Simply the best day of riding so far. Last week I was getting sunburnt – today I felt that crisp bite of autumn. I’ve ridden south into a new season.
My body felt refreshed from my rest day in Perth (Day 23), where I got to see Ben and a few friends, including Pauna, a super traveller whom I met in Turkey 3 years ago. This great, wild world community, eh?
100km passed by quickly in bike meditation. I expected the opposite. – without my podcasts and music (all on my dead phone), I thought I’d be bored. But time passes more smoothly without sound interrupting it.
My mind is definitely adjusting to bike touring. 3 weeks ago I was bored out of my mind after two hours in the saddle. Now, every morning I look forward to saddling up, and time passes in a flash.
I rolled into my second warmshowers homestay, Will & Jenny, an hour before sunset. They have a beautiful house on a canal. It’s
pretty cool – every house has a little boat moored to a personal dock out back.
Again, I was amazed by the warmshowers hospitality. Big dinner full of meat and veggies, the two foods I lack on the road (I think other tourers know this). Both Will and Jenny were incredibly easy to get on with. We talked until I started nodding off (19:30, my cyclist’s body won’t stay awake much after dark). They have some incredible plans – they’ve done two 4-month bike tours, and have now sold their house and business in order to live more simply and travel more extensively. They’re building up their orange VW combi as a mobile home, following the tourer’s philosophy of “take only what you need.”
You meet some awesome people through cycling.
If you want to read about 2 seriously cool bike tourers, you can read their blog Wiljen’s Adventures.
In Mutual Weirdness 