My first morning waking up on the road and I am blessed with not only sore legs but a throbbing knee as well.
Ten seconds on the bike confirms it – my knee is going to be a huge problem on this trip.
Probably should have done some training before attempting this.
Oh well, too late now.
Now comes yet another obstacle to my proposed riding of a bicycle across the Australia: the Google.
Yes, it would seem that our go-to solution for many of life’s answers (What do you call a group of ferrets? Who won silver for women’s 800 m freestyle in the 1976 Olympics? Why do wombats poop cubes?), comes up short when providing accurate bicycling directions.
Google’s bicycling directions are currently in beta, and if you don’t know what that means, it basically translates to, “completely ignore this feature’s existence”.
Unless I want to be cycling exclusively on unpaved roads (or unsealed roads as they call them Down Under) and be taking chances down streets labeled “No Thru Street”, then the bicycling feature of Google Maps is best left untouched.
Still, it was difficult for me to abandon my Google overlords.
The bicycling directions promise roads with less traffic, faster routes, and less elevation gain, and so I decided to give them a second, then a third, then a fourth chance.
No, it wasn’t until I was instructed to cycle down a street that was in reality not a street at all, but instead just a field of grass (and a fenced off field of grass at that), that I decided it was time to let go of the one thing in my life I thought I could still trust.
At least I was never forced to double back.
Driving directions it is.
- START: Little River, Victoria
- END: Clarendon, Victoria
- DAY’S DISTANCE: 45.08 mi / 75.55 km
- TOTAL DISTANCE: 90.36 mi / 145.42 km