Come Riding?

“I have never entirely understood why, when people urge you to see their ‘real’ country, they send you to the empty parts where almost no sane person would choose to live, but there you are. You cannot say you have been to Australia until you have crossed the outback.”— Bill Bryson, ” In a Sunburned Country”

So here we go again….

The e-mail from our friend David O’Neill from Christchurch, New Zealand was so innocently titled, “Come Riding?”  Joe and I met David during our first Ride for Water in 2012. We had corresponded with David prior to our 2012 trip in anticipation of sharing in that journey. David’s start on that trip was delayed due to his efforts to rebuild his businesses that had been damaged by the Christchurch earthquake in 2011. David eventually caught up with us in Missoula, MT and we spent the next 10 days together cycling thru the Rockies and into the rangeland of Eastern Montana. While his timetable put him on a more urgent pace to cross the U.S., we maintained contact during that trip and have corresponded occasionally over the intervening years.

When I got that e-mail in September of 2015 inviting Joe and I to ride across Australia, Barb and I were in the last stages of preparing for a mission trip to Malawi. I forwarded David’s e-mail to Barb without comment and she responded an hour or so later, “Well you didn’t say no, did you?” Now, there are few ways I could have interpreted that response. All interpretations indicate, how well Barb knows me. She knows it would be totally out of character for me to immediately say “no” to this or any such tempting offer. At worse she probably suspected I had already booked roundtrip airfare, or…. She knows very well the passion Joe and I have for taking on this sort of endeavor and that this could be another trip of a lifetime. Regardless, it wasn’t a particularly good time to put it on our plate without a good deal of thought. The decision would have to wait until after our trip to Malawi and an extended stay in South Africa.

After quite a bit of discussion and running thru scenarios where Barb might join us at the conclusion of the ride, or maybe spend time together in Australia before the start, we decided that trying to make that happen, given all the uncertainties and timing, would be just too complex. Between Joe and I, we had to work out enough time to complete the ride during his summer break, and take into consideration any job conflicts. Joe was intent on spending at least part of the summer in Ames, IA and was fortunate to land a research position on campus. Of course, all of this had to dovetail with David’s schedule as well.

Following several e-mails over several weeks we decided in early March a tentative time frame for the trip. Joe and I would arrive in Melbourne sometime during the last week of June and target our finish in Darwin in the second week of August. By the end of March we secured our flights, which have us arriving in Australia June 22, and a departure date of August 10. We decided that our route would take us West from Melbourne along the southern coast of Australia then turn north passing through Adelaide. North of Port Augusta, we would join the Stuart highway for our northern trek thru Australia’s “Great Red Center.” The town of Alice Springs marks the midway point across the Outback. Our final destination is Darwin, the capitol of the Northern Territory on the Timor Sea.

The route covers roughly 4000 km or approximately 2500 miles. The biggest challenge will be the remote Stuart Highway or “The Track,” a two-lane road, the only paved road for that matter, across the Outback. It is plied by minimal car traffic, but massive “road trains” are common. The vast distances between civilized points will require careful planning on our part. Access to water will be our foremost concern.   We anticipate several nights in “bush-camp.” David completed an West to East trip from Perth to Sydney in 2009 so his experience in the Outback will be welcome.

As in 2012 I am called to connect this ride to a purpose. Our trip to Malawi in the September 2015 had witnessed the completion of the first wells with money raised in 2012. At the time, we knew the project might take some time to get moving. Connecting our experienced well team from the Jeanes Church in Domasi, Malawi to the villages near the Lisanjala Church near Mulanje was the first obstacle.   Having the Jeanes Well Team introduce the concepts of the project and convincing the members of the Lisanjala area villages that their input was a necessary part of attaining a well, was all new and as expected, the promises were met with skepticism. Our partners at the Lisanjala Church and the Jeanes Well Team facilitated meetings and did an outstanding job bringing several of the villages on board. The resulting wells are a testament to the diligent work of everyone involved. So as with our ride in 2012, this will be a fundraiser for water security projects in Malawi. Recent flooding and subsequent drought has severely impacted crop production, and Malawi is threatened with food security issues of crisis proportions. So Ride for Water will also draw awareness to food security issues as well.

These are our challenges.

David O’Neill with us on road just East of the Rockies in 2012.

An overview of our route from Melbourne to Darwin.