Working The Crowd
CWCT Day 3: Gulgong to Mudgee
"I'm four and he's six. My name is B and he's R. There's a baby in our family too but I don't know how many months the baby is. The baby's a boy, he's a brother too. How long are you staying? We're only staying one night. Dad's lit a fire." B worked the whole caravan park, talking to everyone, a future politician if ever I'd seen one. Every so often he returned to check in with us and inform us that he'd had dinner/an icecream/a drink of Milo. I went for a shower and he came back in my absence. "Where's the girl?" He asked Roger, obviously appreciating my youthful countenance. Like I said, that kid would go far.
| Heart | 0 | Comment | 0 | Link |
Roger's broken phone stayed broken. In our digital age this rendered him bereft of navigation and, even more important for his engineering brain, access to the numbers that would allow him to spend his rides calculating water consumption/km; traveling speed, arrival times, and whether he had passed the highest point of the ride yet. The broken phone also meant he couldn't call for help if he needed it, and I couldn't invite him to lunch with me under a bridge if the occasion arose.
We decided that I would ride from Gulgong to Mudgee. He would meet me there and ride back. Should he never arrive, I would at least know where to look for his body (probably not in a fridge).
Off I went, starting off by riding up Gulgong's main street which, apart from a lick of paint, hadn't changed much in the last 100 years. I half expected to have to wait for a bullock wagon to pass.
A fierce tail wind sped me along the first 10 km or so. The few trees scattered around did little to break the wind which slowly turned from a tail wind to a strong cross wind with moments of head wind. I was not impressed, but the ride was enjoyable nonetheless. I puttered up and down over rolling hills of cultivation: winter oats, grapes, and unidentified herbage.
The old railway line meandered off through the hills, demonstrating the possibility of a fine rail trail in the future.
| Heart | 0 | Comment | 0 | Link |
I paused at the top of the final hill. Mudgee was visible 10km away in the valley, at the bottom of a long downhill.
The last 5km took forever as Mudgee crept incrementally closer, my awesome cycling skills deserting me in the face of the headwind, slogging along beside the creek on a tedious little road shared with too many overexcited drivers.
Roger, being a sensible man, decided that riding the 30km back to Gulgong with a big uphill and a headwind was not for him. We called it a day and came home to spend the afternoon on the big deck outside the comfortable camp kitchen, doing all the pesky admin stuff that had to be done even when traveling. B had moved on, so nobody came to visit us and provide updates about their family dynamics and state of nutrition. The boy was probably happily working the crowd at another caravan park somewhere, but I missed him anyway.
And we washed the car. As much as we could without a hose, anyway.
| Rate this entry's writing | Heart | 1 |
| Comment on this entry | Comment | 0 |