Day 257 | 10km past Wittenoom turnoff: it's very hot and I take a 3 hour snooze under a tree
81 km | Heading west total: 11,869 km
After 257 days on the road some essential items are starting to wear out.
(I’m generally holding together OK.)
The only zip on my tent has got stuck and the sides no longer zip together.
Fortunately I’m past the dangerous mozzie zone now but there was always a futile sense of security by being able to zip myself into my cocoon away from the snakes and dingos. The camera lens gets stuck every now and again but hasn’t yet stopped taking photos. I’ll admit it’s had a pretty hard life. The bike seems to constantly have issues. Even my body has its moments: my right knee is pretty dodgy grinding away day after day.
At least I managed to spend some time in Broome fixing the slowly depressing blow up mattress. In the end I found four pin prick holes, the final leak took a whole lot of examination to locate. The mattress is only about an inch thick so even a tiny leak collapses me flat on terra firma during the night.
Tonight I camped in a pretty rugged creek bed the only likely place in a vast environment of needle sharp spinifex. In the middle of the night I rolled over and was startled when I suddenly heard the mattress deflating. My enthusiasm for the trip started deflating with it. This could be rather uncomfortable with the tent set up in a rocky creek bed. I could hear the air continuing to escape quickly but for some reason the mattress was still firm.
Oh. I had left the radio on and my ear had moved adjacent to the earplug with some white noise static making the noise of the rushing air.
Wheww!
Lucky for once.