Tim vs Amy, Cooee vs Tim

In the cloudy morning, I grunted a goodbye to Sal, who was diligently and quietly leaving for work in the rain. Her enthusiasm for work that day was as low as mine for getting up, though she chose to rise to the challenge instead of turning towards the wall and continuing to drool and snore for another hour. (Not saying that's what Sal typically does; that's what I did.)

Shortly after, a pile of pyjamas resembling Amy rolled into the lounge like a flannel tumbleweed, so I quickly concealed my drool patch and feigned alertness. We had a date with the Stuarts in Ipswich that night, so we spent our first ounces of consciousness arranging our transport and accommodation accordingly. Amy ended up with a booking on the afternoon train and I would race her there on the Reverend. Cooee had kindly offered to share his bedroom for a couple of nights so I planned to descend upon him after dinner with the Stuarts.

The sun came out for a while before lunch, giving Amy and me the perfect chance for some high-octane shopping in downtown Nambour. The place really has it all: Vinnies and the Salvos.  We picked our way around the place, ingesting coffees, sandwiches and pastry things here and there. Something that grabbed our attention was how polite the locals seemed to be. Every time we threatened to blunder into the path of an oncoming car, they would stop gently and motion for us to cross - quite unlike other parts of southeast QLD, where a wrong move might leave you with a radiator shroud where your lungs should be. Later on, when Amy was rushing to the train with her heavy suitcase, one of the oddly non-violent residents gave her a lift to the station! Perhaps all the physio Sal had done on the local population had made them feel so good they had transcended petty aggression and spent their days offering rides to strangers. Maybe everyone was high on drugs. We will never know.

By the time I left, the heavens had opened again and the Rev and I became hopelessly lost in a tangle of hilly backroads. Visibility was atrocious.  It took half a frustrating hour to find my way back to the familiar freeway, making me late to dinner in Ipswich. Amy had won this round of train vs motorbike and her smugness knew no bounds (at least, not in the confines of my neurotic head).

Dinner was a Thai feast that quickly set everything right again for this sore loser. After we ate, we spent some time in the lounge, marvelling at Bear Grylls' willingness to drink his own urine and sleep inside zebra carcasses for fun. Clay kept us entertained with magic tricks out of a book he'd found, some of which were even successful. Though I could have happily lounged on and stayed the night, I had to see Cooee, so I said a quick goodbye and left. Robyn, Rod and Clay would leave for Thailand soon. I rode through the cool dark and wondered when I would next see them.

I knocked on Cooee's door and he punched me in the balls. At first I wasn't sure if it was his usual affectionate greeting or he was upset that I'd taken so long to arrive, so I tried to smile while I coughed to clear my Vas Deferens from the back of my throat. A glass of red wine later, we were in his bedroom jiggling our wrists, sweating with the intensity of a properly shredding Guitar Hero face-off. We thrashed our plastic guitars through Tool, Metallica and other testostereophonic anthems to badassery, until it was very late.

Next day, I rode a luggage-free Reverend down to 99 Bikes in Fortitude Valley, where Cooee works. There, he was an assembler, wrench monkey and sometime sales consultant to the many Brisbanians who'd rather push pedals than accelerators. We both wanted Vietnamese food from the restaurant at the other end of the Valley, so he ducked through a door somewhere and re-appeared with the Shop Bikes so we could pedal our way there.

I don't know which of them was worse: the decrepit single-speed men's racer without any brakes, or the garishly decorated and slightly bent child's BMX bike. After a brief pause, he deigned that I should ride the BMX; at least it had brakes. Cooee's braking solution comprised a hastily fitted caliper stolen from the parts bin, with his feet for backup.

My 'Shop Bike' would have looked like this if it were new. It wasn't.

The insanity that followed was some of the finest cycling I have enjoyed in a long time. I bunnyhopped up the footpath; Cooee's brakes totally failed; we careened against the human tide on the footpath on our pathetic machines. It was unexpectedly and totally freaking awesome. Arriving at the Vietnamese place, we simply dumped our bikes around the corner and left them. No Valley drug fiend would make anything selling them to Cash Converters, so they were safe to rust in the laneway while we ate.

My stay was to be brief, so the next morning I rose with Cooee, saddled up the Rev and made my way back to Maryborough. Cooee was preparing to leave for Italy - taking some time to explore, ride and live differently - so it was a slightly sombre departure for me. We might only have been lucky to see each other once a year, but his insane creativity was always a delight to have in my life. I hope to hang out with him again, whether it's at home, in Italia or somewhere beyond. Save a broken bike and some vino rosso for me, dude.

Update: Cooee kindly sent me this pic of the very bike I rode (albeit with race bars fitted for extra speed). Here Mr Khoo models the Malvern Star RadMax which is, in no uncertain terms, RAD TO THE MAX.

Nambour

I arrive in Nambour soaked to the skin and dyed slightly black from my leather jacket. I should really have put my wet gear on, but the downpour hit so quickly that I couldn't find a safe place to stop. Hang on, what am I whining for? This is motorcycling - the sport of masochists!

Before I even found Sally's place, I bumped into Simon, her sister Katy's husband. He lead me there and Sal gave us all a warm welcome. The combined party included Sally, Katy and Amy (all sisters), Simon and me. We all got stuck into the lunch that Sal has generously provided for the horde of relatives. Burping and satisfied, Katy and Simon made the trip back to Brisbane, Amy had a nap and I went under the house to try and sort out the Reverend's running problem again.

Although I was still cold and didn't feel like taking the bike apart again, I had an idea that occurred to me as I was trying to get the Rev to idle when I left that morning. The choke lever had been feeling a little stiff near one end of its travel, so I decided to investigate if something was wrong with the cable. With the seat, side panels, left instrument assembly and fuel tank off, Eureka! There it was.

Because the choke lever uses one cable to actuate two choke plungers (one for each carb), there is a splitter halfway down the cable. One of the legs of the splitter had cracked, allowing the rear cylinder choke cable to stay taut even when the choke lever was off. That meant the rear cylinder's mixture was always too rich, ruining the idle and causing the engine to stall when hot. Woohoo! I'd worked the sucker out!

I still had to fix the thing, though. A phone call to Honda Australia brought the depressing news that choke cables were $80 and there wasn't a single one in the land. I told them that waiting eight weeks for it to be shipped from Japan was not an option and hung up. I needed another solution.

Everyone knows that you can fix absolutely any mechanical problem with gaffa tape (if you can't, it's an electrical problem). I wasn't carrying any, so I went to ask Sal for some. She looked high and low, but couldn't turn up any of the sticky black stuff. She thought for a moment.

"Would strapping tape work?"

"What?"

"You know, the stuff I use on people." (She's a physiotherapist, helping all sorts of people at Nambour Hospital).

"Give us a look at it."

It was flexible; it was super sticky and: IT WORKED! With his guts taped up, the Rev started instantly and settled into a smooth and sonorous idle. Thanks to Sally, a little physio on his choke cable splitter had made him good as new again.

All three of us wanted an easy dinner, so Sal took me on a tour of the fast food restaurants of Nambour. Her little, green Daihatsu Sirion is an amazing beastie, despite its advancing years. Most of the family has bets on when it will explode during one of its daily Nambour hill starts, but the little jigger just keeps cheating us out of our money.

Back at the ranch, with pizza, KFC and a salvaged bottle of wine, we all chatted happily for a couple of hours. It's been a long time since I'd talked with Sal for more than a couple of minutes, so it was a relief to find her beautiful sense of humour had survived years of study. All talked out, three happy cousins went to bed.

We apologise for this break in transmission

As many of you have commented, the pace of of new posts has slowed to a crawl. The most recent posts are well over a month behind - I'm writing this from a garden in Katherine, NT, on power I'm stealing from a nearby caravan site. It's the first internet access I've had in 5 days and 2000km.

Writing about what I'm doing and reading your comments is a major part of this trip for me. It helps me make sense of this little mission and keep my motivation up. It gives me a huge thrill when you tell me you've enjoyed my latest post!

The reality of my travel - right now, at least - is that I spend the bulk of my time simply covering ground and trying not to die. When I'm not riding, refuelling or resting, I'm talking to people and trying to plan my next move. Two hours of every day is chewed up simply by making and breaking camp. Maybe I really suck at camping.

Anyway, the point of this whine is that when I do have time to write, I usually don't have A) power, B) internet, C) a functioning nervous system or D) all of the above. The best I can do is take notes every day (and I'm doing really well with that), for fleshing out into diary entries later. Then I sort of pass out.

Dear readers, if there are any of you left, I WILL continue to write this blog until its natural conclusion. Even if I have to write half the story from home when I'm done, I'll do it.

That is a promise.

What I can't guarantee is the quality or frequency of my updates until I get to somewhere around Perth, which is a bleeding long way away. I'll do as much as I can. Thanks so much for taking the time to read this :-)

Lots of love,

Timmy P

PS You can find out where I am at any time by clicking the "Find Me" link in the top right-hand corner.

PPS Please find attached some photos of stuff you haven't read about yet.

Riding out west with Johnny.

A very special visitor.

Friendly locals.

Wide open spaces.

Friends (and relatives) for life.

Lauren's cancer journey pt 3

My trip away to Queensland, before LT started treatment, gave me lots of happy times for the memory tank. I jotted some of them down over a beer on the way back to Hobart.

1829, Wed 6 January 2010.  Melbourne Airport.

The last couple of days have been a mixed bag, feelings-wise, which is pretty normal for me approaching any sort of 'change event' (Don Watson would be proud of my management speak).  I've had a few moments of despair that tend to lead to antisocial outbursts at family members, but they've passed quickly.  I'm a bit scared of what my role as a carer for Lauren might entail, and it's pushing my fear of commitment button pretty hard.  I need to remember that I'm still somewhat on holiday and that I need to look after myself if I'm going to be worth having around at all.  I wish our travel plans were still locked in; it would give me at least one thing to structure the immediate future around.

Phew.  Maybe no wild night tonight, going by my beer breath.  Gotta do something to fight the boredom though.
So LT has had her three first radiation blasts, with only minor side effects so far.  Poor girl was very uptight with that sort of whole-body nervousness before her first dose, but luckily things went reassuringly well. The mystery at this point is which other side effects might show up, how bad they'll be and how long before we're thoroughly fed up with the daily rigmarole of treatment.  You'll here about it here first, dear diary.

This tiny screen gives me fierce eyestrain.  I look up every now and then and can't pick the gender of anyone further than 5m away.  I guess it doubles my perving potential, if I really get desperate for a bright side.

Maybe I'll finish by jotting some holiday highlights to jog the memory, since I was slack as a lazy dog with the camera this time.  In no particular order, they are:

• Playing at least 15 rounds of yard golf with Alex and, in between the long periods of sucking, actually nailing a few shots;
• Trying twice, for several hours at a time, to tune A's nitro buggy to a useable state and failing;
• Spending at least a working week setting up, fixing or otherwise fiddling with Dad, Mum and Alex's computers,  rendering the household somewhat more likely to harness the computing mumbo at their disposal.  I came close to frustration, but the happiness of success (and payment to the tune of $200) kept me going like a crack-addicted ferret with an IT degree;
• Spending about 4 hours with Alex, chosing a remote control car with his Christmas funds, only to have the one he bought fail after 30 minutes.  Cue another 45 minute trip down the coast to swap it for another (blessedly functional) one;
• Heading down to Kawana and spending half a day getting my camp cooking kit seriously sorted out. I am so damn chuffed with the compact cleverness of the setup I ended up with.  YEEESSSS!!!;
• Seeing Mum burst into tears when Nick presented her with a Tahitian black pearl to thank her for supporting him through uni.  While I was completely upstaged on the gift front (the top I got her didn't fit), it was a beautiful moment;
• Being a small part of the new car purchase that Mum and Dad made to kick off their Season of Spending.  It's a nice new Forester with lots of legroom in the back.  Lovely;
• Getting myself and Paul some wicked new shirts from Ed Harry.  I love the look of my “Argentina” one, but the Terminator 2 quoting one is the funniest ever.  Paul loved his :-).  I also hooked the big man up with wireless in his house, which he reckons is the best thing since sliced bread;
• Spending hours with Paul and Alison, vegging out, playing PS3, watching Zombieland, Sin City, Avatar and stupid Youtube clips.  Good clean manly fun;
• Camping in the back yard in my new tent.  I made it through the night without the fly.  I am mother-effin hardcore;
• Seeing mum's face when she saw me on Skype video chat for the first time;
• Having a seriously beautiful time with LT in QLD.  I love just being us, hanging out.
• Seeing Amy, Sally and the other Prideauxs yesterday.  Amy is looking great, but her lymphocytic colitis is back.  I hope to hell the steroids she's on do the trick, otherwise she's looking at another two years of being wrecked by chemo.  Please God, she's had enough;

I'll think of more, I'm sure, but I'm done for now.  Only half an hour til I can get on the plane. See you in Hobart.

Home at last

Today's map.

It was a funny feeling to roll into the backyard of Mum and Dad's on a motorcycle. For the first time in the trip, I'd reached somewhere I really identified with from the past, so it was a bit surreal to turn up astride a part of my new life in Tassie. (I didn't get into bikes until I moved from the mainland three years ago.)

Little bro Alex, some twelve years younger than me, was excited to say hello until Nick and Eb arrived and he went totally ballistic. Having left home when he was only five, I guess I fit better into the 'grumpy uncle' category better than 'brother'. We see each other a couple of times a year and that's it. When all the family are together, though, it's loud, chaotic (by our standards) and a boatload of fun.

Visiting the folks isn't visiting the folks without one of my favourite things: sitting on the deck at dusk, drinking wine and solving life's problems. The house looks over the river and the canefields beyond, with Mum's meticulously-kept gardens and Dad's sprawling vege plantation filling out the foreground. Fruit bats whoosh overhead in small groups, the occasional jumping mullet makes a lonely 'ploonk' in the river and we are united in quiet conversation for half an hour. At least, that's how it would have been if Alex had sat still and stopped using long exposures and a torch to create photos of Nick with a giant phallus erupting from his middle. I loved it anyway.

In the morning, the real men - that is, everyone but me and Mum - went off for a round of golf at the local links (is that what you call them?). Golf, to me, is somewhere between having herpes and being mauled by dogs in terms of enjoyment, but Nick and Alex are both pretty good at it. Worried by the Rev's recent misbehaviour, I raided Supercheap Auto and the local bike shop for everything necessary to give him a full service. Assuming the poor running was an overheating problem, I made sure I had everything handy to flush out the cooling system and make sure it was healthy.

We played copious rounds of Modern Warfare on Alex's PS3. The usual characters were in play: Alex, merciless and happy to sing about shooting you in the face; Nick, almost as good, but more polite when celebrating his headshots; and me, morose and frustrated, constantly being shot in the head. I'm glad I never joined the army.

Next morning, we met up with our very Dutch grandmother for breakfast at a portside cafe. The service was terrible - "D'youse wanna sit inside or ert?" - but the bacon more than made up for it. I feel there would be far fewer broken relationships these days if only people would turn to bacon in times of need.

It was a short stay, because there were still more people to visit in the great southeast, so I prepared to head south to Nambour and visit cousin Sally. My departure was in front of the whole family and did irreparable damage to my ego when the Rev once again refused to start and idle. Alex even had time to get the camera and record my increasingly frustrated attempts to leave. Alex, if that turns up on Youtube, you're a dead man, ok?

Without time to unload the bike and take it apart again, I chose to go anyway, once I worked out how to keep it alive. I made my exit eventually, tense and frustrated, riding in the rain for an hour on the way to Nambour.

Ten thousand underpants

The next few posts will be a disappointment for people who like photos with their text. While I was in south-east Queensland, I directed my energy towards spending time with my wonderful and extensive family. I'm not really comfortable taking photos when I'm catching up with people. It takes you out of the moment and puts you at risk of being punched in the berries if they're camera-shy. Plus they'd all get mobbed by Australia's Next Top Model if I put any of their mugshots online. So I'm sorry, but all you're getting out of me for the moment is text.

*lonely cricket chirping*

I stayed with Nick for several days, while he and his girlfriend Eb went about their daily working lives. I would normally feel awkward being the unemployed bum mooching off two hard working people, but I'd had plenty of time to get used to it while LT was ill.

Nick works in finance and, as far as I can tell, loves it like mad. He's always had an interest in money, particularly in the area of directing as much of it as possible to his wallet. In his job as an adviser, the more money he makes for his clients, the more he earns for himself, so he gets to be both an altruist and filthy rich. It's the perfect job for a bloke who's always had a natural rapport with people (and their money).

One day, while he was at work, I put a load of laundry on in his crazy cyborg washing machine that plays music (no joke!). When it was done, I had to empty the drier to make way for my stuff. Instead of the usual conglomerate of apparel, what I pulled out, in astonishing quantity, were underpants. Thousands of underpants, maybe millions - all male, all Nick's. As armful followed armful, I began to fear I would suffocate under the steadily-growing swamp of elasticised bum ornaments. My only option was to start folding them as fast as I could and stem the rising tide. Several hours later, I was done and I  knew something about Nick I had never suspected: he has never thrown out a pair of jocks since leaving home.

A highlight of this stay in Brisbane was visiting the Stuart family - my aunt and uncle and their three children. They're a most unique family unit: adventurous, principled and generous in everything. Wade, Maxine and Clay - the kids - span the spectrum of talent from the pure creative to the artfully practical, making an evening's chat with them great entertainment. Aunty Rob treated us all to a gigantic chicken dinner, dessert and cups of tea along the way. Too full to move, I accepted Wade's offer to sleep over in the house he's renovating. All went well until the next morning, when I found the back door locked and a note asking me to leave via the front. Fine, I thought, but there isn't a door at the front! After a moment's confusion, I found a door after all, hidden behind a new wall that I had to slide behind to get out.

I couldn't stick around long, because I'd arranged a lunchtime rendezvous with Mr Khoo, a friend from my college days. Cooee is a unique and beautiful snowflake in my landscape of friends. He is the Instigator; the Maker of Mischief - a man whose creative medium is life itself. He is an uplifting, confronting, hilarious and sometimes dangerous man to be around. I love him like a fat kid loves cake.

I rode into town without showering or brushing my teeth, since I hadn't brought any toiletries to the Stuart's place. This went poorly with the searing sunshine that sent my armpits into overdrive and the Rev into fits of coughing as he got too hot. In fact, as I rode, I realised he was starting to sound decidedly ill. By the time I reached the Valley, he was cutting out in traffic and turning the trip into a nightmare. Things didn't improve once I met up with Cooee and rode with him to West End for a vegetarian feast at the Hare Krishna restaurant. The Rev cut out at the worst possible times: in the middle of a roundabout; approaching an intersection and just after Cooee, who was riding lead, took a turn. It was a smelly, intensely frustrated Timmy who sat down to his kofta balls and rice that day.

It was a happy, if brief, reunion though. Mr Khoo was preparing for a triathlon and, more importantly, his imminent departure to Italy for a tour of discovery and enlightenment. There was much to talk about, so we arranged to meet for longer the following week.

My uncle Sean and his partner Kylie live on the south side of Brisbane in a house that they are painstakingly renovating. At the end of the week, Nick, Eb and I went out to dinner with them at one of their favourite local restaurants. We had a great time chewing the fat about life, work and toys while we enjoyed a cracking meal under the watchful leer of the extremely camp manager. Seeing as I was the only single person at the table, I was the lucky one who enjoyed his repeated caressing of my shoulder when he topped up my drinks. After tea, we toured the renovations at Sean and Kylie's place and I drooled over his beautiful new Husky TE-510 dirt bike. It was a monster!

Next day, Nick and Eb were going to Maryborough - our birthplace - to visit the parents and Alex, our younger brother. Because I live an idiotic distance from Maryborough, seeing the whole family at once is a rare treat, so I raced Nick up the highway to spend a weekend with the folks. Luckily, the Rev held together for the three hour trip. I beat Nick, despite stopping on the way to buy two pairs of underpants. It stopped me from feeling quite so under-endowed in the tighty whitey department, but I knew I would never come close to his truly epic collection of jocks. I suppose some people are just naturally gifted.

Back on Queensland soil

Today's map.

It was nearly lunchtime after I'd dealt with the snapped clutch lever, so I was back on the bike straight away, heading for a less crashy place to eat. That place, after a couple of dozen miles of beautiful scenery, was Nimbin.

Nimbin is a freakin' hole.

Be careful asking for a pot at the Nimbin Hotel.

A faded sign, just out of town, boasts that Nimbin was home to the 1973 Aquarius Festival. Almost nothing, it seems, has changed in the town since then. The people in the main street - stoners, hippies (overwhelmingly unemployed), the mentally ill, wandering children and dogs - look as lost and faded as the festival billboard itself. Cannabis passes for culture here; a shallow, smoky and dismal shared futility. The only clean buildings are the police station and the drug abuse outreach centre. Everything else is a confused pastiche of New Age symbology, folk art and simple filth.

In deference to what good there was in town - the alternative power company, working artists and genuine seekers of truth - I ordered a tofu burger for lunch. It was surprisingly good, making a mockery of my own flaccid and tasteless attempts to cook with the stuff.

Tofu done right.

I filled my prescription at the local chemist (yes folks, I bought drugs in Nimbin) and went to leave, but my bike was parked in by a delivery truck. I wandered around some more and talked to three people. One of them asked me for money. The second offered me weed. The third told me the times the police sniffer dogs come by and offered to help me hide my stash. I explained I wasn't carrying and he went on a rant about police suppressing freedom anyway. By then, the truck had moved and I was free to get the hell out of there.

The next hour or so was spent pottering north through the pretty countryside and crossing the border into Queensland. The road surfaces improved immediately, so I enjoyed gently swooping through smooth corners as I came out of the hills behind the Gold Coast. In planning to arrive at Nick's place that afternoon, my brain had conveniently neglected to consider traffic once I was back on the highway. The five 'o' clock rush was in full swing, so the eight lanes of the Pacific Motorway had become 110km/h destruction derby. Nearing Brisvegas, this rapidly became an 80km/h event, then 30km/h, then a going-nowhere-and-overheating contest.

Unprepared for the gridlock, my bladder began to fill with great rivers of impending urine. With my waterworks expanding like the universe after the Big Bang, my mission in life very quickly became finding a way to wee. Simply flopping out my junk and blasting away in public seemed a touch rude, but the crawling cars almost made it a necessity until, shining over the treetops, an beacon of hope shone forth in yellow and blue.

It was IKEA.

I raced in, disobeying all the carpark speed limits along the way. With relief so close, my pee tank issued its warnings of imminent rupture even more frantically.  I spoke to it internally, reassuring it that the time was almost at hand, if it would just hold out a little longer.

How cruel reality can be when judging the nature of a decision, though. Inside the store - one of the largest in the southern hemisphere - I became lost. There were hectares of bathroom fittings, but not a single plumbed loo in sight. Toilet roll holders mocked me as I searched, weeping, with my fingers still in my ears after being assaulted by a display of miniature fountains. For nearly ten minutes I wandered in circles, ready to go in a reasonably capacious vase if I managed to find one, before I found it: a single staff toilet under a small black and white sign. I unloaded with such force that I swear I bent the urinal.

IPeeAhh.

Apart from getting lost in the dark because, as usual, I had only the vaguest idea where my brother lived, I made it to his place without further bodily crises. I was grateful for his and girlfriend Eb's warm welcome, not to mention his fusion cooking prowess in making pizzas out of spaghetti mince. We chatted and watched the wrongest and most hilarious movie ever, then I sank into the most beautiful bed in all of bedly creation. Happy times.

The Rev takes a dump

It rained on and off during the night, mostly when I was trying to get between the tent and somewhere else. Weirdly, the morning after was the first to gift me a dry tent, so breaking camp was quicker than usual. I was bound for Queensland - my brother's house in Brisbane - for the night.

Before catching up with my bro, though, there was the small matter of choosing a suitably tortuous route through the hinterland and across the border. I have driven the Pacific Hwy across the border only a handful of times, but they were enough to convince me to find another way. On Ez's advice, my first stop was in Byron Bay.

I don't think I've ever been to Byron, so it existed in my head as a simple jumble of adjectives like 'chilled', 'green' and 'unemployed'. It didn't take much snooping around to add 'brain-haemorrhagingly beautiful' to the list, amongst others. I parked the bike near the southern headland of the main beach, grabbed the camera and went exploring.

Following the track around the headland, I immediately regretted embarking on a hike in my motorcycle clobber. Kevlar-lined jeans, knee pads, tall black boots and the morning sun do not mix well with steep walking tracks. Oh well. It's tough looking cool.

The next beach along was also beautiful; aided greatly by the quantity of naked breast-meat spread liberally over it. For my moral safety, I kept the camera at the wide end of the zoom range here.

Another sweaty hillclimb later, I was at the easternmost point of the Australian mainland. I forget what it's called, but it's probably Cape Eastylots or It's All West From Here Point.

So overheated that a Japanese tour group mistook me for the Shinto god of perspiration (the offerings were lovely, but unnecessary), I called the exploration quits and retraced my steps to the bike.

The road bent inland and I followed it to Lismore (home of the Lizmorons, according to Ez). It was my first visit to her home town. It was also the first time I've ever lost control of the Rev.

Rolling down the main street, dehydrated and looking for something to drink, I came upon the scene of a recent traffic accident. A small four wheel drive was marooned unhappily on the kerb with its front wheels jutting outward at sick angles. Bystanders paused to offer help to the distressed driver on his mobile phone. Taken by all this, I failed to register an equally distracted driver reversing out of a car park right in front of me. Easing on the brakes, I came to a safe halt and moved to put my foot down to steady the bike.

The road wasn't there.

Caught out by the steep camber of the street, I pedalled on air for a frantic second before the Rev - all 250 loaded kilos of him - gracefully subsided onto the bitumen for a short nap. When a bike leans past its balancing 'point of no return', there's only one thing you can do: swear loudly and let go. I did.

The bags took the worst of the impact, but poor Reverend suffered a snapped clutch lever in the fall. My injuries were limited to my ego, having just treated the accident-gawpers to a second, if less violent, episode of mechanical ineptitude.

I needed some time to calm down and plan how to deal this little setback. With the help of two other blokes, I picked the Rev up and parked him out of further harm's way. Using my laptop at a coffee shop across the road, I nearly wept with joy when a Google search for Honda dealers in Lismore delivered a result. A little phone-work and fifteen dollars later, I had a replacement lever in my hand. Thanks Ongmac Honda; you rock!

It took no longer than to finish my takeaway cup of bean gravy to get the new lever installed. I was grinning like an idiot. I had made impromptu repairs to a motorcycle on the road. My ego was restored: at last, I had truly become a man!

Meeting Ez and Ev

Today's map.

The long weekend was over, the maniacs were off the roads and I had to get out of Wauchope. I'd spent three blissful nights there, relaxing and recovering. Now I had to get to Lennox Head, nearly 400km away, for a rendezvous with one of my bestest mates from Brisbane, Ez.

In the three years I worked as an engineer in Brisbane, Ez became one of my most trusted and revered friends. She, like me, was churning away in the private sector as a consultant, wielding her degrees in sociology and economics to very profitable (for her company, at least) effect. We both felt that we were working at jobs where our creative sides were somehow irrelevant to our roles; that procedures, politics and profit margins existing to crush our intellects instead of developing them. We marvelled at how complete, honest-to-goodness d**kheads landed managerial roles; how wide the gulf between marketing and reality could really be. (Do I sound like a petulant Gen Y'er? Sorry.)

Anyway, we shared our problems over cups of tea at our flats, via frustrated and hilarious emails, or by wandering through the discount shop in the Queen St Mall and laughing at all the mis-translated packaging from China. We hung out, talking all the time, buzzing and fizzing with stupid creativity until the pent-up frustration of the week had been eased. Ez, if you're listening, I don't think I can ever thank you enough for those days (and for still talking to me after I ditched my life in Queensland to see if the one I sought was in Tasmania).

With our history in mind, I was excited to get a chance to catch up on the last couple of months in our lives, so I pointed the Rev up the highway and rode like crazy. Starting at 7:30, I made Lennox in time for a late lunch at the pub. As promised, Ez's partner Evan came along to demolish pub grub and I was finally introduced to the bloke I'd heard so much about. His laidback humour seemed like the perfect foil to Ez's razor wit and, before our meals even arrived, we were all talking smack and laughing on the verandah together. It was brilliant.

With the pressure to arrive long gone and a steak sandwich mellowing in my stomach, exhaustion hit me like a sack of Chuck Norrises. Ez kindly took me to the shops to buy provisions, then gave me a guided tour while Ev had a surf. In the afternoon light, the rocky headland was beautiful. We watched the surfers and chatted animatedly as the sun sank. Lauren called me, freshly returned from her first CanTeen camp, and I caught up with her while we waited for Ev to finish surfing.

"It's one of the best things I've done in my life. Ever!" LT enthused.

Finally, she'd had the chance to meet people who'd been through what she had and just 'got it' when she told her story. I beamed and told Ez. It was a very happy piece of news from a girl who was initially pretty nervous about going to camp.

Ez had to travel back to Brisbane, ready for another week of work, so we said our goodbyes. Tired and happy, I set up my tent at the caravan park down the road in the last of the light. It had been an enormous and very beautiful day.

Lauren's Cancer Journey pt 2

Waiting to find out what (and where) Lauren's treatment would be was a frustrating time. Between us, we drank quite a bit of wine and watched too much TV while we waited. Maybe we were afraid of going outside in case of somebody running up and diagnosing LT with another illness. Maybe we just weren't really ready to deal with what our future could be. Either way, detaching the brain via TV and alcohol was a popular pastime.


In the end, the surgeon referred us to a local oncologist who was confident he could design a radiation-only (that is, no chemo) treatment plan for Lauren's cancer site. It was a great relief not to be sent to a far-flung capital city to be treated, but the relief faded quickly as we braced for another medical professional to enter the scene and demand consultations.


Something about his job as oncologist must have upset him, because he was morbidly obese. His face was an almost-perfect square, like it had been extruded upwards from between his shoulders, and he possessed no visible neck. His chins undulated gently as he spoke.


"What we're going to do is called hyper-fractionation, darling," he explained to Lauren. It meant having lots of small, high doses of radiation, rather than ones spaced a couple of weeks apart. In fact, he told us, LT would be getting blasted daily, starting January. The plan would run for seven weeks and, yes, there would be side effects. Thyroid damage, a sore throat, skin damage, hair loss, loss of taste sensation and nausea were likely, he said. These, it would later turn out, would be the tip of the iceberg (if icebergs were made of debilitating pain instead of water molecules).


It was still December and, having at last been given a timeframe for treatment, we planned a small holiday to Queensland in the intervening time. LT and I figured that if things were going to suck, we should build up some happy times to draw on. Plus, it beat the idea of sitting in front of the idiot box sucking cheap wine for five weeks.

2017, Sat 5 Dec 2009

Lauren had Christmas morning early today :-) She's drinking wine and playing with her shiny new iPod nano right now. Looks like a hit (thank goodness, as I keep getting technology sort of gifts instead of romantic type rubbish and I fear my luck will soon run out). She's singing like a retard, oh god.

Schedule for tomorrow: up at 0400; leave at 0445; away on the plane at 0600. Lose an hour switching to non-daylight saving and arrive, grumpy and tired on the Sunshine Coast at 1105. Whee! Can't wait to see the family :-D

Hanging in Wauchope

Today's map.


Talking to the manager, Eric, the next morning, I began to realise what I lucky find this motel had been. I asked about doing my laundry and, rather than offering me the usual same-day dry cleaning that costs a couple of internal organs, he let me wash my gear on site. He even watched over my clothes as they dried, in case it rained. I was feeling so content that I decided to stay there a little longer.

I gave the Rev a bath using the fire hose near my room. The entire insect population of Victoria and NSW was plastered over my headlight and had been baked on by the heat of the beam. Seeing their barbecued bodies smashed onto the glass, I suddenly twigged why the bike faintly smelt of roasting meat after a long day's ride.

Before and after a good hosing.

Next day, in need of more adventure than the motel room could offer, I rode down to Port Macquarie for a look around. The bike, minus all the baggage for this day trip, felt like a superbike compared to its laden state. I had a lot of fun exploiting the lighter handling on the quick jaunt down to the coast.

It was a grey day, threatening rain. The Rev and I pottered along the coastline to the south of Port Macquarie, stopping at a lighthouse on the headland to take some photos.

The wind from the south wailed over the headland and adjusted my normally untidy mop into some kind of hair helmet. I laughed a Tasmanian laugh at locals who complained about how 'freakin cold' it was, until I remembered that I whined about the weather for a full two years when I moved south to Hobart.

I stopped at the only open coffee shop for a flat white and a muffin and copped an ad in the local tourist paper for an interesting concept in caffeination: a Christian internet cafe. The name was pure gold!

I wisely slipped into my full wets before leaving and got completely pounded by a rainstorm all the way home. There is only so much a raincoat can do when you're complicating its job by whizzing along in a storm. By the time I was back at my room, I looked like I'd been fired out of a torpedo tube across the breadth of the Atlantic. It was a great day though. After pushing a little too hard for the last couple of weeks, it was a joy to stay in one place and be a lazy tourist.

Dirtier than ever

Today's map.



Tim S had to rush off to work in the morning, so there was no sleep-in for either of us. A tribe of apes (or, possibly, very drunk teenage males) ruined the night for just about everyone in the apartments, until the police were called. One poor resident was so upset with their incredibly antisocial noise that she screamed at them for a full ten minutes from her bedroom window.


Breakfast was pide leftovers. As I scoffed, I said a silent prayer for anyone who might stray within range of my garlic-enhanced breath during the day. Tim skipped breakfast - his stomach was still giving him grief - and cleaned up the place before dashing off to the office in a taxi. I stood in the grey morning light and considered my options.


The drunks from the night before reminded me that it was a long weekend. With a barely-rational feeling of dread for what that might mean in terms of traffic, I pushed north, staying off the highway by following the coastal tourist drive towards Forster-Tuncurry. I don't remember too much of that ride, apart from feeling that QLD was finally getting closer. I couldn't wait to see my family and sit on the deck, looking over the river and talking.


The brain wasn't firing on all cylinders, so I decided to get some exercise at Cape Hawke. There was a crazily steep walking track up the little bluff, cutting through dense subtropical forest that reminded me strongly of Noosa Hill in QLD. Pairs of butterflies were chasing each other through the undergrowth, doing crazy kamikaze mating dances. At the top, there was an observation tower with the most incredible, panoramic view of the coast. It was worth the climb just to listen to an American man having a noisy heart attack on the way up.

Cape Hawke viewing platform.

Looking south.

Looking north to Forster-Tuncurry.

Looking unkempt.

Forster and Tuncurry themselves did nothing to float my boat and/or rustle my jimmies, so I rode on. Think Gold Coast if you want the general idea: faded, plastic and past its prime, despite the beautiful location.

Beach at Forster.

Next stop was Wingham, where history was abundant but lunch choices were few. Luckily, there was one decent place amongst the boarded-over shopfronts and dusty hardware stores. I treated myself to a 'gourmet hotdog' and a flat white, while I worked on the blog. A gorgeous girl sat nearby with her family, talking about her band and their upcoming recording contract. I didn't catch their name, sadly, so my fantasy of being their first motorcyle-riding groupie evaporated. Ah well, it never would have worked out - she was half a foot taller than me (and Lauren will probably cut half a foot off my gentleman's vegetables after she reads this).

Fancy hotdog at Wingham.

After such a cracking lunch, I felt the Rev and I could make it to Wauchope without any dramas. The road between them was about 150km of mostly deserted farmland, which looked easily achievable. There was about 35km of dirt road, said the sign, but I wasn't too phased after the Rev had handled the last bit of gravel so well.

When the dirt arrived, it was quite a bit trickier than I'd hoped. The nice, graded surface quickly gave way to a liberal scattering of deep potholes, separated by stretches of ball-bearing gravel wherever the road lay in full sun. I spent an awful lot of time in first and second gear, but at least that gave me the chance to drink in the forest sections at a slower pace. I love how riding puts you in touch with the elements and this was a great piece of country for that. I felt the sting of the sun give way to cool, fresh air whenever we ducked under the canopy of trees. Road kill and cow crap added to the sensorama at regular intervals.

Rev waits patiently for me to pee.

Another break after a very rough section.

Feed silo near Comboyne.

It was getting late by the time the bitumen returned and, once again, I was starting to feel tense and tired from biting off more kilometres than I could chew. The sun was almost gone by the time I reached Wauchope (pronounced 'war hope', not 'walk up' like the one in NT). A frantic drive around town revealed no caravan parks or camping spots, so I reluctantly stopped at the quietest-looking motel I could find.

I was dishevelled and supremely grumpy when Eric, the manager of the Timber Town Motel, greeted me. When I baulked at the price (which was brilliant value, but still a lot more than camping) he calmly ran me through the other options in town: the pub, which was noisy and nearly as expensive and a competing motel, which was run down and expensive. Desperately tired and lured by the call of a proper bed, I signed myself in for the night.

On finding my room, I had no regrets at all. The room was huge, the bed was comfy and there were little bottles of shampoo waiting for me in the bathroom.

Luxury!

The bed passed the flop test.

After the most magical shower ever invented, which felt like being bathed in warm milk by forest nymphs (well, ok, maybe not THAT good), I walked up to the tavern for a meal and a beer. You know how, in the movies, a stranger walks into a pub and the band stops playing and everyone freezes mid-swallow to stare at them? That happened to me. It sucks.

After straightening my shoulders and ordering a pint and some squid 'n' chips, normal chatter resumed and I went and swigged my lager in the beer garden. The food was top notch - I had really spoiled myself today!

Back at room 3 and much more relaxed, I ignored the pay TV and flaked out for the most delicious, delirious slumber.

Wiseman's Folly

Today's map.

Wow...like, wow.

If ever you want to feel like you've been thrown in a hessian bag full of pineapples and towed behind a combine harvester for a thousand kilometres, try this ride on for size. Make sure you're poorly rested, after a freezing night listening to a nearby gravel sieving machine, for the best (and most melodramatic) effect.

Home sweet home.

The mission I had chosen to accept was to ride to Newcastle to meet up with Tim, a workmate and active member of our southern tribe of power kiting addicts. Tim normally works in Tassie, but spends a few weeks in Newie now and then, supporting his employer's design drafting crew on some huge projects. He was due to fly home the next day, so the race was on if I was to have a chance of seeing him for a beer.

I left Oberon a little late, having lost the usual chunk of time trying to get the tent dry before packing up. I want to go back to Oberon sometime. It's a pretty place, with a real mix of people on display. Grabbing groceries at the IGA the night before, I came across preppy-looking teenagers, feral mothers and genuine cow cockies (complete with hats and utes) all in the same aisle.

Rush hour, Oberon.

Perhaps dumbly, I refused to compromise my rule of avoiding major highways and struck out towards Lithgow, where I picked up the famous Bells Line of Road towards Sydney. The sun was spanking down, the traffic was moderate and the speed limits were, as usual, stupidly low given the conditions. I'm glad I stuck to them, though, as the highway patrol picked me to follow for  a good 15 kilometres. Nothing like copper sitting too close behind you to focus your technique and grate your nerves...

Keeping time was a constant challenge, especially with the approaching nightmare of bypassing Sydney. I really don't like Sydney. It's a McCain's Frozen Pizza of a city - deliciously alluring; a luscious-looking, transcendent consumption experience, according to the advertising. Up close, it's a pale and flaccid imitation, dripping snake-oil and peppered with unidentifiable detritus. It's a large Meatlovers with too much meat and no love.

Most of my (possibly unjustified) disdain for the place comes from trying to navigate the bastard. On previous trips, I've always managed to get snared in angry traffic, or diverted via the ring road to Neptune. This trip stayed true to form, with aggravation arriving in gigantic waves as I approached the outer suburb of Windsor. Hungry and tired, I stopped for a pie, fuel and directions at a roadside servo.

Now that's gourMET.

Resting Reverend.

To avoid the sanity-crushing maze of city thoroughfares, I'd picked a squiggly line of secondary road to the northwest as my bypass. This turned out to be a mistake on par with ogling Miranda Kerr on national television. After getting lost almost immediately, adding thirty unnecessary kilometres to the trip, the road then subjected me to the most brutal endurance test I had yet faced. The entire width of the carriageway was composed of patches; not a single piece of unbroken bitumen graced its sadistic surface. Up and down, up and down, round this hairpin, through these potholes, dodge the truck and so on. The heat was unrelenting now, blasting under my helmet and cracking my lips. I stopped at a lookout to lie, exhausted, under a tree for a while.

Oh look, it's a river.

Tired and fed up.

The next town was Wiseman's Ferry. It was here that the road abruptly ended and turned into the Hawkesbury River. Nobody told me I would have to catch a bleeding ferry because, apparently, bridges outside a 100km radius of Sydney had not yet been invented. I suppose I didn't ask.

Mercifully, it was only a ten minute wait before the punt showed up. About five cars and I rolled on for our unexpected river cruise.

I remained inside my motorcycle at all times.

Helmet may contain traces of grumpy engineer.

C'mon c'mon c'mon!

I almost wheelied over the guardrail in my enthusiasm to disembark. I had many miles to cover and the window for beers with Tim was closing fast. The chase from Wiseman's Ferry to the motorway was harrowing, but fascinating. Within spitting distance of Shiteney, this area feels like the deepest, darkest reaches of the Mississippi delta. Broken caravans and decaying sheds served as houses, with one standout example being a perfect cube, with a single central window, perched on four towers of Besser bricks. The collection of humans congregating at the lonely pub looked, through their cloying shroud of cigarette smoke, just like the kind to stab their own mothers in the eyeball as a birthday present. I kept my visor down and rode for my life.

By the time I hit the motorway, peak hour was in its death throes and so was I. I rang Tim from a roadhouse to let him know I'd be a little late.

Beyond tired.

In Newcastle, a second navigational crisis ensued as I tried to find a pub I'd never heard of, in a city I'd never visited, in the bloody dark. Eventually, with Tim's patient directions over the phone, I staggered into the bar for a happy reunion with him. There were a bunch of people there, so we stayed and chatted until we were ravenously hungry.

Tim grabbed a curry and I opted for a turkish pide from one of the amazing array of eateries that lined the streets. At 9pm, after a testing day, that pide was a thing of beauty. Olives, feta, eggplant and mountains of garlic - it was stupid good! Tim and I slumped in the living room of his apartment and ate.

Heaven does exist, right inside this box.

Tim's gut was playing up after a busy week and I was so cactus I was inarticulate. We agreed to turn in, rather than party on, as we both felt things would get ugly if we overdid it. I rolled out my mat in the lounge and passed out, smiling.