3rd July - Gin Gin to Miriam Vale

Nigel says......What a terrible night's sleep! It didn't bode well when we arrived back from the pub to find the police "interviewing" one of the other residents. Awoke at 4am to a persistent buzzing somewhere in the room. After about 30 mins of ripping the place apart finally traced the sound to the smoke detector. Gordon was useless. "Gordon, can you hear the buzzing?" "Yes, irritating isn't it!" This was the limit of his assistance in stopping the mental torture. Then at 0500hrs the road menders next door decided to slam their doors and rev their engines and at 0630hrs room service delivered breakfast to one of the neighbouring rooms with a cheery "Good morning, breakfast!" Groan.....

We left at 0830hrs. We couldn't see anywhere on the map where we could stop, so we decided to pick up a pie each as we cycled past the bakery. Good move. Today we cycled 100 kilometers (63 miles) and the only thing of note was the abandoned and derelict Colosseum Creek Motel and Roadhouse (pets welcome). This establishment taunted us with signs like 'Cold beer in 10kms' 'Coffee in 5kms'.

It was quite a hilly route mainly through the bush, with some stretches of cattle grazing. I saw two houses in the whole 100 kilometers. The weather was quite overcast and cold this morning, but warmed up late morning. I saw a heat haze coming off the road for the first time today. I suppose this is a taster of what we can expect.

Thoughts and comments:

• Lots of boats being towed north
• Lots of outsize loads on the road this morning.
• Traffic volume low and drivers generally courteous today
• Bruce Highway generally ok today.
• Snack of the day: Sausage roll - Roadsign 25kms north of Gin Gin.
• Podcast of the day: History of the World in 100 objects - No 12 - The Standard of Ur
• Slogan of the day: Welcome to the Gladstone Region - The Region of choice.....
• Fact of the day: Miriam Vale is the commercial and governmental hub of the 'Discovery Coast' area.

Going clubbing in Miriam Vale tonight...Calliope tomorrow

Gordon says ...

If Nigel had a bad night's sleep. he managed to disguise it well amid an 8 hour cacophanic masterpiece of inter-galactically loud snoring, so I wasn't really overly sympathetic to his concerns over some tiny little noise coming from somewhere else in the room. Truth is, I'm in the process of coming down with a cold, so I didn't sleep very well myself anyway (nothing like the death-virus I had a couple of weeks ago, and since I peddled through that, nothing to worry about) I'm slurping Lemsip as I write.

The ride was OK today - 100 kms of nothing. Even though I l look like a complete dick, the mirror on my helmet is turning out to be a pretty good idea. I can see the trucks coming a mile away, and beach the bike well before they arrive. I know my roadie cycling buddies -Anthony, Amir and Big Jim - would rather be run over than wear one, but they can kiss my ass. This isn't like racing 60 kms around the river loop 3 times a week. Half the truckies don't appear to care whether they have to scrap you off their tyres at the end of the day, or not. And the 4x4s towing boats are no better. Basically, I've set myself the target of seeing my children again, and if this stupid mirror is the price I have to pay, so be it.

Have stopped listening to music. Alan gave me three audio books to listen to, so I'm currently lost in the world of John le Carre - cold-war spys and all that. Not necessarily the choice I would make for myself, but it makes the time pass just that little bit quicker. I'm thinking of biting the bullet and going the whole 3000 hours of War and Peace from the itunes shop, which I've never actually read. What an intellectual snob I am ...

Short ride tomorrow - hopefully my cold will thank me for that.