4 Jan 2024
I woke up at 5am to be ready to go at sunrise. I actually had a pretty bad night's sleep again. It was really windy and I didn't realise how big of a difference pegging out the sides of my tent fully made in terms of wind noise. So it kept me up a bit and then I got out and made adjustments and it was a lot better after that.
Early into my ride for the day I came across the Big Bend lookout, which was wonderful and a great start to the day. Then I quickly got to Swan Reach, which had a park/campsite with a clean water tap and I refilled my water bladder and bottle there. I had originally planned to take the road on the west side of the river, which was unsealed. But after riding on the main, sealed road on the east side of the river, I felt like i was having a good time on the bitumen and like I wasn't being passed too frequently by cars so I continued n Hunter Road.
Just before Blanchetown I had a bit of an incident. I didn't manage to unclip in time when I went off to the side of the road as a road train was passing and I fell over on the gravel shoulder, hurting my knee. I was fully off the road and I unclipped and dragged my bike out of the way before the train passed, but it still was too dangerous for my liking.
I have now fallen due to unclipping troubles 4 times this trip. I definitely lost my confidence for the rest of the day and wondered if I might even stop in Blanchetown. I had to rethink how exactly this was happening this many times, as before using cleats I have fallen only one time while bikepacking, which was also while coming to a stop. And that's the only time I'd fallen off my bike since 2016! So as I waited for my knee to stop bleeding so badly, I ran through in my head how I was going about coming to a stop. and I realised that in Melbourne, I got used to an unloaded bike on smooth asphalt, which allowed me to unclip my left foot, stop and lean to the left, then unclip the right foot. However, here with a loaded bike coming onto a gravel shoulder (in between packed and loose), my bike would get thrown around a little by the poor surface, especially since I was coming off a smooth surface and suddenly needed to handle the thing differently. This meant that sometimes it leaned to the right instead of the left when I stopped, and then being still clipped in on the right was an issue, because unclipping is still not a reflex for me. So I decided each time I needed to stop now, for trucks or road trains, I would give myself more time and unclip both feet, then stop on the bitumen, then walk my bike off the road. I can hear them coming from pretty far away so time shouldn't be an issue.
I rode to the turnoff to Blanchetown and decided I was feeling ok and my knee was still working, so I'd push on all the way to Morgan. I booked the caravan park over the phone and asked the receptionist which road she would recommend from Blanchetown, the sealed or unsealed. She said that the road trains I was seeing would be going to the Sturt Highway, which turns east from Blanchetown, but as I am going north, I wouldn't get much traffic on that road, so it was very much worth taking the sealed route.
The person I spoke to from the caravan park was very correct, and the ride into Morgan was pleasant, which says a lot since I felt very jumpy after my fall earlier in the day. The ride itself was actually very flat and easy today with great mallee views all the way. But it was the same views all the way. I really felt like I was riding towards Central Australia!
I got into town via my first Murray River ferry, around 1pm when it was probably around 26 degrees, and within an hour it was already 32 degrees. I borrowed an ice pack from reception for my knee, and after icing my knee for a bit I had lunch at the Xross Roads Pantry (chicken sandwich and pavlova) which was really nice.
Hopefully my knee feels all right when I wake up tomorrow. I have shaved off a day from my estimated time for this trip, so i have an extra rest day to spare if it does feel quite bad. I do feel a bit stupid about this because it really is all my fault and I should have gotten better at using cleats before coming here. But this is where we're at now. Tomorrow is another hot day with an early start.
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