Full Circle - Part I

At the end of an eventful and arduous day on the road, I basked in the warm glow of the fireplace in a cozy lodge. Listening to the rain pattering on the tin roof, relishing the shelter, my dripping clothes creating a puddle on the floor near the fire, I contemplated how I got here, and the possibilities for tomorrow as I opened my journal to detail the day’s events:

Day 21, December 15, 2019 - Corinna, Tasmania

I woke up this morning at 6:30 a.m. to something that sounded like a squeaky toy having an orgasm on top of my tent.  It was a bird of some sort.  I didn’t want to acknowledge its existence, nor open my eyes, because I was acutely aware that there was wetness both inside and outside of the tent.  When I finally sat up, I assessed the situation - there was a huge puddle all around me, the tent was obviously leaking and basically everything was anywhere between damp and sopping, dripping, and undeniably wet including my sleeping bag.  UGH.  

Everything I knew about Corinna, I had learned from patrons in a pub in Marrawah a couple of days earlier.  I was told that Corinna was an old mining town, a ghost town with a few scattered buildings, and was the location of the cable ferry that crossed the Pieman River, in “The Tarkine.”  I didn’t know what “the Tarkine” was, but here in Corinna, through a pamphlet I had nabbed from the information booth at the front of the lodge, I learned that it is the largest temperate rainforest in Australia.  

That would’ve been good intel to have this morning, as my mood was anything but temperate, standing in the rain in the forest, impatiently struggling to shove a wet tent inside of its stuff sack, its sopping fabric more interested in clinging to my skin and accumulating gravel from the roadside, rather than letting itself be put away nicely.  There are few things as disheartening as putting a tent away wet, biking all day in the rain, knowing that you will be setting up the tent again that night, no less wet .  Still, having a literal wet blanket beat the figurative one that had weighed me down in recent weeks.  I had come to Tasmania as a duo with a friend, but we had “broken up” just a week prior.

Since then I had been revelling in the freedom of independence brought on by solo travel - my preferred mode of moving through the world.  On this day, my choices brought me into this abandoned gold mining town, on the verge of hypothermia, having also just survived a near death experience.  I was pleasantly surprised to have fallen upon this lodge, complete with a few cabin rentals available on site.

Normally, I am not one to spend on frivolities like a roof over my head, only to then go unconscious, which has always seemed to me a supreme waste of my meagre funds.  It is difficult for me to reconcile that the cost of 8 hours of sleep can be equivalent to my wages of slogging it out as a camp cook for 16 hours a day in a northern camp, for example.  

Yet, over the past few weeks, I felt I was haemorrhaging money by spending needlessly on paying for campgrounds or staying at Airbnbs with my less laissez faire partner.  This irked me –I felt that such acts should only be reserved for special occasions or emergencies .  So, despite having already spent more than I normally would on accommodations during a cycle tour, I decided to splurge on a cabin this time, given the circumstances.  

For the next 24 hours, I vowed to capitalize, maximize and utilize every amenity that the place had to offer.  I would defile this cabin with my presence.  I would shower, dry my gear, crank the heater, abuse the internet by downloading podcasts and streaming music, clean my clothes in the sink, do a makeshift spa treatment, have multiple naps, and make much needed bike repairs whose success would determine my route ahead.

As much as my time at the Lodge in Corinna was about looking forward, it also afforded me the time to reflect on the past few days.  How had I even arrived in this, “the heart of the Tarkine Wilderness” in the first place?  The answer was mostly by happenstance, beginning with the break-up.  It had been a week since we parted ways.  As my recent travels were a series of action packed forward fumbles towards unknown destinations and new people, I hadn’t truly taken the time to analyze what went wrong between us, and the role that I played in that.

Truth be told, I had known early on that our union was ill-fated. In a truly bizarre stream of events in the month prior to flying to Tasmania, I had stopped at a gas station in the middle of an 18 hour road trip back in British Columbia.  While waiting in line for the cashier, I struck up a conversation with the person behind me, starting by extolling the virtues of beef jerky and ending with the realization that the friend I was going to Tasmania with had also biked with the man in the line up behind me! They went around New Zealand together the year prior.  He described it as a harrowing experience  - she had planned everything to a painfully strict schedule with very little room for spontaneity - as a result, their friendship had taken a serious hit.  His last words were “don’t do it” as I drove away, shocked by the serendipity of this meeting.  

Deep down I knew he was right. I had detected our dissimilarities throughout our preparations. My “preparations” began and ended with booking the plane ticket.  The rest would be left to fate, choices to be made based on conditions in the heat of the moment. These choices could be based on anything from which way the wind is blowing, to what town has the best ice cream shop.  On my bike trip through New Zealand, I once biked over 100 kms to a town simply because I had really liked this beer and suddenly decided I wanted to visit the brewery on a whim.   

“Plans are just ideas with expectations” is my life motto, my creed.   My friend, on the other hand, wanted to know where we would be at the end of each day, a month ahead of time.   Maybe her life motto was “Ideas are just plans that have not been beaten into submission”.  Lacking forethought, planning too far ahead was a nearly impossible notion to me – there were simply too many unknown variables.  “I could die before I get there” I thought.  To give any more thought to the matter, therefore, seemed a waste of brain activity that I could be using for my online scrabble game RIGHT NOW.

The problem with our apparent incompatibility was that the tickets were already purchased, the wheels were in motion, and I was not keen on pulling the plug on the trip - I would rather go through misery than flake out on someone at the 11th hour.  

The prophecies of the gas station Nostradamus came true – our time together was cataclysmic.  As he forewarned in his predictions, she was strict and high maintenance, taking a nine-to-five approach to cycling hours. I preferred to bike sporadically until it was dark out. I liked to camp anywhere—in animal pastures, on the beach, behind pubs, in the woods, on the side of the road—and she needed complete, uninterrupted silence.  In this land of baaa’ing sheep and mooing cows, crashing ocean waves, and birds that conducted symphonic orgies at dawn, silence was an impossibility. 

We ended up splurging continuously on Airbnbs to cater to her need for noiselessness.  I felt hemmed in by predetermined plans, closed off from novelty, with the pressure to adhere to a schedule feeling oppressive and forced. As I compromised my own needs to accommodate and keep things positive, my underlying irritation began to poke through.

My way of expressing my irritation came by alternating between bouts of toxic positivity - “Everything is great!” to passive aggressiveness — “I guess that’s fine.”  I would burn ahead full steam uphills to create separation between us, or became painfully slow and lollygagged in towns in protest of our “plans”.  I had to admit to myself that though generally optimistic, I can be a difficult person to travel with if I do not ultimately get my way.

I’ve rarely had to come to terms with my own quirks - when you travel solo, there is no one there to question your motivations and desires. I was not used to reporting to anyone or making compromises of any kind (without being paid to do so), and I didn’t like it. On this trip, I found myself being questioned constantly for my thoughts and actions, which caused my blood to boil.  

The moment when my partner told me she would need to tap out of the trip early, citing nerve pain in her neck, I was both relieved and elated, and immediately took off on my own way in a new direction, doubling down on the chaos of the unknown.  In the week since our split, I had not taken the time to process my role in the breakdown. 

Facing the fact that I contributed to some of the unpleasantness of this trip, I realized that my obsession with seeking novelty had hindered my ability to understand my friend’s insecurities and needs better. While I still liked her as a person and recognized that her desire for safety and security was just as valid as my need for excitement, I still found myself burdened by the weight of our failure as a duo, and what that might mean in the future when we inevitably crossed paths again.

I seemed to carry the heaviness of my thoughts as I climbed and dipped, up and down, alone on the desolate road to Corinna. In my journal, I wrote:

The climbs were very steep today.  The road was gravel.  I was mute all day except to occasionally swear when I saw a patch of pavement, which meant that the road was about to steeply climb.  They do something funny here and pave only part of the road - 100 meters here, 50 meters there - only when it’s super steep or otherwise dangerous.  The sand and grime did not help - it was EVERYWHERE - my water bottles were covered, my socks, pants, bags, brakes, gear were all gritty.

I leveraged the laborious climb by using an excerpt of the song “Jailbreak” by AC/DC as my mantra as I pushed against gravity– an homage to a wild night I had had the day before last, which found me being hosted by a kind man named “Nuts” in the small coastal community of Marrawah.  He had picked me up in a rainstorm on the side of the road, taken me kneeboard surfing at the local break, and then on to the infamous Marrawah Tavern to drink beer and commiserate with some colourful characters. 

One thing led to another, and I found myself in Nuts’ living room at 2 a.m., performing a beer-fueled rendition of the infamous late 70’s rock tune, as he strummed along on guitar and I belted out with feeling: “He made it out... with a bullet in his BACK!” - the words crawling out of my mouth, in a performance that would’ve made Bon Scott proud.  Given my recent escape from my own spiritual confinement, it all seemed a fitting release. 

Singing, quoting, or playing AC/DC is a form of currency in Australia, and being knowledgeable in such dealings pays dividends.  Nuts almost convinced me to make a guest appearance with his band at the Marrawah pub on Christmas Eve, based on my impromptu audition.   It may have been the finest singing performance of my life, but if you sing an AC/DC song in a living room with only one drunken person as a witness, did you even make a sound?  

The pub is where I got the idea to come to Corinna in the first place - a chat with a sheep herder had convinced me that this route was a worthwhile foray and promised to be low traffic with options to branch off and discover areas rich in wilderness, indigenous traditional territories, and gold rush history. A virtual smorgasbord of “Choose your Own Adventure” options.

Before me and my travel partner split ways, I was convinced I had lost my traveler’s mojo.  In our time together, almost no one had approached us, which was unheard of in my previous travels.  I considered myself a bit of magical traveling unicorn in that I always seemed to attract the most wild and wonderful characters.  I mourned the loss of that synchronicity and my magnetism to strangers, though I contemplated that maybe people were less friendly here, or that these kind of interactions were reserved for younger women, and maybe I had simply aged out.

This bogus theory was proven wrong almost instantly when we parted - I had made many connections and friends in the past week leading to Corinna, confirming with great relief that my mojo had only been temporarily stifled, not exterminated permanently.  

The C249 was a muddy road that made me deeply regret removing my front mudguard and flippantly throwing it in the garbage a few weeks earlier.  In my defense, it had been abused along its journey halfway across the world, through the dark side of the tarmac, into the careless hands of the luggage porters - I’d imagined that the large box containing my bike was used perhaps as a landing pad for an amateur wrestling match.  I continued:

"At some point, at the top of a hill, I realized that neither of my brakes were working at all and they were caked in mud.  I realized this as I was already rolling down a steep paved part that had no line of sight to the bottom and was warned through signage that it was a twisty, turny, steep descent.  GULP.  I had both brakes squeezed to the handlebars, and still I picked up speed."

Rolling out of control, I was barreling quickly towards a sharp corner adorned with a guardrail. The rail would’ve made a perfect launching pad to catapult me over a steep cliff, where I would’ve been writing in my journal in a mangled heap, using it as my last will and testament. 

To avoid that fate, I did what anyone in my situation would do:

“I Fred Flinstone’d my foot flat on the pavement to try to slow down, and then, as things started to speed up and get more desperate, I stuck my heels in.”

Though the foot friction was doing something, it wasn’t doing enough.  I was still building speed, and quickly realized that I was not going to make the corner, and even if I did, it would only serve to prolong this roller coaster of doom.

I employed my last desperate tactic, inspired by an album in my record collection back home called “24 Truck Drivin’ Songs”.  In one song, the trucker rubs his rig against a mountain to slow it down.  I figured if it was an effective way to slow down an 18-wheeler,  then it could slow my 2-wheeler no problem.  It was worth a try, anyway: 

“I steered the bike into the fortuitously placed embankment covered in bushes and slowed down by coming into it parallel and leaning the bike until I came to a stop.  I somehow came out unscathed, thanks to my overpacked panniers rubbing the embankment first.  Phew.  That was scary, and would’ve gone terribly had there not been a hill beside me.”

I got off the bike, unloaded all of my gear, flipped it over, cleaned the brake pads and tightened them as best I could in the circumstances.  Despite my repairs, the brakes ended up slipping two more times in more controlled circumstances and felt entirely unsafe.

Eventually my brakes were tightened to the max, with only the front brake working just enough to slow me down gradually, like a locomotive. Not ideal, but manageable until I could get to a town with a bike shop.

Here in Corinna, safe and sound, I had time to figure out the least (down)hilly route that may lead me to a bike shop to get some help with my brakes.  

“More tea?” the lodge restaurant waiter asked.  “No thanks, I’m good for now, thank you” I said with a smiling and appreciative nod.

“Zeehan and beyond tomorrow, perhaps.” I wrote, and closed the journal for the night. “No definite plans, of course” I thought, and smirked as I retired back to my cabin.