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Up at 6:00am and hit the road after throwing a couple of rocks at the"Enjoy the Birdsville Track" sign that had been mocking me all night - peering over me like the eyes of T.J. Eckleberg.
It was a lot more comfortable riding in the relative cool of early morning - not that was cool - my thermometer said it never got below 41 all night - but that was cool compared to the furnace I've been riding through for the past 2 days.
It was a fairly uneventful ride - except that I did learn to make use of the regular artesian bores. I was carrying plenty of water - and drinking plenty of water (I drank 1.5 litres just lying there trying to sleep last night) - but I didn't want to miss a single change to refill my bottles - there were times I'd stop and only need to top up half a litre but it I broke down or crashed that extra half litre might be the difference between life and death.
As I rode further and the day got hotter I was able to enjoy the luxury of stopping at a water bore - guzzling / litres of water and then stripping off and having a swim in the water troughs :) I got sun burnt in places I've never been sunburnt before.
As sunburn was becoming an issue I began to leave my clothes on and jump in the water fully clothed :). It was heaven jumping back on the bike and riding along fully drenched - trouble was it was so hot the wind had you completely dry in 10 minutes - but the process was repeated at each water bore :)
I eventually made it to Mungerannie at about 1:00pm (yes 7 hours to go 220kms - I told you I was careful - and quite a bit of swimming!)
The news there was not good!! Lots of rain down south and the real possibility of it coming North and closing the track - The Innkeeper - Phil - suggested I leave straight away (maybe it was the way I smelled) and make a dash for Marree and the end of The Birdsville Track 190kms away - after Marree the roads are quite a bit better and less effected by rain. The only regularly flood affected road after The Track is the Marree to Lyndhust Road and more than half of that is bitumen.
I was too shagged to ride on straight away - so I decided to sleep till about 3:00pm and then bolt for it - lucky I decided on that sleep!!!
When I woke visibility was about 5m - it was an enormous dust storm!! You couldn't walk through it let alone ride!! I'm glad I didn't leave earlier and get stuck in it out on the road!! It was bad enough getting dust in my beer while we all took refuge in the pub!! In all there was 6 of us stranded there by the dust storm - one pair thought they'd chance it in their land rover but they were back in 30 minutes - just couldn't see where they were going and getting an engine full of crap!!
So a pretty good night - and a VERY good shower was had at The Mungerannie Roadhouse - Thanks Phil!!
Another interesting thing - while I was sitting there drinking with Phil both Dusty from the Birdsville Bakery and the guys from the Birdsville Caravan Park rang to make sure I had got there OK - I didn't ask them to - they both just did it out of concern for a traveller - country people are good people!!
(either that or they were sure the idiot on the Postie bike would need rescuing!!)
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