July 13, 2015
Look you've got to slow down you idiot: Stop and smell the roses would ya?
We stayed in Michael’s home for two days, and I mean that quite literally. With bad weather outside I was happy to rest my tired body, and I don’t think I went outside at all the whole time that we were there. After my long rush across the country I was tired, and grateful for the chance to relax. Michael was busy a lot of the time, and was often out, although he would come back occasionally in a whirlwind of loud chatter and maniacal cleaning. Noticing how tired I was and after hearing that we planned to take just four weeks to cycle to Gold Coast he berated me: “Look, you’ve got to slow down you idiot. Stop and smell the roses would ya?”
Michael was an odd and sometimes difficult host, but he was a good guy really, and it was great to have a place to rest, although I did tactfully suggest to Dea that I be responsible for finding our next warmshowers host. As for the bike parts that we’d come here to collect, most of them had arrived, although sadly not the tyres that Pete, a generous reader of my blog, had kindly offered to donate to the cause. A quick exchange of emails revealed that they had been sent to the wrong address and returned to sender, and my offer to Pete of a place in the Really Long Way Round Hall of Fame had to be hastily retracted.
Come Monday morning we were ready to head back into downtown Melbourne, and did so on a much-better-planned route that meant we could take bike trails almost the whole way. These first took us slightly inland of the bay, through wetland areas where we watched various long-billed birds. It was an overcast morning, but the rain stayed away and it was lovely to be cycling together. Dea seemed really happy. For all Michael’s eccentricities his advice stuck with me, and I knew he was right. This journey wasn’t about me anymore, it was about both of us. I wasn’t Solo-Man anymore and the two of us were going to have to slow down and smell the roses if this was going to work.
Back in Melbourne we went to our original AirBnb host, but only to collect some of Dea’s luggage that she had stashed there. Resuming our complex itinerary we were now moving to a different AirBnb host a few kilometres further north, chosen because of its proximity to the frame repair specialists that were going to fix up my kangaroo-damaged chainstay. The borrowed bike that Dea was on did not have a huge capacity for carrying stuff, and so her heavy backpack ended up strapped on the back of my bike. Coming in addition to all of my own belongings this meant my bike was absurdly heavy, more so than ever before, for the last few kilometres of the day. Graham’s weld had survived this far, but it was to undergo one final test under the strain of all this as we cycled north on a bicycle path busy with commuters heading home as dusk once again overcame us.
Along the way we stopped to collect some handlebars from yet another location. These had also been kindly offered to us by Pete, although fortunately his wife Louise had taken charge of writing the address this time, and the bars had arrived safely. Dea found somewhere to carry them and we wobbled along to our new hosts, both making it all the way by bicycle this time. We were warmly welcomed into our new homestay, which we were pleased to see had a large outdoor patio area which we were told we could turn into a bicycle workshop.
I started straight away, stripping my frame right down. Tomorrow it would go to the repair shop. Graham’s weld had, against all expectations, survived.
Today's ride: 75 km (47 miles)
Total: 44,840 km (27,846 miles)
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