Listening to UNDER THE MILKY WAY The Church
Starfish album 1988
OK new challenge,
for this blog it's all Aussie tunes only!
Smash this one on Spotify tonight, then go outside and look up.
(only really works if you're in Oz, lucky us!)
The O-Bahn artic shakes like a wet dog as its guide wheels engage the rails. The worn old auto trans screams its disapproval as it shifts up and a loose window three seats down starts rattling like a bastard. Aaargh. We crack a mighty eighty Ks on the 7.04 544X as I scheme how to shut the !@#$& window up with whatever I've got in my bag. Ahhh bugger the window let it rattle. I'm snug and cosy in the my daily lair right up in the back corner as I caste a drowsy eye over my forty odd fellow
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| Yeh nah I don't need a holiday...much... |
passengers, all staring blankly at their phones. Yep everybody. Facebook.. Gummy..Tetris.. Married at First Sight...work emails...uuurgh. We rattle through stations, over bridges and belt through tunnels...again...and again.. just like yesterday. My attention span is bouncing from guard rail to guard rail and I'm getting bored...oh oh. The guy in front of me has a really nasty giant pimple on the back of his neck. Uh huh yep don't look. Erm...oh oh...my imagination is suddenly off the hook and the giant zit is suddenly expanding and expanding and eeeexpanding till.. BOOM.. it explodes in a giant liquid custard explosion. It fills the bus and washes all the 7.04 crowd out of the windows in a giant yellow river of pus, all screaming and still clutching their phones furiously thumbing 000...
AAAAH STOP IT!
I quickly reign in and look away from the quivering baby Vesuvius but lock onto a poor fellow three seats down across the aisle. Oh oh. He appears to have a some sort of hair
transplant thingo going on...sort of lots of tufts that haven't joined up yet. Hmm...I must remember to water my lawn. As I try not to stare my imagination goes into a high speed time lapse thing like on the nature shows on the telly. Suddenly the tufts begin to grow and join up. Oh no no no. Within moments the guy has grown a GIANT afro which envelopes a pair of nurses in the seat behind and begins to totally fill the bus interior. Wow! Muffled screams emanate from the rear of the still growing enormous hairy orb until one nurse finds some scissors, cuts out a nurse shaped escape route and they scramble free. They then both hold hands, shout "Geronimo", and jump out the nearest window and
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| No pus explosions or giant hair today... maybe I should take my helmet off ...hmm better not. |
...and...and...shit....
STOP IT!...I REALLY NEED A HOLIDAY!
The bus dives into the tunnel under the parklands and spews out the eight o'clock start crew all along Grenfell and Currie street. I'm the last out and I shuffle off across Light Square. The daily boot camp exercise mob, a curious bunch of sweaty fatties and the usual tedious fitness freaks, leap about to tired tunes from a buggered old boom box and the barked instructions of Mr Superfit. As I pass the neatly laid out cones, dumbbells, medicine balls and skippy ropes in the middle of the square, I approach a public defibrillator bolted to a pole. Hmm maybe it's a fake one Mr Superfit puts up to drum up business.
Nah it's very real...and I actually applaud whoever voted to spend public money on it. Good job...buuut every day I feel its brooding presence. I swear the orange bastard watches as I pass daily and crosses another day off life's log book....tick tick tick...matter of time. I swing into Shannon place. I'm a minute away from my desk. On that desk is a holiday request form I've been brooding over for months. It asks too much, but is the amount I need, and...as the defibrillator whispers every day, the amount I must take. It might cost my job and I totally understand the inconvenience to my employer,
but today I'm gonna hand it in cos,
THIS YEAR....I'M DOING THE BIG LAP ROUND AUSTRALIA!
Lap Under the Sun
it ain't no commute
and it ain't no day trip
won't be coming back tomorrow
won't be coming back next week
I'll ride all seasons
I'll tackle any road
yeh lappin the edge
of great southern abode
Dean
Argentina 2017
Again and again and...
well...again.
This is my third really big motorcycle trip. People often bang on about how lucky I have been to do these things buuut I believe there's no luck, just dumb commitment. If you wanna go, really wanna go, you will. I wanna go...so I do. I sell my stuff, blow heaps of money, go without holidays, risk my job, upset my wife, bust my ass preparing some two wheeled heap and head off. My wife Marianne just shakes her head and says "Well, no matter what I say you're gonna go anyway so off you go".
If there is a lucky bit here, well, I'm lucky to have her.
In 2014 my mate Ron and I rode our trusty DR650s from London across the world to
Vladivostok, about 20,000k over three months. A crazy pair of unprepared amateurs crossing some of the most remote and hairiest parts of the world. It was absolutely fantastic. In 2017 I saddled up my cheapy KLR650, and rode all on my own from Montreal Canada down to Santiago in Chile, about 24,000k over four months. I rode alone through Mexico, jumped borders through Central America, sailed across the Caribbean, headed down through Colombia, rode the Andes, visited Machu Picchu, haggled for fuel in Bolivia, camped out in Argentina and ended the trip in Chile. All on my own...and I would do it again tomorrow, in fact, right now!
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| Georgia 2014 |
Vladivostok, about 20,000k over three months. A crazy pair of unprepared amateurs crossing some of the most remote and hairiest parts of the world. It was absolutely fantastic. In 2017 I saddled up my cheapy KLR650, and rode all on my own from Montreal Canada down to Santiago in Chile, about 24,000k over four months. I rode alone through Mexico, jumped borders through Central America, sailed across the Caribbean, headed down through Colombia, rode the Andes, visited Machu Picchu, haggled for fuel in Bolivia, camped out in Argentina and ended the trip in Chile. All on my own...and I would do it again tomorrow, in fact, right now!
I learnt a lot about myself on my own...
and it wasn't all bad!
OK OK I really wanted to ride northern India next. I have a hankering to see Everest and ride about in the Himalayas. Plan was to fly into Delhi, hire a cheapy bike and just head north with no particular agenda. Buuuut ole mate Covid came along and all overseas plans
are shelved, maybe till I'm too old. My 60th birthday ticked by...then 61...and aaaaarm, with body parts getting squeakier every year, time for a new plan, soon! Well, embarrassingly, I've never been to Perth, or anywhere in Western Australia really, or even to Darwin. Some big traveller huh, hasn't even been around his own back yard.
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| South America, este es un gran lugar |
Right! Sorted! A lap of Australia then.
A full lap...and will have to include some crappy hard bits like Cape Yorke and Gibb River as well. I'll probably never get another chance to see these places again. In a couple of years I've kinda promised Marianne her own big lap. Gonna don socks and sandals (oh yeh), hook up a giant caravan, and join the grey nomad mob blocking up the highways and generally giving working people the shits. Marianne's not big on bugs and dust and heat and bumpy roads...or anything mildly uncomfortable really...smart girl. So the fun bits will be out. OK back to me, hmm, I figure a complete lap of mainland Australia, including Cape York, will be maybe 18k over 3-4 months, yep, how hard can that be? They even speak English here!
OK each time I go I'm a little older, a little slower, but not especially wiser.
Nope, wise people would not spend four months sitting out in the weather, on a motorised bicycle, with thirty litres of inflammable liquid between their legs, kept upright by invisible gyroscopic forces, eating whatever and sleeping wherever the road throws at them...three times over.
Sounds more stupid than wise really...
but OK stupid...sort a bike and start getting ready cos,
you're off again!
(insert small woo hoo...not really a woohooer but what the hell...woo hoo!)
Listening to WAY OUT WEST the Dingoes
The Dingoes 1974
dum de da dum dum
dum de da dum dum
dee daaa dum, livin ana workin...
Serious classic Aussie ear worm material
aaaand pissed newt Karaoke song!
Reality Check No. 1
Hmm well if you haven't read my blogs before this is the part where I try to cut the crap. I look down at my feet for a while...mumble a bit...maybe check for navel fluff or stray earwax...have a bit of a scratch...
...aaand assess where I really am.
Ok, let's go.
Firstly, I have been granted leave from work or...better put, I'm allowed to come back and resume cleaning the coffee machine in September. A big thanks to Giang, Rhys, Pete and anyone else in the chain who stamps and ticks things. Next, I'm leaving in about a month, so only three or four weekends to sort stuff. Gulp. Can do.
OK, what about a plan.
Hmm, yep how about I just hop out of bed on my first day off, have breaky, kiss the Mrs and pat the dog (don't mix this up), head out to the shed, jump on a bike and piss off... anticlockwise round Australia.
Plan sortedish...
NEXT BLOG
THREE WEEKS TO REVIVE AN
OLD FRIEND AND I STRUGGLE TO GET KEEN...
..UNTIL TWO WEEKS TO GO AND i WAKE AT TWO AM,
REALISE IT'S 20,000K, THE FRIEND IS A WORN OUT HEAP,
AND I SHIT MYSELF!
REALLY REALLY APPRECIATE COMMENTS.
THE LESS COMMENTS I GET THE MORE DEPRESSED I GET
AND THE MORE CRAP POETRY I WRITE!
OXFORD DEFINITION OF CRAP
ADJECTIVE - EXTREMELY POOR IN QUALITY
PLEASE COMMENT!
LAP UNDER THE SUN
