dirt road issue: trying not to fall off.

I do find there’s a little spare capacity in this brain and so I spend some time counting the abandoned cars along the road. They aren’t on the road, they’ve been parked some distance away in the scrub, sometimes upside down, usually fully wrecked, mostly burnt out.

Many are rusting hulks an Australian version of Yves Klein sculptures, but in a dull red-brown rather than that famous blue.

A fair proportion are Fords with a few less Holdens and other assorted makes, Toyota, a Kia that seems to have been surprised to make it so far, and even a dead Volvo. It’s hard to determine the exact model in the conditions, no glass or paint, but I’ve a good memory for rear pillars from the 70s and 80s it seems.

They come in patterns as if deliberately laid out, sedans predominant but then 2 utes, or 3 station wagons in a row. No 4WDs.

I started the count with the 4 wrecks on Sunday on the Lenora to Laverton Road, 20 Yesterday and I knew I was heading for a good score today when I had 3 under my belt before the end of the first kilometre.

Knowing it would be easy to lose count over the course of the day I made up a little mantra for each of the numbers, it’s funny how the mind works, a pair of shoes, 3 of a kind, 2 pairs, 5 bananas, 6 fish, somewhere there were cabbages for a winter of sauerkraut, an odd assortment of endives, 20, age of legal drinking, a memorable 21st, that was easy, quarter of a century, then various events that matched my age at the time.

Score: 35, duck and dive.

Somehow I found some of the ideas through the 20s a little unsettling, thinking back then, if only I knew what I know now.

I’ll stick with the baskets of fruit tomorrow.

Each car a story, heartbreak and maybe despair, mostly now forgotten.

Still it’s how we overcome the difficulties we encounter in life that makes us as people.