Today was a lesson in perspective I guess. I spent the morning hustling to get out of Kununurra then ended up voluntarily staying.

I went early to the shops, and to get coffee & breakfast, and cleaned my bike all of which took until about 9:30 when I started trying to track down my wheel. 

After a few frustrating conversations, it arrived at the couriers in Kununurra so I went and precariously balanced it back to the bike shop.

Mick was out of covid iso by now and had the tools and chain whip. The cassette came off smoothly and went on the new one but once we put it on the bike, it didn’t turn! 

A panicked phone call to Omafiets followed as I wondered if I hadn’t swapped all the right parts. Chris very kindly called me from his covid isolation and started talking about spacers, at which time I checked the box again and found a missing spacer and everything went on. Unfortunately this meant more dicking around with it than I would have liked but I hope we haven’t managed to stuff anything up. 

After another coffee (well, it was 1pm and too hot to ride), I went back to the backpackers, ready to ride out triumphantly only to find Brian talking to another cyclist. Davin, from South Africa via Adelaide, had ridden from Victoria River, having left his car there when he found Kenny, from Scotland via Melbourne, riding. Kenny has ridden all the way from Melbourne, is carrying a swag tent on a Vivente world radonneur, but has only slept in it less than 10 times. He is on skinny tyres and doing up to 200k per day. They are riding to Broome via the sealed road. I got a bit concerned cause Davin decided not to do the Gibb, even though he’s done the Indy-Pac race from Perth to Sydney’s and ridden to Cameron’s Corner. I’m hoping it’s mostly cause he met Kenny and put his road wheels on. He’s riding a Bomtrak and has an extremely light set up. 

I decided to stay and chat and go for a pub dinner, which was actually not too bad at Hotel Kununurra. Feeling a bit nervous about the Gibb now though and kind of wishing I’d got some kms under way today but will wake up early tomorrow. 

Heart

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