Merry Christmas from Beachport!

It's been a hectic few days.  it seems like I've been going a lot and sitting a lot, but never really long enough anywhere to make any difference, if that makes any sense.  I'm presently in the nice little resort town of Beachport, South Australia.  Here in the middle of summer in this part of the world, it is cold, windy and rainy....

The ride up to Lavers Hill.  Oooof!

I had a minor emergency a few days ago:  I spent the better part of a day on some really cruel hills up to Lavers Hill, north of Apollo Bay on the Great Ocean Road.  I camped there and rode down the hill the next day into Port Campbell, which was awesome; long, windy downhill tracks that had me up to 65km/hr at one point.  I rested up and was about 5km out of Port Campbell when I heard a POP! and my rear tire went instantly flat.

POP!

I pulled over and found that something had cut the tire a long time ago and that the tube bulged out, got worn thru by the road and popped.  Throwing a new tube in wouldn't fix it, since that would just bulge out as well, and even something like putting several layers of old tube between the new tube and the tire was no good.  I had to have a new tire, period.  So I limped back into Port Campbell, spent the night and took a bus to Warnambool, where the nice people at the Bicycle Center there sold me two new tires and a new flat-resistant tube.  See the orange pillar in the picture of the Bicycle Center in the link?  That's where I fixed the bike.

Not even four layers of tube is
gonna make this tire good!

So the long and short of it was that the catastrophic tire failure happened when I was only going about 20km/hr and there were no cars about, as opposed to 65km/hr down a huge hill with cars stacked up behind me.  I'm alive to tell about it.  Luck.

It's been good riding in a lot of ways since then - relatively flat with good shoulders - but there's been a constant, unrelenting headwind that makes it very tedious and tiring.  Not comingNorthFromHobart tiring, but the kind of grinding fatigue that just eventually gets to you.  I pulled into Heywood on a very windy, chilly and justAboutToRain kinda evening a few days ago and reconned a place to swag out, then headed for the local hotel for a beer and some chips.  Turned out the hotel didn't have bar food, just proper restaurant fare (at proper restaurant prices) so I had a beer and some spagbol.  The spagbol was awesome, I have to say, but it didn't do anything for my economy.  Not only was it kinda expensive, but but when I was done the prospect of sleeping in a hammock and likely getting rained on wasn't looking so good any more.  So I paid $60 to stay in the hotel which, I gotta say, was at least $30 more than it deserved.  The spagbol was good tho....

I'm still shooting to make Adelaide by the 27th, but I concluded yesterday as I pulled into Millicent that it just wasn't gonna happen.  I now have a bus ticket to Adelaide departing from Kingston, about 100km up the road from where I am now.  I'll prolly do another 40km or so today and the remainder tomorrow.  Bus my way into Adelaide on the 27th, stay with someone that night and then head for Alice on the Ghan.

And today is Christmas.  I spent snuggled in my warm bag, swaddled in my hammock, suspended by the hammock straps
all given to me by my awesome mom.  I was protected from the wind by the FabuFoam pad given to me by Sue Johnson
waaaay back in Mooloolaba.  I slept really well, and I woke up to a goodMorning message from my wonderful girlfriend Christie, who clearly needs to raise standards in men and find someone who isn't satisfied with a hammock and a piece of foam on Christmas Eve.

Lucky me to have them all.  Lucky me to have you all and lucky me to be alive on this gorgeous Christmas Day.  Merry Christmas, everyone!