27 August 2016

Early start this morning. Marica woke Sandra up at 5:45 AM. (So much for a holiday for me) She claims she was doing it just for Sandra, so Sandra would get to the Police station before they went for their next round of RBT, (mind you they were going west, which is the direction we were traveling in, so Marica just wanted the pleasure of waking Sandra up. It is irrelevant that we didn't pass them, and we might have missed out in getting one from them if Marica didn't wake Sandra up but that is beside the point).

Anyway, on the way back to our room, Sandra witnessed and abduction and potential murder......

too bad she had just been to the police station and couldn't be bothered turning around again to report it to them, so she told Marica instead. Not that Marica did anything about it........

You see, it all started as Sandra turned the corner, heading down a dark, pre-dawn, pot hole ridden track........when suddenly in front of me scurried a little field mouse. Before it had run a meter, down swooped a menacing sparrow with murdering intentions, (could just have been hungry for breakfast), and grabbed the tiny mouse up by its tail, and flew off.

How sad, to have one's life ended so abruptly.

After such a traumatic start to the day, Sandra had to persevere further, and drink the coffee that Marica had made.......

We managed to get off early, as our tents were not wet, and still packed from yesterday. We only got as far as Mundrabilla, before the first of many delays. From this point on, people were stalking us. Several different groups of people started up conversations with us about what we were doing, where we were going, and why the Vespa. They even returned to take pictures of us and our bikes, and from here on, every time we stopped we would run into a few of them, and talk. We even ran into 2 different couples from our Ceduna campsite. Every petrol station stop, and because of the Vespa there were a lot (we didn't miss one), we would be held up continuing the conversation that we started a few stops ago, and adding more people each time.

A very friendly group, these grey nomads. They are all going to keep an eye out for us the rest of the trip.

Made it to Norseman, after what turned out to be a 9 1/2 hour trip, which included all of the service station stops. The last 2 hours of which, it did rain, the first rain since our first day.

After all of these long stretches of nothing, who would of thought it could get any more tedious. After Caiguna we hit the 90 mile straight. This is the longest straight section of road in the world. 146.6km of nothing but straight road, a couple of ups and downs, but all straight.

That is the road was straight. Marica and Sandra weren't they were both at 45 degrees to the road most of the time, due the massive crosswinds, and gusts. not only off the plains, but also off the road trains.

In this section of the world, pretty much all you see on the roads are Road trains, Campervans, Caravans, and bicycle riders, even more bicycle than motorbikes (Marica has counted).

You may think that Marica is observant.........but she was completely oblivious of the Mother emu and her 6 chicks, standing 20cm from the road edge, as she road past them looking for bicycles to count. (Even her scaring the chicks into running away, didn't bring her attention to them).

OMG......so much writing we didn't make it to the pub !!!!!