Day 152 | Alice: sliding into the civilisation groove
Plenty of work here in Alice they say, for those that want it. I’m in no great rush, gee, I just finished biking 7500 km and a certain period of adjustment, mostly for the body, is required. And it’ll take a week or so to scratch out the last blogs.
Seems I just scurried in on time. Was 36°C on Sunday when I docked, 40° yesterday, 41° today. Makes for easy drying of the washing, hang it up, pull it down, immediately, just wished the machine had managed to eradicate all signs of the last 10 days effort.
It’s been 68 days since I last stretched horizontal in a bed and multiply that with the joy of not having to stash all that camping stuff, still dripping, in my panniers in the morning, mind you the day generally improved radically following that point, instead just wander down the street to the huge supermarket, choice of two, and suddenly civilisation is showing its benefits. Doesn’t feel so bad, at least for a while.
I’m going to be stationed here for the summer, the weather further north on the next section of my zigzag will have the Wet Season starting soonish, flooding a possibility, even common when you can get 100 mm of rain in an hour, the ground already sodden with the day before’s effort. Hard enough to ride with the major thunderstorms most afternoons, forked lightning all around, no shelter for 100 km.
This journal will be only some occasional bike related entries for a while.
Alice is a pretty wild town, stabbing capital of Australia, largest renal dialysis unit in the Southern Hemisphere, (you get a bit of “the largest in the Southern Hemisphere” stuff down here, primarily because there’s not exactly a lot of competition), that’s whacky because the town has less than 30,000 people resident and we are up against the masses in Buenos Aires, or Sao Paulo, theft is a major issue, so the pedals are coming off the bike, I’m walking around for the foreseeable future.
At least a topup to my savings should enable the remainder of the trip to be completed without further breaks and the climate will be in my favour as I head first north in the Dry Season, then south as Spring and Summer come around.
In the money department the last two months have been rather frugal, only food to account for, shrinkage of the savings less than $800 since I left Exmouth. Not so much to spend money on when there’s an absence of shops.
Meanwhile in my temporary accommodation there’s the usual type of riveting backpacker style declamations masquerading as conversation broadcast to anyone who will listen:
… I woke up at lunchtime and still had my shoes on …
… The security guy at the Casino said we were too drunk to get in. It was after 3am so we came back. I thought you’d be around … Yes dear, we heard you singing.
… I got back from work late and there was some retard sleeping on my bed, even still had my junk all over it, he just plonked on top. Took me 20 minutes to get him off …
… That guy I met in the bathroom, we kissed a bit but I wouldn’t want to sleep with him …, then, almost as justification to herself, … anyway I couldn’t … I’ve only got one condom left and it’s past its use by date …
Get me outta here!