You're only as old as the pig you can smell

Day 41. Laura to Manatoo Road

Tim's bit:
I haven't posted for a few days. I've been struggling a bit, for a variety of reasons. For one, it seems that this process means that every injury I've ever had that hasn't been completely shifted onwards has come back to visit, or in other words, any imbalance in my body... and I'm almost forty, of course I'm not balanced!... As Lily and I have taken to saying: "Hmmm. Interesting."

Today we were up pretty early and away by about 8am, hoping to avoid the heat. It was already 24 degrees at 6am (according to techno-boffin and her phone that knows all things), but thankfully the clouds stuck around and I don't think it got much hotter than that.

Today's ride/run went slowly up, then a swooping but sandy downhill, then slowly up again. All up it was a touch over 19kms. Done by 9:15, changed and turned around by 9:30, it was into the wind for the long steady downhills and one challenging uphill. We were back by 11:30. (Lily, riding, wisely chose to speed away from me, running, over the last five or so kilometres, although the stench from the pig farm didn't seem as bad on the way back as it did on the way out! She was back a bit earlier.) I did feel for the people whose house is set in among the pigs. I bet visitors don't stay as long as they might and the kids always have to go to other houses for sleepovers. They need one of the methane capture setups that the pig farm near Clunes got - turning a negative (the smell of pig-shit never won anyone friends among their neighbours) into a positive, as they now manage to generate enough power to light up a whole town, and they don't smell anymore!

When I got back, I walked into the campsite looking, I guess, like I was a bicycle short of being a cyclist, and was asked by fellow-caravan-park-residents if I'd put it in for a service. I explained the story of what we were doing and they were lovely about it and we talked briefly about how they'd met a girl who was cycling around Australia etc etc. I signed off to go and jump in a cold shower.

How many people apart from me do their best thinking in the shower? (Go on, hands up, I'm counting...) Cold showers may not be the best version, but they do calm down sore bodies, and anyway: two things occurred to me:

(1) I have invisible fences in my head. This may sound a little dramatic, schizophrenic or else just stupid, but living in and out of caravan parks has shown me that the idea of privacy is just a weird fence we put around ourselves and other people in order to... what?... avoid talking to them or being interrupted by them. I guess growing up in a city and then being relatively shy and generally busy trying to do things (mostly obscure, useless things like write stories or run long distances, which I spend my time trying to invest with value by being really busy doing them) I am used to the idea that these fences exist. It's the custom. It's the way cities function. If they didn't, we'd all end up stopping for chats all the time and nothing would get done. People who've been on the road for a long enough time - and that's not that long - tend to lose that sense of time and space. When I stopped to chat, I walked into their circle and stayed for as long as it took for us to have our chat, and this wasn't an invasion of their time or space or privacy. I came away realising that it's probably the people with fences in their heads that are weird, because those fences are, really, just inside my head, even when they're not.

(2) Always check your underpants for grass seeds. They're not comfortable.

That idea of "doing something of value" has been in my head a little bit recently. Running the Mawson Trail is probably less meaningful than one half hour of teaching work. I'm getting fitter; I'm learning a lot about running; I'm hanging out with Lily and seeing new parts of Australia. I do seem to be caught between The Slow Travel Movement (an offshoot of the Slow Food Movement, it emphasises slow, connected, appreciative, attentive travel) and Stop Wasting So Much Time!!!, which I think is called the basic philosophy of the entire 20th Century! We could cover 800kms a day in a car! I could learn about nature by doing a course or just reading the damn internet, and then we could go and make some money and get on with living the god damned dream...

Apart from that, a lot of people seem to respond to us like we're 18 or 20 years old, which I find oddly entertaining. Lots of comments like "Good for you. Do it while you're still young." "...while you still can" as if we have not had jobs or careers or anything before now. It seems to imply that we have a freedom no one over 25 or under 65 has, and since we're not seniors towing a van (lining up the next petrol station with good restrooms and settling for some shade next to the caravan for exercise) we must be kids, which leaves me feeling strangely like I'm too young to be hanging out with the grey-nomads but too old to be getting pissed with the backpackers (who are pretty scarce in these parts anyway)... so we're odd-bods. Apart from the usual anxiety about not fitting into a neat social box, it's nice to have to make it up as we go. Hmmm Interesting.

Lily's bit:

Just a quick one from me... We've had a great day's ride. I am looking forward to getting back into running, but am soooo tempted to keep improving my riding! Feeling fit and strong and seeing daily improvements is cool!

Laura has been a treat, but I'm excited by Jamestown, our next stop. It has "modern shopping facilities", whatever that means (Tim thinks it means there's an eftpos machine in the local shop). I'm hoping for book shops and maybe a good supermarket where I can pick up my favourite muesli. It's the little things that make me happy...

It's raining and forecast to carry on like this for the next couple of days. It's all good. We're warm. We're dry. And I have a bottle of very nice local shiraz to keep me occupied. Yay!