Day 67: Thrashed! Beaten! Defeated!

May 21st, 2011

Penong to 40km east of Nundroo
Distance: 43km
Total distance: 3499km

I knew the weather in Nullarbor wouldn’t be so kind. Yesterday was just an exception. Today I faced the greatest and most gruesome enemy for any cyclists: EXTREME headwind.

Flapping tent woke me up early this morning. Peeked out to find that I’d be getting a headwind today, sigh. Back to bed then. Woke up for real only at 7.30am. Took me a long time to get ready as I cooked up some onions and spam. Got the onions from the free food basket, food left by travelers that can’t be brought pass the quarantine check point in Ceduna. If only they banned meat too, mmmmm. For some reason, the cooking this morning took a long time. I think it might be that the frying pan was too high from the burner. Made a mental note to use sauce pan for all future cooking.

Hit the road only at 10.30am, as late as yesterday but this time I wasn’t motivated to ride at all. Once I got on the highway, I faced west and instantly felt the invisible yet forceful push from 1 o’clock.

The wind continued blowing even until now, as I’m writing this at 6pm. I have never seen such a forceful wind in so many years of riding. And of course, I lost one of my flags again. Wanted to turn back to pick it up but the thought of riding an extra kilometre of extreme headwind puts me off. I can’t afford to lose my remaining flag, so I made a decision to go flagless (until I get out of Nullarbor), great logic huh? Most of Nullarbor is pretty straight and flat road, so I am already quite visible without the flags.

Less than 10km into riding, I met Darren, another English cyclist! He’s riding from Perth to Sydney and I bet he had a blast riding in the extreme tailwind condition! He was aiming for 150km today whereas I aimed for only half of that. In the end, I only managed half of what I aimed for, a mere 40km, but incredibly hard riding. I wanted to ride a bit further as there was still a couple of hours daylight, but at 35km, it started raining, and becomes heavy at times. That’s when I tell myself I had enough of this, I’ve wasted enough of precious energy in overcoming the wind. Besides, it was already 4pm, no way I can make it to Nundroo Roadhouse which was still about 40km away.

Found myself a decent spot surrounded by trees to pitch my tent. Pitching a tent in this wind was tricky. I could be easily mistaken for trying to fly a huge kite. I somehow managed by anchoring my tent to a 10kg rock, haha. Tonight will be my first night of bush camping in Nullarbor. Only my second night in Nullarbor and already getting such a blow. Lovely.