Cycling Adventurer: Bicycle Touring - Perth-Adelaide 1997: Ready to Go

The Cycling Adventurer
Perth-Adelaide 1997	Ready to Go

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Ready to hit the road... now where's the cat!

I tended to keep my plan to myself until I was fairly certain I was going to undertake the journey. The two people form whom I kept full details until necessary were my parents. They were under the impression that I was going to do a cycling tour of the WA south-west before making other arrangements to return to Hobart.

Inevitably, I received all sorts of advice from all sorts of people. Most were like the BikeWest guy — they had not actually completed the trip by bicycle. One particular know-it-all at The West Australian told me of a former colleague who started the trip twice. The first time was into strong headwinds that eventually caused the journey to be aborted. The second was successful. Mr KIA also had driven to and from Adelaide and reckoned the headwinds and boredom would be my main deterrents to success on the Eyre Highway.

On the whole, though, people seemed to be quite impressed with the planned adventure. They asked the inevitable questions about safety and water.

My research through the newspaper's archives revealed an official Main Roads Department estimate of 350 vehicles using the Eyre Highway each day. That was less than 15 vehicles an hour, or a vehicle every four minutes. Roadtrains were likely to be the major traffic challenge.

My research also identified that I should be capable of carrying 4.5 litres of water each day, perhaps more if temperatures were excessively high.

I consulted some people who had travelled the highway by car. They said the road was well served by roadhouses that were up to 180km apart, although some were only 65km apart. The BikeWest guy said the roadhouses served only "greasy truckie's food", but water generally was available for cyclists without too many problems. He said the roads were gently undulating.

Friends Charles and Chris Knight returned from Hobart to Western Australia on the Eyre Highway a year earlier. Their main concern for me was safety when camping at night. I was prepared to take my chances. Work colleague Rob Inder-Smith, a casual like me, was the most recent Eyre Highway traveller; he came from New South Wales, and said boredom was probably going to be my biggest problem.

As to practical preparation, I didn't have much to do. My weekend and day rides gradually increased in length. The longest distance I achieved before departing was 73km, and I felt in reasonably good shape afterwards. I concentrated on fitting the equipment together on the bike. I had the rear steel pannier rack modified thanks to the welding expertise of another newspaper colleague, Brad Thompson.

One doubt continued to lurk. I removed the rear axle and found it scored. I was concerned, so I delivered the bike back to the shop from where I had bought it for its free first service. I asked that the bearings in the bottom bracket and the wheels be checked along with the cables. I really don't know what happened, but the fact that my front gearshift was terrible afterwards indicated the free service may have been a waste of time.

Everything else seemed to fall into place quite well. As I bought my camping equipment, I laid it out on the floor of my room and experimented with packing the panniers. The converted backpacks were made from non-waterproof material; I used garbage bags for moisture protection.

I used my battered bathroom scales to weigh me at 87kg, then me with the loaded bike and two full water bottles at 135kg. I figured that with a 70-30 rear-front weight ratio, the rear Kenda 700 x 35C tyrs were capable of taking the stress of 95kg when they were pumped up to 70psi. I pumped the front tyre to 65psi. About the only thing I did not do was take the bike for a run with all the gear on board.

I did have some fun, however, learning to use toe clips and how to crash at lowspeeds!

As an entry-level cyclist, I thought new-style clipless pedals were too expensive and too dangerous for me to use. I settled for a cheap pair of old-fashioned toe-clips. Then followed a comedy of low-speed errors that left my body and pride well and truly bruised... and the anti-clotting Aspirin I was prescribed post-heart attack served only to make the bruising even more widespread and dramatic.

I can't remember my first fall from the bike, but anyone who has used toe-clips knows the story: Ride up to traffic lights, slow to a stop, lose balance, topple over, feet still in clips. The movement to remove the foot is back-and-out, and the whole attempt usually comes far too late. The knee, forearm or hand usually break the fall. The degree of pain, measured on a scale of 10, usually is over 5, and may be much more depending on how the judges, sitting in their cars or standing on the footpaths, reveal their scores by the sneering looks on their faces.

On the way home from work one night, I had successfully made the transition out of toe-clips and put my right foot on the road. I noticed I had not wrapped my right sock up over the cuff of my jeans. An attractive woman pulled up in her car at the lights next to me. As I bent down to fix the sock over the cuff, I lost balance and gently toppled over to the left side. The pain score was 3 physically but 5-plus on the embarrassment side.

On another occasion, during a mid-week ride, I backed out of a tight spot at the end of a track, again with my right foot out of the clip. But I put too much pressure on the my left pedal, and again I toppled to the ground. This time, as I fell, I feared I might break my ankle, or at least sprain it. Luckily the pain measured about 6, and after doing the horse thing of getting straight back on after a fall, the pain disappeared and full mobility was restored to the joint.

My most serious accident, however, was a simple flip-flop effort on the road outside my flat late one night. Again, at about walking pace, I was dumped on my left shoulder as the front wheel went out from under me while doing some zig-zagging. I did more than badly bruise muscles, and did enough damaged to tendons and ligaments to prevent me from lifting my arm above horizontal until I departed Perth.

Apart from these crashes, everything seemed to fall into place, so to speak. But everyone around the sports sub-editors desk at work came down with the flu in the three months prior to my departure. I thought I had successfully evaded it... until the last week I was at work.

On the last two days of my contract, I really should have been home in bed, but the money was vital. I was next to useless for all of the following week, and I dropped well behind in moving stuff out of my flat into storage, finding a home for the cat, and keeping up my training. In fact, I did not get on my bike for the entire week before leaving Perth.

I eventually caught up on some of the chores, but still did not depart until Tuesday 16 September 1997, one day late. Even on the morning of departure, I had to deliver back the utility I had hired to move my household stuff into storage. The cat then disappeared for the best part of 24 hours. She could not be delivered to her new owner at the arranged time.

Finally, I had a "fight" with my refigerator. It wanted to go in one direction off the back of the utility, while I wanted it to go in another. The altercation ended with me winning, but at the expense of quite bad cuts inflicted by the cooling wires behind the fridge on the middle and ring fingers of my left hand. I was so frustrated that I didn't even both dressing the wounds, leaving them to stop bleeding eventually of their own accord. I could think only that I was in for a rough time if the journey was to continue in this vein.

I had decided quite early on that to satisfy my parents, I would take a south-westerly route to Esperance, then head north to Norseman to start the crossing proper. I had already been to Bunbury, Busselton and Albany at various times in my 2½ years in the State, so I did not see much point in wasting precious energy going there again.

I chose a route on the Brookton Highway to Narrogin and Katanning. From there, the South Coast Highway heads through Ravensthorpe and on to Esperance. Apart from the south coast route through Busselton, I had no option but to climb the hills around Perth to get out of the city.

I felt some trepidation in the week before leaving. I'm a great planner but when it comes to executing the plans, I'm rarely confident that they will work. But, as with all major projects, there is a certain inevitability that overtakes events. In this case, it was moving out of the flat and having the phone and power disconnected.

Charles and Chris Knight offered me a bed on the Tuesday night, or until such time as I was ready to depart. I gently declined their offer as it would only delay the inevitable. If I was not in a bed of my own, I might as well be in my tent at the start of my odyssey.

In my mind, I said goodbye to Perth and looked to the horizon for what was to come. My journey was about to start in earnest.

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