July 24, 2015
Leaving Sale: Introducing another new friend
As Dea and I were preparing to leave our lovely hosts and continue our journey Trish offered to accompany us into town and show us some of the sites of Sale. These amounted to a wooden statue and some of the least impressive botanical gardens one could imagine (wrong time of year of course) although I have to say observing Sale’s wild albino peacocks was the town’s saving grace. Then we all went shopping together, a task which ended up taking most of the day. We were looking for a new camping stove to replace my old broken one, and we wanted the same model, because we’d already bought a four pack of butane gas canisters. We went in every camping shop, outdoor shop, hardware shop, bike shop, fishing shop and Aldi shop but with no luck whatsoever. Trish even suggested we go to the gun shop to look there, but I declined on principle. Eventually we were told that the type of stove we were after was no longer allowed to be sold in Australia, which was annoying.
But our shopping trip was not fruitless. Though we would still be eating cold sandwiches for dinner we did have much more luck with the other items on our list, successfully purchasing food and reflective tape and a spoke key and a hi-viz vest and a platypus. In one of those cheap dollar-store style shops Dea had spotted a cuddly toy platypus and decided to buy it for me as a gift, I think so that Karen would have company, or perhaps so that she wouldn’t be the only one looking silly with a cuddly toy on her bike.
Trish looked at us a bit strange when the platypus appeared, but she still maintained an air of loveliness as she waved us off at the edge of town, gifting us a homemade cake to take with us. From there the road got a little busier than we would have liked, and there were even a few spots of rain, but it was alright really. We made friends with the platypus, who was called Plopples, because Dea made the mistake of letting me name him, and he spoke in a refined and well-mannered accent and said things like “It’s Mr Plopples if you don’t mind.” Other than that the rest of the day passed without incident, so I’ll just leave you with a couple of photos of Dea looking first of all very adorable, and then seriously badass.
Today's ride: 35 km (22 miles)
Total: 45,179 km (28,056 miles)
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