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Journal: |
I got up at 4:30am and had the included breakfast provided at the
motel, again making sure I got my money’s worth, before waddling
onto the road at around 5:30am. The early kilometres in the
dark through the Port Hedland area were a little scary as there were
lots of roadworks and deviations combined with heavy traffic of
mining vehicles, trucks and roadtrains as everybody got their
customary early start. I finally got through the worst of it
and was about 5km south of town when I heard the now very familiar
twang of a rear spoke breaking again. Very frustrating, since
I hadn’t touched the wheel for two days and it had survived the
previous day without problems. I pulled off to the side of the
road in the dawn half-light to see if I could make any temporary
adjustments. I had been there a few minutes when a mining
vehicle did a U-turn and the driver asked whether I was Dave Byrnes
and introduced himself as a friend of my friend, Greg T, back home.
We had a brief chat then he continued on his way to work. I
decided that I needed to buy the additional wrenches/spanners I
needed to replace rear drive-side spokes before continuing on, so
retraced my steps and then rode into South Hedland where I knew
there was a reasonable-sized shopping centre, including a K-Mart,
arriving about 6:45am. I found the K-Mart opened at 8am so
adjourned to the nearby McDonalds for a coffee while I waited.
I bought the wrenches in K-Mart and then spent some time
replacing the broken spoke and, to the best of my ability, adjusting
the rear wheel spokes to “true” the wheel and avoid any excessively
tight or loose spokes. It was quite late in the morning before
I hit the road again with the goal of getting at least to Roebourne
(185km) or maybe Karratha (225km) where I had confirmed there was a
bike shop with mechanic available in the morning to look at my rear
wheel. A nice tailwind had sprung up and I was optimistic
about recovering some of my lost time as I headed east through the
mostly flat grasslands with occasional low ranges, rocky outcrops
and red soil of the Pilbara. There was quite a lot of mining
and tourist traffic along the road as well as evidence of mining
operations in the distance on both sides of the road. After
about 80km, I heard the familiar “twang” again as another rear
drive-side spoke broke. Curses! I got off the bike and
spent some time bending the broken spoke around two cross spokes to
take some tension with the objective of getting to Karratha tomorrow
and getting an expert to look at the wheel. A campervan pulled
up to see if I needed help, although the old guy seemed more
interested in telling me about his biking problems in Broome where
he had cracked a couple of ribs in a fall.
When I started riding again, the wind seemed to have swung round
to be coming at me from 2 o’clock and the riding again became
laborious. Gone were my hopes for some time recovery and my
chronic right knee began to get very painful. I called in at
the old Whim Creek Hotel for a cold drink and asked whether they had
any accommodation, but was unsuccessful. There was plenty of
accommodation there, but I think it is just for construction and
mining workers. With 85km to go and the sun beginning to get
lower I continued on into the wind with Roebourne as my target even
thought I was fairly sure there was no accommodation there.
Instead I would sleep rough somewhere in town or nearby. My
knee began to get very sore (I have a 1.25cm crater in the cartilage
behind the knee cap from years of long-distance running) and reached
about 7/10 on the pain scale, the worst so far on the trip. I
had anti-inflammatories with me, but was very reluctant to take them
now the record attempt was off. They only mask the pain while
further damage is incurred. It began to seem foolhardy to
continue with the ride if the knee was also going to become a
problem. It might not be so bad tomorrow, but there would be
other bad days, and I wanted to keep some cartilage for future
running and riding. Finally, I reached the big decision that I
would go home from Karratha, which has an airport, tomorrow, rather
than continue on. There were too many good arguments for
finishing, and not enough for continuing, on balance. The
record was always the thing for me, and that was already out of the
question.
I reached Roebourne, an historic old mining town and regional
centre with a large aboriginal population in the dark about 8:30pm
and cycled slowly through the very quiet town. I eventually
found a café still open and went in and ordered the night’s special
of curried sausages and mashed potato. I asked the guy behind
the counter about getting a room somewhere in town and he replied
that he might be able to help me out. It turned out that the
café was part of a mining/construction workers hostel and that
behind it were rows of basic motel-like rooms. I took one, and
learned that breakfast would be available between 4:30am and 6am the
next morning as part of the room fee. After a shower, I logged
onto the internet and booked myself a flight back to Sydney via
Perth from Karratha at 11:30am the next morning and went to bed sad,
but resolved to move on from this third failed attempt.
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