May 29th, 2011
Caiguna to Balladonia
Distance: 189km
Total distance: 4469km
As of this morning, I still haven’t given up my hope of riding 200km a day. I had one great sleep last night. Fully restored my energy level. A couple of hundred metres off the Caiguna roadhouse and I found myself riding into the longest straight road in the country, the 90 Mile Straight. To be honest, I didn’t feel any different riding on a long straight road compared to my rides in the past few days. Couldn’t really tell if it’s straight when I couldn’t see the road more than 5km ahead due to mild undulations. Very mild undulations in fact, which is a good thing. A decent tailwind at 4 to 5 o’clock and armed with a bucket load of uplifting music, I was more determined than ever to ride the 200km. One minor problem though, to achieve that distance, I must ride pass the next roadhouse and bush camp somewhere. Bush camping means I need at least 30mins of daylight left to survey for a campsite and to set up my tent. With this in mind, I focused on high cadence riding, constantly achieving a stable speed of 23km/h and above without experiencing much fatigue. At this point, I felt invincible!
At about 180km, the road undulates a lot and that’s when I started losing speed, and consequently daylight. Very sadly, I had no choice but to give up my last opportunity of riding 200km and just settle down at Balladonia roadhouse. Wasn’t all bad though, I set a new personal average speed record of 19.5km/h! And I get to meet Mike too, a 71 year old guy walking across the country that I’ve been hearing about from Andrew and other travellers who had met him. I didn’t camp tonight, took a backpackers room instead as it was very cheap. My room was just next to Mike’s. I didn’t get to talk to him much though, as he was busy entertaining others. Will be seeing him again tomorrow on the road so hopefully I’ll get to talk to him one on one. Instant noodles tonight, yums!
The solar panels are to provide power for telecommunications. I think they’re repeater stations, probably for fibre-optics since there isn’t a huge tower, which they would be for, if it was for radio. There should be a little building near each array that houses the technical stuff.