Day 41 – Pine Creek to Adelaide River 113K / 70 Miles

Second to the last, penultimate. We are almost to Darwin. Another 110 or so Kilometers and we will be rolling down to the Esplanade and to Bicentennial Park on Darwin Harbor. Not sure how I feel about it. Three weeks ago battling into the incessant headwinds, I couldn’t wait for the ride to be over. We were behind schedule and were forced to forego some of the extra places we wanted to visit. We bought time with a couple Greyhound tickets and have been enjoying the last 8 days. We will have time to visit one National Park near Darwin. As soon as we return, we will be seeing Barb off to Haiti as part of the “She Said” mission trip. I will be taking Joe back to Iowa State within the week. Life will be proceeding off the bike. I hate to say this but in some ways I’m actually looking forward to our 35½-hour travel day on August 10, when will leave Darwin at 1:50 AM and arrive in Indy at 11:30 PM. Along with readjusting to home we will be readjusting our diet. Joe can probably get away with eating like we have, but for me, scaling back my intake will take some work. For weeks I’ve had cravings for Fiesta Café and Papa Dels, and of course Custard Cup. Our haircuts are scheduled and we’ll probably take a few days to get our internal clocks straight. It will take some time to appreciate our trip across Australia and what it all means in the end.

For everything that was wrong about yesterday, it was right today. We were 10 kilometers into the ride before the first vehicle overtook us. Only 4 had passed in the opposite direction. Since Katherine the topography changed, and the last two days have been spent winding over and around a series of ridgelines. Today we started out at an altitude of nearly 230 meters and we finished at 62. The downhill trend was accentuated by a nice tailwind and we rolled into our destination, Adelaide River, at 12:30 just in time for lunch. I am sure this was our fastest day of the trip.