Day Four – Race for the Border

It was grey. That was the first thing that struck me when I woke – the sky was grey. Given that I was about to ride a couple of hundred kilometres through basically desert, a grey sky wasn’t a bad thing. Clear skies and baking sun make for a tough day on the bike. Lower temperatures would make it much more pleasant. Driving torrential rain, on the other hand, would make it less pleasant. So for the first moments as I lay in my bivvy looking up at the grey sky I was wondering which of those it would turn out to be. Then I realised that whichever it was going to be, right now it was actually pretty good for riding, so best I get up and do so.

Last night I had stopped within sight of Caiguna Roadhouse so that I could, if necessary, head back there for breakfast. To be honest though some of the worst customer service I’ve ever had was from the owner of that roadhouse back in 2018 and it just wasn’t calling to me. I had stocked up well in Balladonia and still had food and water left, so I decided to eat what I had and head straight for Cocklebiddy. I wanted to move quickly, because I knew it was about 350km to the border, and if I got a good day in I could make that. Not only would it be a great mental boost, it would also be one less border that could be shut between me and getting home! I got on my bike.

It was about 65km up the road to Cocklebiddy on very flat roads, and the headwind had dropped down quite a bit, so I did it fairly easily in a little over two and a half hours. I had good memories of Cocklebiddy Roadhouse from 2018, and was in a good mood rolling onto the driveway. As I pulled up I noticed a familiar looking bike.

Felix is a guy I had never met, but he is a member of some of the same bikepacking groups on social media as I am, and he takes good pictures and presents things with a wonderful kind of simple poetry, so I had been virtually following his relaxed tour from east to west for a few weeks by this time. I knew he had mentioned IndyPac and wondered if he would cross paths with any of us, and that he was somewhere close to the border, so I had him in mind. His distinctive white cargo bike was easy to recognise, and as I leaned my bike next to his and then headed for the door I saw a guy in cycling kit coming out, so I paused and said “Hey, Felix, right?”

He was a bit surprised, and asked me how I knew that, so I quickly explained: “I follow you on Instagram.”

“I’m not on Instagram”

“Oh, then it must be facebook. Anyway, I follow you somewhere so my phone keeps showing me your pictures!”

He still seemed a bit surprised, but then we had a good chat before he headed off to keep enjoying his tour. Meanwhile I headed into the roadhouse to get food – a lot of food – and water. Having gone about 240km since a resupply I was surprised to find that I still had a fair bit of water left.

I was carrying nearly 9 litres, I had three 650ml bottles on my frame and my three-litre hydration pack, but for these longer stretches I also bought two 2L bottles that I just strapped onto the top of my Tailfin. I got a question the other day about how happy I was with my Tailfin, and the answer is very happy indeed. I love it, and use all the time. It was great for this race, it works on all of my bikes except my track bike (and actually I could get some adaptors to make it work there if I ever felt a burning need to carry luggage around the velodrome) and I take it every time I go somewhere overnight, every time I commute somewhere, and actually often if I’m just going for a long day ride. Strapping the bottles onto it was not great though. I did it using a couple of long webbing straps that I had brought along for the purpose, and it worked ok, but it wasn’t perfect. One of the great advantages of the Tailfin is that it is quick and easy to pack. That means I’m a lot happier to stop and get something out of it if I need it mid-ride, or to stop and shed a jacket. Unfortunately, when you strap bottles over the top of it with webbing it pretty much negates that benefit, so as I rode I realised that I needed to come up with a better system for the future (and by the way, I contacted the guys from Tailfin once I was at home and realised that they already have a perfect solution developed. I’ve got that solution in my hands now, and was very much looking forward to using it in September for what would have been the longest ride I’ve done on my dual-suspension MTB, but alas Covid ruined those plans). For now, though, I was carrying 9 litres, and I hadn’t even finished it all in the ride from Balladonia. The reason was that it was actually remarkably cool. Most of the 240km I had ridden through the night, and it had been cool and overcast so far that morning. This meant I had been sweating a lot less than usual, but I probably still would have been better off if I had drunk more of the water.

I got a good breakfast (hamburger with the lot, chips, choccy milkshake, lots of water, fruitcake, carrot cake, more carrot cake and a lamington, some more of that fruitcake, oh, and I’ll grab some things to take with me) and ate it outside where I had a chat with some caravaners heading the other way, then topped up all my water and headed off again.

It was 90km to Madura, and I rode it with only one stop, partially because I was feeling pretty good, but partially because I had checked the weather forecast. I could see rain coming from the west, and the forecast verified that. I figured the quicker I rode the more chance I had of not getting caught in it, so I just kept along nice and steady.

The land is pretty flat in that part of the world, and you are riding along at around 100m above sea level, but you gradually climb as you approach Madura Pass, and then you come to the pass and the road drops away to be basically just above sea level. At the top of that pass though the view is magnificent, and it seems as though you can see forever.

There is a roadhouse there as well, and I wasn’t a huge fan when I stopped there in 2018, but this time I quite liked it. I ordered a lot of salad and a burger, and they were able to provide both, and I had a bit of a chat about what was open further on up the road. The skies were still pretty grey and the forecast was still for quite a bit of rain, so I was thinking it would be worth staying under a roof if possible tonight. I made a few phone calls as well, and confirmed that Mundrabilla Roadhouse would be closed by the time I got there, but that I would be able to get a room at Border Village any time. That was around 195km away though, so I was going to have to get a move on if I was going to get there at any sort of reasonable time. I got back on my bike.

I have to be honest, the topography of this area just amazes me. It is such a sudden drop down Madura Pass, and then you just hit a flat plain that extends for miles. Off to the north you can see flat land and then way off in the distance a sudden rise back up to the level of the top of the pass, and to the south you know the ocean is there, but basically everything is just flat. The conditions are pretty harsh (I think it doesn’t get a lot of rain but gets a heap of salt-laden wind blasting off the ocean) and although there is a lot of vegetation most of it is no more than thigh high, so you can see forever. I admit it doesn’t sound very exciting, but believe me, it is beautiful.

It was around 3:30pm when I stopped at Madura, and just after 4 when I got back on the bike. Even if I only averaged 25km/h across the flatlands I should reach Border Village around midnight. At that point I’d get the mental boost of having made it across WA, I’d be able to get some hot food, a hot shower, a room to shelter from the rain, dry any wet kit, and get a good night’s sleep. Easy.

Turns out, it wasn’t easy. I initially fooled around taking some pictures for a while, but then decided I should put my head down and get moving before the rain arrived. Much to my surprise, there was a heap of salt-laden wind blasting off the ocean, and scarcely a tree for miles to slow it down. Happily, it wasn’t actually a headwind, but as a very stiff crosswind it still slowed me down a bit. The lack of even the slightest rise certainly helped though, and I was thinking midnight sounded pretty good. There were just a couple of things I hadn’t factored in.

Firstly, my knots weren’t up to scratch. There isn’t a great deal of traffic in that part of the world, and what there is you can see coming from a long way away. Most of the traffic you do see though is road trains – prime movers pulling three or even four trailers, and weighing upwards of 100 tonnes. One remarkable thing about road train drivers is that most of them seem to be much more friendly, considerate and polite than the average car driver while they’re on the road. I’ve got a theory that involves being professional drivers in charge of a vehicle that is, frankly, huge, and not needing to prove anything, but that’s just a theory. Anyway, when they see you from 5 minutes away and they have a long straight road that they can see is clear for miles they invariably move well over and give you heaps of room. When the road isn’t clear though, well, they can’t move over, and it takes quite a while to stop a hundred tonnes. On that basis, any time it wasn’t obvious that a passing road train would have heaps of space, I just got off the road. On the few occasions when there was a road train coming from each direction I usually had enough time to change my speed to make sure that they were passing me well away from the point where they were passing each-other. You literally see these things 15 minutes away, so you’ve got a lot of time to react. But it still isn’t always possible, and as I hurried along I realised that the truck up in-front was going to get here at about the same time as the one behind. I was getting off the road.

The shoulder at that point looked pretty good, and I figured I could ride onto it, possibly without stopping at all. As the trucks approached I stuck out my arm to give a good clear indication that I was going to get out of the way, so they could just continue on. Then I turned onto the shoulder. At exactly the point it got bumpy. I rode through the first bumps, and heard a funny sound from behind me. I hit some more bumps, and realised it was my spare water, slipping out from under my strapping. Now with the two bottles strapped either side of the top of the Tailfin and the bike pointing and moving away from the road it made good sense that one bottle would roll along the edge of the road, while the other would roll straight into the roadside vegetation and quickly come to a stop. The bottles didn’t show good sense. They both fell towards the road, and both rolled further out into it. I watched them rolling, and decided not to step in front of a 100 tonne truck to retrieve them – it was going to be fine anyway, I could see they were both stopping outside of the wheel tracks. I waited for about 10 seconds, while the bottles stopped rolling and the truck coming from ahead kept coming. It was going to miss both bottles by a mile. Great. It did miss both bottles by a mile. Even greater. Have I mentioned the wind blast these things push? Suddenly the bottles were rolling again. In a terrible sort of slow motion I watched the farthest bottle start rolling back towards me, and back towards the truck coming from behind. It still took around 5 seconds, but it rolled to a stop right in the wheel track just as the truck got there, and it was amazing just how flat that bottle looked after the truck had passed on by.

It didn’t actually take long to retrieve and reattach the surviving bottle, and shove the remains of the other one under the straps, and I still had plenty of water so losing that one wasn’t an issue, but mentally it didn’t do me any favours. Still, after cursing for a little while, and making sure that this time I had tied the bottles properly, I got back on the bike.

The second thing I hadn’t factored in though was that it wasn’t actually just after 4 when I got on the bike at Madura Pass. I knew this, I just wasn’t thinking about this. Turns out, it was around ten to five. You see, there is a time-zone in between Perth and South Australia. It is a sort of semi-official time-zone, called the Border Time Zone, or to give it its official unofficial name, Australian Central Western Standard Time, and its 45 minutes ahead of Perth time. I’m going to say at this point that it is a brilliant feeling when you suddenly realise that you have ridden far enough to pass into a different time-zone, and it’s also an absolute pain.

Of course, the reason they put an extra time-zone in there is so that what clocks say makes sense in relation to what the sun is doing. So even though I wasn’t paying particular attention to my watch it was pretty obvious that after a couple of days of riding due east it was getting dark earlier. And as it got dark, my body decided (reasonably) that night-time was here, and it would soon be time for bed. My plan to ride hard through the night was only good for as long as I was fit and sufficiently awake to do so.

It was only about 8pm (well ok, it was about 8:45pm, if you allow for time-zones) but I could feel that in another four hours I wouldn’t be in a state I wanted to ride in. I could either push on now, or take a break and then be feeling fresh for the next four hours. I saw a roadside lay-by, and decided to take a break and have a power-nap. I didn’t want to be long about it, so I just lay down on the dirt, using my jacket as a pillow, setting my alarm for half an hour’s time. I was pretty sure it would help a lot.

It didn’t help much. It was dusk, and one key thing I hadn’t noticed in the gloom was the ant’s nest just beside the track. It only took a couple of minutes for the first of them to find me. I brushed it off, but then two or three more came back. They weren’t biting, so I figured I’d just ignore it, but as more arrived it started to really tickle quite a lot, and after 15 minutes I realised there was simply no way I was going to sleep there. At that point it also started to rain, so I gave up, got up, brushed off the ants, and got on my bike. Honestly it was far from the most restful stop I’ve had, and I thought I may still need another nap before the border.

I rode another 33km, and with the wind having died down a lot and the rain still holding off apart from the odd drop now and then the conditions weren’t too bad, but it still took me nearly an hour and a half. The facts were that I was tired, my butt was sore, and I was riding slowly. I made what was going to be a quick roadside stop to try and address the butt discomfort. It did help a little, but it was far from quick. When you are just plain tired everything takes longer. You spend minutes putting down your bike, minutes looking for the things you want, minutes packing up, minutes stretching, minutes checking the weather, basically you just spend time, without going forwards. Looking afterwards I can see that the stop was 27 minutes in total, for what should have taken three minutes at the most! I was clearly tired, and I knew it. I considered stopping there and having another nap, but realised it was only 8km to Mundrabilla Roadhouse, so I decided to head there and see if it offered better sleeping options.

Mundrabilla was just as quiet as I had expected, but there was a picnic table there under a little roof, and it looked like much better ant protection. I checked the weather and it looked like I had a while before the rain would arrive – as long as I got out of there within about half an hour I should make Border Village without getting too wet.

I set my alarm for half an hour, climbed onto the table, and tried to sleep.

I actually did sleep a little, but when the alarm went off half an hour later I was freezing cold. It was my own fault, I should have known that would happen.

You know those magic defrosting plates that they sometimes sell on late-night TV shopping specials? The ones that are supposed to magically defrost your food in next to no time? Well, they do actually work, and they aren’t very complicated. Basically, they’re just aluminium plates, and they work because aluminium is a great conductor of heat. When you put your frozen lamb-chops (or whatever else) on the plate the whole plate quickly goes to the temperature of the lamb-chops, which is colder than the rest of the room, and then essentially, you’ve got all of the surface area of the plate acting as a radiator to transfer heat from the room into your lamb-chops, and your lamb-chops quickly warm up. It works the other way, too – if your lamb-chop is really hot and you put it on the aluminium plate it will cool down much quicker. It also works if it isn’t a plate, but an aluminium picnic table, and it isn’t a lamb-chop but yourself.

So I woke up freezing cold, and cursing every telly-marketer who has walked the earth (I know – not their fault. Don’t care). But at least I had slept a bit, and was feeling a bit more refreshed, and should be right to make Border Village. It was just around 80km east of me. Three or four hours, then a warm bed. I looked east, hoping to see the glow of Border Village on the horizon. What I saw was lightning. Bugger that.

I’ve ridden through rain, and snow, and wind, and heat, and I’ll ride through all of them again. Things I’m not keen to ride through though are hail and lightning. Especially if I’m going to ride 80km with no shelter, me being the tallest thing for as far as I can see. I was stopping in Mundrabilla.

I rolled out my bivvy on the dirt, went and used the restrooms to get ready for bed, and then climbed inside my nice warm sleeping bag. I had spent the whole day expecting to end it in South Australia, and I wasn’t going to make it. I was a bit disappointed, but I knew that a good night’s sleep was going to do me good. Tomorrow would be another day.