It’s strange how things work out sometimes! Just after I’d posted the Silly Sydney Season post, and just as I was thinking about leaving the comfort of the coffee shop and embarking on the walk back to the hostel in the 40 degree heat, I thought I’d go back onto Gumtree Adelaide to see, for the last time, if there were any house shares available that adhere to my very lax, easy-going selection criteria: near the beach, near the cycle ways, shops nearby, near public transport into the city, close to plenty of coffee houses, cheap rent, flexible month-to-month rental agreement, non smoking, quiet area, no pets, cable TV, housing for Naomi, free WiFi and no sign of students. There was! So within an hour I was viewing it and within two hours it was all signed, sealed and done!
So Adelaide is where I’ll be for a while (not exactly sure how long: we’ll see when the travel bug returns, it always does!). The place I’ve found is about 200m away from pristine beaches, a short walk from Glenelg:
I couldn’t get any decent beach shots because they were full of teens on holiday and walking around with a digital camera avec zoooooooooooom made me feel like an outed sex offender. So instead, you’ll have to make do with a rather poor marina shot and a rather poor beach shot:
It’s a shame I don’t really like swimming or water sports of any kind.
My new landlord [German] is into all kinds of cycling madness including triathlons. Their entire bike weighs less than one of my front panniers. They recently completed the Busselton Iron Man competition: 180K bike ride, 3.8KM swim around Busselton Jetty and a full marathon in under 13 hours. I recalled fondly how I felt after riding 190K with a loaded bike on the Nullarbor stretch: or rather, I recalled how every single part of me felt after riding 190K with a loaded bike on the Nullarbor stretch: My arms, my wrists, my neck, my back, my knees, my ankles, my hips, my thighs, my hands, my shoulders, my calfs and in fact my entire being. I was living in a painful place that day, every muscle on fire, as if I was a lobster that had been dropped into a pot. The thought of running a marathon and swimming for nearly 4K afterwards makes me realize that some people really are just masochistic bastards. There is no other more apt description I can think of. Mind you, I did have 45 Kilos of luggage and a real bike! None of this fancy-schmancy feather-light carbon fibre nonsense!
[No jealousy at all!...!]
You probably gathered from my last few posts that I’ve been a bit indecisive about what to do next. Indecisiveness and flapping is something I loathe. Oh, how it infuriates me! I would much rather spend time doing the wrong thing than doing no thing which probably means I’d be safe in Nigeria. Six months of travelling, hiking and cycling without a decent break is pretty much my limit: I’ve never travelled for this long so I had no way of knowing this until now. A rest beckons. And I’ve plenty to do!
I know *NOTHING* about Sydney. I have done *ZERO* planning because I didn’t know when I’d arrive (or if I even would!). Before I get to Sydney, I need to work out where I want to live, where I do NOT want to live!, how to Aussify my CV, sort out Medicare, tax issues, rental agreements, work etc. I was going to leave all of this until I arrived in Sydney but it makes far more sense to do as much as possible before I get there: rents in Sydney are about twice what they are here in Adelaide so Sydney is not a place I want to be unemployed for too long! Oh, and having free WiFi here means I don’t have to race the time-out counter and bandwidth limits that I always get in coffee shops. Trying to organize things or change your plans on the move is a bloody faff.
You would think I’d have learnt that by now. But: NO.
I almost rented a flat in Esperance for four months and spent the summer there but figured it would be better for me if I at least got across the Nullarbor first. So now I’m a-chillin’.
The cycling trip to Sydney will recommence at least after the Silly Season has passed but realistically in March when things start to cool down a bit, accommodation is freed up again because the kids are back at school and the peak holiday season has passed. I’m not too far from the Adelaide hills here so I’ll try to do a few regular rides and at least one big day a fortnight to keep fit.
In the meantime, I will be programming prolifically and might make a few mumblings on here. Otherwise, there probably won’t be many travel-related updates for a while…
Tchau!