Fathers Day-Expedition Dust day 104-105
You need the sound of stillness to remind yourself of who you. Breath is the strongest tool you have so once a day focus on that breath and remember how powerful it really is.
I woke up cold and on the hard ground at about 3am, the roll mat that I got from some random store in the middle of nowhere had popped! It’s back to sleeping on the ground for me. I struggled to sleep the rest of the morning, tossing and turning until the sun came up.
A lack of sleep is my biggest nemesis, it stops me from being the best I can and can often make me irrational. It doesn’t however impede my ability to complete a physical challenge. I made breakfast and dad and I packed up together. The wind was stronger than the day before, I assured dad that it was ment to die down before 12. Yesterday as the light was fading I found a wedged tail eagle skull so just before I left I mounted it onto the front of my bike as a sort of totem to help get through the wind. It was a very hard day on the bike but we pushed through and made it to Qulpie by the afternoon!
The next day was a down day so I got the washing done and rested my body. When it came time to leave the following morning we had heard there was a bacon and egg burger fundraiser happening down at the local shop. We headed down there to start our day with a tasty big breakfast! We both got two burgers and spent about 25min talking to the organizers of the fundraiser. While we were there some other cyclists who we had met the day before (who actually were the ones who told us about the burgers) came to get breakfast before they headed out of town the way dad and I had just come. All filled up we had one more thing we wanted to do. We leaned our bikes outside the supermarket and went in to get a few treats as it was Father’s Day! Yesterday dad found out there was a small town with one man living in it between Qulpie and charlavile so we decided to take him a fruit cake.
With all the treats and the cake packed in the bikes we set off, the weather was perfect for cycling, no wind and not too hot. It only took us two hours to cover 49km. We pulled over on the side of the road and had a little to eat. After we ate we got back on the bikes for another few hours. When we reached the sign for the little town I was way ahead of dad so I turned off and made my way down the gravel road. We had been following rail tracks all day and now we had to cross them. On the other side of the tracks I stopped and waited for dad. There was 3 buildings and a huge water tank, it was easy to spot the occupied house as it had a cute little dog running around in the yard. At closer inspection It looked as though it was all shut up and nobody was home. I gave a big knock on the door but unfortunately nobody was home. We decided to leave the cake in his letterbox. As we were talking outside I heard the flooring of the house move, someone was home and they must have heard us. He came to the window and we told him that we brought him a cake as a gift because we thought he might have wanted it. He was very greatfull but was busy and had things he needed to do, before he left he told us we could fill our bottles from a water tank in the property next to him. With full souls and bottles topped up we decided to ride another 30km to a river so I could try my luck with the yabby fishing again!
By the end of the day both dad and I were tired, my knee was a bit sore but we did ride 110km so that’s completely understandable. One of the older blokes I met when we first arrived in Qulpie told me that yabbies are vegetarians so as soon as I arrived I put a few prunes in the cage with the hope that they would like them more than the sausage I had tried to use last time. There was a muddy pool of water tabout 20m from our tent it was in the bottom of the riverbed that floods about once a year it was only about half a metre deep, we laughed because it seemed so silly trying to catch the yabbys in an oversized puddle. We had no faith that we would get anything. Dad pulled out a bottle of wine some cheese, crackers and ham as a Father’s Day camp treat! Even though it was a day to show him how much he means to me i have realized him coming out here makes today equally about him showing me how much I mean to him.