We were greeted this morning at 6am by the sound of what in Minnesota would be called "screaming", but in Glendambo is just "talking". This conversation came from the room next door where a group of motorcyclists and their support vehicle driver were staying. Even with adjustments made for cross-cultural speaking volume, there seemed to be a lot of commotion. As we were about to leave I discovered the cause: apparently someone had stolen the biker's tent off their car roof rack during the night. The support driver asked us if we'd seen anyone lurking about during the night... but as we'd gone to bed around 8pm we hadn't seen a thing.
Riding was good today. I stopped to have lunch under a gnarled tree (the only tree for some distance), and as I stood up I hit my head on an overhanging branch and managed to drive a sharp, coarse piece of bark deep into my scalp! After expressing my displeasure in a manor that would have made Richy Thompson blush, I set myself to the tasks of removing the large chunk of bark, cleaning the wound (with Dave's help)... and finally having some lunch and a nice little nap. I found a very interesting little stone somewhere during this process, and it seemed to have a nice calming effect of me... odd.
After that I made good time the Bon Bon rest area where we to bush camp. However, I had no sooner set up my tent than an official -looking guy pulled up in a white SUV and tells us that we cannot camp at Bon Bon tonight due to the fact that there is a rocket probe re-entering into the area tonight. He said that we needed to move out of the restricted area about 25km away, and that there was a sign indicating where the safe zone was. I was not at all in a diplomatic mood, and so I said as little as possible... However, I did find out that if we didn't move the police would be arresting us right around 10pm.
So with the sun low in the sky, having already started to "unwind", and after riding 53 miles already today, we had to pack up our things and move on down the road. Now in all fairness the guy did offer to give us a ride, but we told him "We came to ride this road..." And ride we did, because the "25 km" turned out to be 41 km instead!!! We arrived at the safe zone almost at dark, and there were several caravans waiting there as well. So we got our tents set up and received a nice invitation to join a few travellers around their campfire and wait til 11.21pm to see the probe re-enter in the NW part of the sky.
We are half way to Coober Pedy and I'm not sure what we'll do tomorrow, but another 80 mile day would suck. But that's tomorrow.... I'm going back to the fire for a little camaraderie!
