Riding the Stuart Highway..

My blog is very intuitive and personal - and I often forget to tell about more general things. But finally a rest day with good internet connection - and time..
 So here a little update on also not so personal things..

Kathrine

We are at Katherine, 332 k's south of Darwin, at sleepy 10.000 inhabitants town "in the middle of nowhere". The Stewart Highway, that we follow all the way down to Alice Springs goes thru here. There are a lot of aboriginals hanging around on the street corners - they look very wild with big eyes set apart, curly hair and a very dark skin. Apparently they generally made some good arrangement with the government so they got most of their original land back - and make money on this thru tourism and mining..

Larger group 

 In Darwin our group more than doubled it's size - we are now around 40 riders. I reckon that the average age did not go down - it must be around 60. There are quite some people in their late 60ies - and not counting Nelli, Henry's 18 years old niece, Jody who turned 40 the day before yesterday is the "baby" of the crowd. Age does not mean that people are not strong and committed!
 Of course the riders that have done the 2 months in Indonesia have adjusted to the heat and have built up extra strength - I also feel that myself.. I can cope with long hot days - and I think that I am getting faster on the bike. But I keep on dreaming of a lighter bike - I know that mine is among the most heavy ones - and it irritates me a bit..
 There ended up being a bit over 5.000 k's in Indonesia - I did the 3656 of them.. Only two, Brett and Chris did the whole thing = EFI (every fucking inch)..
 Since Darwin there are quite a few known faces from The Bamboo Road last year: Ursula and Rae from Swarmish, Vancouver, Paul from Ottawa, Matthew from England, Nola from Toronto. It's good to see them all again..

Riding the Stuart Highway

Here in Australia the riding is very much the same every day. We start already at 6-6.15 having given in our bags at the luggage truck at 5.30 and starting breakfast at 5.45. There the temperature is still pleasant - and we see the sun rising - mostly as a big red ball coming up and turning yellow - beautiful. Then it slowly gets hotter - I typically drink 11/2 liters of water before our "lunch" stop - often already between 9 and 10 after 60-75 k's of riding. The quality of our food has gone tremendously up since we arrived in Australia - and the sandwiches we have for lunch are delicious. To be hungry is a permanent condition - so no problem with an early lunch - we just take another after arrival at camp between 11.15 am and 1.15 pm in my case. The quickest riders will already be in at 10-11.30. The distances in Australia so far have been between 90 and 130 k's. Our next bloc of riding days will be of 5 - with several days over 150 k's - I wonder how that will go..
 Roads are fine with rough tar.  A bit boring just going straight - but do not miss the hills - yet.. There are quite a lot of road trains  - huge long vehicles with up to four sections behind. Traffic is fast generally. There mostly is a little shoulder - we are told to go out in the rough if two road trains are passing each other beside us - not a bad idea.. We still have trees to the sides of the roads - but not before long we will be in the desert with absolutely no shade around. It gets extremely hot from around ten in the morning. And a strong, hot headwind rises regularly. I bring an umbrella for the worst case situation that I get a flat or am forced to stop for another reason - and 3 1/2 liter of water when I leave camp. There is water at lunch - and energy drink, which I finally started taking.

Camping

Only did it once - so far.. Had a very bad sleep. I inflated my thermorest maddress too little and felt like I was "falling off" most of the time. The ground also was uneven. And my little fan could not make the extreme heat go away. Not very restful! Was more awake than asleep. Realized that it is gonna be a costly affair to get some decent sleep on this trip considering the accommodation costing 70-150 aus. dollars a day. So I give the camping another try tomorrow - but might end up not doing it so much - giving my sleep higher priority than money..