It is fairly windy. This morning at the start of the ride I was still in the woodlands and so it was a bit protected. By midday the wind had picked up and the trees had dropped off so it was a bit more gruelling. The wind is coming from the south or south east. For my purposes, it's coming from the front left. That means that when the road trains go past I'm getting hit with blasts of air and then sucked into their wake. The bike automatically corrects the sucking (something about rake and trail I believe) but the air blast is the strongest yet. It really knocks me about. By this afternoon I was slowing down to around 85km/h to go past them.
The only other thing to note is that I rode along the longest straight road in Australia, 147km, which really isn't anything to give a shit about. I was a bit disappointed because it had hills. So it wasn't really straight in three dimensions. It should be the longest cornerless road in Australia.
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| This is my review of the caltex in Norseman. It's easier to post the review than rewrite how hopeless they were. |
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This morning I woke up bright and early to the beginning of a beautiful day. Just as I was getting up to start packing it started raining. Big ol' fat rain out of nowhere! I left basically everything on the bike last night. All of it is waterproof but the main bag needs a cover, so I went out and put that on in the rain. The rain stopped straight after I did that. It was just one little rain cloud floating across the blue sky.
I've managed to come 550km today. My biggest day yet. I'd say it will be my biggest day of the trip. That means I've done 1000km in the last 2 days and I have 200 to go tomorrow.
Early on this morning I discovered that the road actually goes along an escarpment. It meandered down the escarpment and followed the coast along the top of the cliffs. There were quite a few lookouts and I stopped at a couple.
I got to the part of the Nullarbor that is actually treeless. It only goes for about 20km. The flat land without trees was actually kinda interesting. It is a curious thing in its own boring way.
After the treeless plain I entered another woodland, like at the other end. I'm camped among the trees about a km back from the road. When I got to this forest the temperature changed really suddenly. I mean, in the space of a couple of hundred metres the temperature went from chilly wind to hot oven wind. About 10km later I'd say the temperature had risen by 10 degrees. I had three layers on all day and now it is evening and I am in shorts and a t-shirt. I remember at uni learning about the air masses and that the boundary between two moves around around here, so I guess I crossed one.
I'm going to probably light a fire tonight and try to take a photo of the stars. I doubt I'll be very successful. The stars are the best I've seen out here. The milky way isn't just a glow, it has texture, like some of the water I've been drinking out here.
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Well I didn't light a fire but I did take a photo of the stars. They weren't as good as the previous night but I set the camera up and was really shocked when the photo came out great! I took a few, then tried to light up the bike and tent. That took a few goes as well. I think I have a bit to learn but it still came out pretty good. I also need to learn how to process the photos as the stars obviously weren't yellow.
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| This is probably the best one with the bike and tent in it. |
It was windy and the flies were shocking. I'm staying in Ceduna tonight then heading down towards Port Lincoln tomorrow.
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