How I Accidentally Went on a Thirty Kilometre Bike Ride - and Survived! (Part Two)

(N B: If you didn’t read Part One last week, I suggest you scroll down and do that first if you want to get the most out of Part Two!)

Continued from last week…

My writer’s brain is brimming with images, descriptions and feelings that have been evoked by the river, and even though I’ve been sitting here on my flat stone for over an hour – pen in hand – journaling everything I’ve seen or heard or thought, all I can think of now is the laptop computer sitting on the table in the shed. My fingers are on fire with story.

I almost run back through the paddock, picking my way through the cow pats, missing most and wishing I’d packed gum boots. As I pass the billabong, I see an Eastern Swamphen on the far bank, busily foraging for food. I stop to watch for a minute or so, fascinated by the simpleness of her daily routine.

The story in my head is writing itself at breakneck speed and I fumble with the chain on the gate as I try to hold on to details – turns of phrase, opening paragraph, sequence of events. I have about an hour left before Rhonda returns, and the urgency to return to my writing studio – the shed in the middle of the olive grove – the room of my own, the room with a view – is bearing down on me. Every second is precious. There is something about writing in solitude that can’t be explained.

I turn the corner of the track up from the billabong to the shed to see a car driving up the driveway. My heart simultaneously jumps and sinks. It is not a car I recognise and I casually walk to the gate, feeling like a trespasser. The car drives through and a woman and man introduce themselves. It’s the sister-in-law of the friend who has let me stay here, and her husband; they’ve called in on the way to Bright, to visit her parents, as they always do when they’re in the area. After our brief introductions, they disappear in the direction of the billabong and the river.

I return to the shed, feeling at a loss. I would have liked to offer them a drink and to ask them questions about the area. I feel disappointed with myself for not asking. And I feel cheated out of my solitude.

I boil the kettle and wonder if they’ll be long. I decide I can’t settle to write, so I go searching for mobile phone coverage, to ring Rhonda. As I walk down the drive, one missed call and three messages come through on my phone. Rhonda is already back in Porepunkah and wants me to meet her there. She won’t ride the extra five kilometres back here to the olive grove. And she’s had a sausage roll for lunch at the bakery.

My hour or so of precious writing time has shrunk to nothing.

I bottle up my feelings about this without thinking. I feel a bit agitated, but I have to keep up a happy face for the visitors in case they come back before I leave. I drink a quick glass of water instead of the cup of tea I’d been thinking about at the river. I eat a hastily slapped together honey sandwich as I get out my bike and put on a jacket. (It’s quite windy now and the clouds look ominous.)

My visitors appear, back from their rounds, we have another brief chat and they leave. I don my bike helmet and set off down the drive.

I pedal along the main road, into a full head-wind, toward Porepunkah. The couple have told me it is a thirty kilometre ride from here to Myrtleford. This fact is starting to sink in.

The gradient changes from flat to slightly uphill. This, together with the head-wind, together with the fact that the information I have been given about the length of the ride I am embarking on is really sinking in now, together with the frustration of not getting to even turn on my laptop computer back at the olive grove, together with the fact that bike riding is NOT my favourite pastime, is now having an impact.

My legs hurt, my heart is working so hard, I feel nauseous, and I start to feel dizzy. I’m about half-way between the olive grove and Porepunkah. I deliberate whether to turn around and go back. I consider flagging down a four wheel drive or truck.

No four wheel drives or trucks drive past. No one drives past. It’s so lonely riding out here all by myself. What if I have a heart attack and die by the side of the road?

Tears stream down my face and splash onto my glasses, making everything blurry. My nose fills with mucous and I have to breathe through my mouth, and the sensitive tooth I have starts to hurt like hell, in the cold wind.

I didn’t agree to this! This wasn’t the plan!

By now I’m closer to Porepunkah than the olive grove. I consider stopping and phoning Rhonda. Not to tell her I’ll be there soon. To let her have it. I decide this is probably not a good idea. I keep riding. And fuming.

I force my legs to keep going by promising them a big rest at Porepunkah and then lots more rest while we’re freewheeling to Myrtleford. I ride around one more bend and see Rhonda, on the side of the road, in the distance. Fresh tears well up.

As I get closer, she looks up expectantly, and I have about thirty seconds from the time I meet her eyes to the time I pull up beside her to decide how to greet her. I can let her have it or I can take a deep breath and smile back at her, asking how the ride was from Myrtleford to Porepunkah.

I let her have it.

I am so busy letting her have it that I load my jelly legs back on to the pedals and we ride right through Porepunkah without stopping. I tell myself to listen to what I’m saying, to grow up and to apologise to Rhonda. I don’t listen. The gradient is flat and we’re still riding straight into the head-wind. I tell myself that when we start freewheeling I’ll settle down. When we’re rolling past the golden fields of canola I’ll tell her I’m sorry I got a bit cross.

The golden fields of canola don’t appear. Nor do the forests bursting with exotic birds or the twisty paths that weave in and out of forest undergrowth. We pass the backyards of dilapidated houses; collections of rusted out Holden utes; paddocks strewn with redundant farm machinery. The bike path runs beside the main highway. And all the while the gradient remains flat and the wind hits us head-on.

‘You said it would be down-hill!’

‘No I didn’t. You assumed that.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me, then? Why did you let me keep thinking it would be down-hill when you knew it wasn’t?’

‘I did, but you didn’t listen.’

‘Well, why didn’t you tell me again?’

‘I told you several times that it would be mainly flat.’

‘You could have phoned me at the olive grove and told me we’d have this head-wind.’

‘I tried to phone you, but you didn’t answer.’

‘It’s like pedalling uphill with this wind. If I’d known, I wouldn’t have come.’

I complain for about fifteen kilometres.

Maybe it’s the horse that gallops from one end of his paddock to the other when he sees us stop for a breather and we feed him juicy apples from a neighbour’s tree. Maybe it’s when I see hop vines for the first time and am amazed at how high they grow and marvel at the enormous latticework that supports them. Maybe it’s being in the company of a friend who remains unaffected by the barrage of angry words that have assaulted her for the last hour. Whatever it is, I resign myself to a lot of pedalling and relax into the rhythm of the ride. The demons in my head admit defeat and disappear, one by one.

We ride past paddocks of cows and sheep, farmhouses, old tobacco drying sheds, more paddocks strewn with rusted-out cars and tractors, and a curious ‘new age’ garden, full of more gnomes than I have ever seen in one place.

We eventually arrive in Myrtleford and ride through deserted streets to find my car, sitting on its own, outside the bakery – which is shut. We load the bikes onto the car in an easy silence. Words are not needed. Disappointment whips around our faces like a little wind and moves on.

On our way out of town we drive past a coffee shop called ‘Ruby’s’.

It’s open.

The coffee is sensational.