2019 Perth to Sydney,  Australia

One cold November evening in 2014, while huddling over our backyard fire pit, I abruptly turned to Kendra and announced, “I want to ride my bicycle around the world!”  The moment the words left my lips I felt like an idiot.  While the idea had been circling around my head for months, now that it was out in the open I realized that it was just a ridiculous declaration fueled by the impending reality of middle age.  There was no way I was actually going to make it happen, was there?

Now, five summers, nearly 14,000 miles, twenty-some countries, innumerable credit card transactions and endless hours left to my own thoughts...I’m still working on it!  This latest edition from Perth to Sydney spanned 2400 miles and took twenty-five days, not quite the pace I was hoping for but fast enough to get me across the treeless, townless plains of sourthern Australia and hundreds of miles of the Outback before my return flight home.  I’d gone into this ride thinking that I’d experienced the most remote parts of my journey on the Asian steppe of Kazakhstan and western China, but Australia proved even more isolated - I went without wifi for someting like ten days! 

I also learned that Australia is really hilly and the wind likes to blow from the east, at least while I’m pedaling away.  And the roads have no real shoulder to speak of, making traffic a constant worry, especially when the speed limit on these single-lane highways is nearly seventy miles per hour.  That may also explain the literally thousands of kangaroo carcasses lining the roads as well.  All of these challenges, of course, made the experience all that more visceral, and wandering around the grounds of desolate Roadhouse motels and random little Australian towns, as well as camping out so many nights under the Southern Cross was an amazing experience that these photos can only hint at.