DAY 10

The alarm goes of at 06:00, now way Anders is getting up yet. He is freezing, and the tent is clammy and cramped. At 06:18 Anders thought that this expeditions won’t run itself. They have to bicycle everyday. Anders gets in the shower and stays there for a long time, so long that he is getting bad conscience for all the hot water he is using, but it takes some liters to defrost a guy that is almost two meters.

Back to the tent, Lasse is still sleeping. Anders gets a little hurt by the idea of waken him up as he looks really tired. He lets Lasse sleep and doesn’t bother that the time schedule is not going as planned. He packs his own cycle, bags and equipment and put on his long John’s outside todays cycle-outfit due to the cold sea breeze.

“Time to get going, Lasse” Anders says closer to 7. Lasse grunts – but he is alive. They pack their stuff and are mentally prepared for a long distance stage, 80 k’s. Lasse is relying 100 % on Anders when it comes to reading maps and navigating. “If we take this road it will be a softer start without traffic” Anders says and point to a side road to the highway. Lasse endorses and cycles away.

The small idyllic asphalt soon turns into a dirt road. “Let us try” Anders says and they continue on the road that will turn out to be a little nightmare. If they only knew. If they only had been a bit wiser. The dirt road is scandalous and when they come to a new part of the road called Bog Lane bad gets to worse. It is pure sand on the road, the type of sand you find on beaches. The tires drown in the sand and their back tires just keep spinning down the sand due to heavy weight the bikes are carrying. Off the bike, push it for a few meters. They are trying to find the small parts of the road that have the least amount of sand. After a while the road becomes a gravel road. A shitty road that looks like concrete has been mixed with crushed stones and spread out randomly. Large holes for every 10th centimeter and, bike is notoriously shaking and the butt screams of pain. The road is seemingly endless and Lasse falls behind. Anders motivates Lasse by saying “lunch when we get back on the highway, it is only four k’s left”. Lasse is really tired when they get to the highway. He sits on the roadside and eats pasta carbonara leftovers from yesterday. “What I would have done for a cold coke now” Lasse says while the sweat drips from his forehead.

After the dirt road it is still 50 k’s to go to Millicent. They already been on the bike for 4 hours already, 4 hours with pain, hate and almost tears. They get out on the highway that turns out to be newly asphalted. A magical feeling. Huge threes on each side makes the landscape idyllic while they also protects against the wind. After 20 k’s the landscape opens up and along with it comes the headwind that always hit them. Lasse reports to Anders that he is done and got no more to give. Anders replies that he just has to press the inner motivation button. Lasse gives a clear message that he already pushed that button on the dirt road and that is how he made it through those 4 hours with pain.

Anders pedals ahead, while Lasse settles and Anders back wheel. The wind resistance decreases a lot when you do that. Anders takes a break, rests the neck, shoulders, but and knee, and then continues with a new round with Lasse settled on the back wheel again. That’s the routine and how it goes, kilometer after kilometer. After 9 hours the last meters are being climbed up to Millicent hillside Caravan Park. The heaven showers and the tent is set up in a record time. Anders jokes to Lasse about wanting to cycle a bit more and get a glance from Lasse hard to describe.

Anders looks a tomorrows route, 150 meters straight up, he almost doesn’t dare to say it loud.

Awesomestralia – a normal life is boring