fatvegan

I'm about to head off on a little ride along the Finke River. Originally I was going to do the Mereenie Loop, but I ate something funny the day before I was going to leave and now it's five days later. I had to do some bike adjustments. I'm really pretty bad at making bikes go. I hope it's OK.

Alice and I are on the road. We've been riding a few days. Or riding two and pushing one - we spent most of yesterday pushing our bikes up a muddy hill.

We took a bit of a detour to Granite Gorge. It's pretty much the nicest place ever. Big rocks. Lots of nice water. The smallest (meaning best) rock wallabies I have ever seen. Friendly caretakes with budgies and galahs sitting on their shoulders.

We were meant to get to Atherton today (another 50km south), but we decided to stay here. At this rate we will get to Alice Springs about Christmas. Or by the time Emily's baby starts school at the very outside.

Renting cars sure is a slow sort of thing. I could have ridden half way to Cairns in the time I've been waiting in this office. Or if not half way, then at least 0.05% of the way. However, far I would have ridden, it really has been a long time. 2.5 hours so far. They are filling our mega-camper with fuel and toilet chemicals or something.

I'm not actually convinced that any one actually drives mega-vans away from this site. I haven't seen any leave. Just a large bunch of people sitting around on steps. But we'll see.

I have left again. It 23 months since I last jumped on a train to Alice Springs. This time is a little different. I just spend 30 minutes pulling apart my bike to fit it into a box. I'm not totally convinced it will get there in one piece, but we will see. The other difference is that this train is going to Brisbane. I don't think I've ever caught a train to Brisbane.

I can't write very much because there are no powerpoints on this train. Except in the toilets.

My Vegan Passport arrived today. It has a little blurb explaining what vegans do and don't eat. And it has the same blurb in about 100 different languages. Totally bloody ace. How much easier my life could have been.

Serious crimes such as espionage and mass murder may attract the death penalty.

Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Travel Advice for Cuba

This is helpful sort of information for tourists to Cuba to know. If you're travelling overseas with plans to do any mass murdering, it's good to be aware of the possible consequences.

By car: 15 minutes
By bicycle: 30 minutes
By bus: 85 minutes

Estimates assuming fluent traffic conditions.

I just saw two lambs, a couple of months old each, one crispest white and one crispest black, bounding up a perfect green meadow. Their floppy lamb tails were bouncing about with the leaping. Pretty much the best thing ever.

I found a different and much better hostel this time through Adelaide. It doesn't smell like dirty tourists the way the other one did. And as fond as I was of the chatty gambling addict at the last place the quiet here is pleasant. The kitchen is better and pretty. It has a super nice garden area. There was someone actually at the desk when I arrived. It has a free bus drop off service too, so I won't have to relive the last adventure. The new place is also cheaper. And has nice coloured walls.

The pillows might not be quite as fluffy though.

At first glance the Adelaide public transport system appears simple and efficient. Hardly like an Australian transport system at all. However, scratch the surface and you'll discover a delightful puzzle with plenty of twists and tricks to keep the newcomer entertained for hours. Even for the shortest trips. The system is deceptively sophisticated and the disengaged adventurer may be sitting smugly on one train while the train to their actual destination departs only metres away.

Seeking fresh adventure this morning and pretty much being a Communist I decided to catch the local train to the interstate station instead of the free-market shuttle bus service. Catching a bus to a train station when you're living right next to another train station struck me as absurd. Neither did I want catch the public bus. It would surely be slow and I knew it dropped you 500m from the station, which is a long way to and old-school port like mine.

No, I wouldn't be a sucker. I would catch the train right to The Ghan, have an adventure, indulge my socialist prejudices and save money, all at once.

I walked to the station early to buy my train ticket early and find out departure times. I was totally organized. And the ticket was a mere $1.70, which only increased my resolve and self-satisfaction. Who needs privately run "direct" shuttle buses for $5 when the government has already provided for us so well.

I got back my hostel to collect my baggage with plenty of time to spare. There's a saying amongst us train veterans that The Ghan waits for no foolish time budgeted, so I was extra cautious. And imbued with the zeal of the lazy but masterful transport warrior I decided to catch the free tram from the doorstep of my hostel to save the 3 minute walk to the train station.

After waiting 15 minutes for the guaranteed 7-minutely tram I started to worry about domino effects on my precise schedule. A few minutes later the tram did arrive and I breezed onto the carriage the weight of my suitcase vindicating my strategy with every lug.

The tram did not leave and the conductor spent quite some time explaining that only people wanting to go in the opposite direction should remain on the tram. Anyone on the tram wanting to go to where the tram was supposed to go should get out and walk. To the conductor's mild surprise the train emptied. Coincedentily, not a single person on that entire tram wanted to go in the other direction. So we all walked.

The young Sudanese girl with crutches and hardly any left leg was unfussed. She obviously didn't have my finely tuned transport schedule. However, another fellow was much more reasonable and we chortled together knowingly.

Thankfully, another state-sponsored mass transit option was still available. So I walked to the station and the sidewalk we all of us paid for collectively.

I missed my the train that had been optimally temporally located, so I mentally reshuffled my morning, recalculated contingency plans and went off to buy some nuts. My destination was only one station away and the next train wasn't so far off.

Nuts in hand I embarked on the train with several strategic buffer minutes to spare. It was a surprisingly long train for a suburban service and I was once again impressed by the civic commitment to public transport.

Five minutes after the train was due to leave I poked my head out to survey the situation. The display board had changed. More troubling, the length of the train felt tangibly shorter. Plucking up the courage and my bags I walked over to the help desk, worried that I was leaving behind my last chance of a dignified arrival at The Ghan.

A little dejectedly, and fairly sure of the answer I walked up to the help fellow and asked "Do some of your platforms have TWO trains on them?"

"Oh yes," he said with an affable chuckle, "often they do."

"So the 11:10 to Brighton has left then?" I asked a little hopelessly.

"Well it's 11:18," he offered. Sensing I was hoping for slightly more he added "So yes, it's gone."

The next train was 20 minutes away and I had to block out the deafening demands for a taxi coming from my less class conscious sub-conscious. But I held firm and limply sauntered over to the platform of so-called departure. I made amply sure that I should ignore the indicator board urging me on to the train waiting there when I arrived. It was apparently going somewhere else. Once satisfied a settled myself down for a good wait against a pillar and read about cognitive fallacies on Wikipedia while eating nuts.

The train left on time and seemed to be heading on the right direction. I had a mild scare when I almost disembarked at a previously uncharted station but I held my nerve and continued on. I arrived at the interchange terminal which had a healthy number of signs to the interstate platforms. So I started walking.

It was a bit of a walk. Where was an efficient local tram when you need one, I thought. I came to a bus stop for buses to the city. And from the city. I kept on walking. I could even make out the terminal now. And what I suspected was The Ghan itself. 500 metres later I was there, and with enough seconds spare to run down and buy a drink before they closed the doors.

And now here I am, railway veteran extraordinaire, on The Ghan, on our way to Alice.

I have booked my train tickets to Alice Springs. I had plans to maybe fly one way because there is a three night "overnight" in Adelaide on the way there. But it worked out a bit silly with one-way fares, so I'm going on trains both ways. I'll spend 5 days getting there and 3 days getting back. I will have lots of time to think and read and look out the window. Even with three nights accomodation in Adelaide, it's still cheaper than flying. $398 is all for fully return tickets. And I can use the lounge, which has powerpoints for laptops. Hurray.

I'm leaving on the September 6th and getting back on October 1st, and I start at L'Arche (if they've decided I'm OK) on October 2nd.

Ha! I thought that planes were pretty much always cheaper than trains for long distances. But it turns out they aren't. If you're willing to take days instead of hours and sleep in a chair for all those days. I have a scheme to go to Alice Springs for September and I don't want to fly. But I thought I would pay heaps for a return train fare. As it turns out you can get super budget returns from Sydney to Alice Springs for $398 going on The Indian Pacific and The Ghan.

The cheapest equivalent flight costs $544 return, and the value isn't nearly so good because it only lasts a few hours.

So I reckon catching a train is my plan. If I had a bit longer I'd get the unlimited train travel for 6 months ticket for $590. That would be amazingly brilliant, but I'd spend the whole month on trains if I trained it to Darwin and Perth as well.

This is the final route the intrepid road trippers ultimately tripped. It was a mighty fine adventure.

It was 7,371km according to Google but the trip meter reckons we drove about 9,700km (including the optional detour to Uluru).

• Catch up on post cards
• Do your washing (+40°C heat excellent for drying)
• Work on your tan (UV Index 13 (Extreme) most days)
• Chat to friends back home (fast internet)
• Meet new people (unisex dorms) ;)

From Travellers Haven Backpacker Hostel

We're spending two days in Mt Isa. Totally awesome.

My second, by more concerted, attempt at working out the economics of the buses for our little Alice Springs Road Trip. It gets a lot more expensive when we don't all squash into the same bus.

When I was in Cambodia I riding along on a motorcycle and I saw a truck that had driven off the side of the road and flipped over. The violence of it made me assume the driver had probably died, although it's possible he hadn't. There were people milling about and moving the cargo from the overturned truck to a number of other smaller vehicles.

I tend to think about the likelihood of various things happening when I'm overseas. I tried to work out the likelihood of being kidnapped in Colombia. I tried to work out the likelihood of my truck falling into the river on that hairy mountain trip from Peru to Bolivia. Or the likelihood of my five hours on a motorcycle containing a fatal accident. These things are hard to figure out. You can't really extrapolate from one event. I could look at the one month in Cambodia before the crash as a sample size of one. In that sample there was one bad car crash. Maybe that is a lot, but maybe it isn't. In one sense, it is definitely a lot, but it doesn't really tell you anything definitive about Cambodia. I have been in Australia my whole life, and have never seen a truck on it's back on the side of the road. How do I compare one crash in one month, to zero crashes in 24 years? You could multiply that one crash by the right proportion to have a guess at how many crashes there would be in 24 years. But you're not really supposed to.

Most people would look at that crash and get a bit worried. Statisticians would look at it and dismiss it because the sample size is too small. People are probably right to be worried, even though they don't have maths on their side. Although the only reason I think they're right to be worried is because I have a whole lot of other associations in my head about car crashes and third world countries.

If I try to ignore all the other associations there probably aren't any useful conclusions I could have made about that one bad crash. So when I saw another bad crash a couple of days later I felt a bit more confident. Two deadly crashes in four days had to mean something. Surely my fears were concretely justified. But they still aren't. Two crashes, even in one day, doesn't really count for anything. Statistically speaking, I reckon I'd have to spend many months on the backs of motorcycles scouting around for truck crashes before I could be confident about anything.

It all does make me wonder how much more likely statisticians are to die in violent crashes. Someone should do a paper on that. I'm obviously not very good at statistics, so I'd probably stuff it up.

Libby and I spent four hours yesterday at the biggest Paddy's Market in the world. Friendship at breaking point. Although I did buy a lot of nice lamps.

Our train trip last night was the funnest. It was third class, which only had seats but wasn't actually that bad. But it means that people make friends with you because they think you must be hardcore. We were offered food and drink and lovely smelling face wipes all night long. We met a nice group of two girls and a fellow early on and they gave us a rather substantial dinner.

Throughout the night they gave us many lollies, pickled mango, face wipes, mandarins, cold water, sticky rice with beef and curried egg and sweet milky wafer biscuits. Libby suggested I date (with view to marrying) the pretty, young one but we all got tired and fell asleep before I could take her aside for a serious talk (the girl, not Libby).

We offered them some our suddenly embarassing snackables but they politely declined all of them except the orange drinking yoghurt. I'm not sure if they actually liked orange drinking yoghurt or if they simply felt that they refused us more times than was friendly. Having now drunk my first orange drinking yoghurt I'm going to have to assume they were just being gracious.

We also consumed rather a lot of our own snacks. Although Libby managed to scoff the finest treats while I was snoozing, including the remains of the roast almonds which she had so innocently suggested we save until later.

Amidst the feasting I started reading The Beautiful and the Damned by Fitzgerald. I suspect reading this book will be the single best thing I have ever done for my friendship with Libby.

Sleeping was a fairly awkward matter, me being rather too tall for the seats. I ended up following the lead of our friend and sleeping on the floor underneath the seats. He had troubles because his tummy was too large to slide under the seats. I had troubles because I was sufficiently tall that my feet or head would jut out into the next group's cabin. It was as dirty and claustrophobic as you fancy, but mercifully comfortable after sleeping on the seat. I discovered in the morning that the padding I had been using to save my hips was actually a small piece of beef Libby had dropped under the chair the previous night.

I was also worried that someone would tread on my during the night with so many bits sticking out from under the seats. Luckily we were sharing our area with a light-footed grandmother who hopped about without ever touching the ground. When, ready for a shiny new day, I woke up at 3am she offered me an apple. She proceeded to cut and peel it, segment by segment until I'd eaten half. When Libby woke up a little later, she got the other half. She was the best.

Libby and I are sitting for the day in Nong Khai. It's a hot little town in Thailand just south of Vientiane.

At the border, we crossed paths with an efficient-looking Canadian biker tourist. He ended up well in front of us during the usual passport/visa/departure-card shenanigans but as we walked out the other side we saw him walking assertively back towards us with a can of Pepsi in his hand. He smiled at us and said that Thai Pepsi did not taste as good as Lao Pepsi. Abandoning your plans to travel through Thailand for that sort of reason might seem a little drastic, but I can think of several friends who probably understand the same sort of sentiment if not the precise complaint.

We have mostly hidden out from the heat in this nice internet/ice-cream cafe. It's about 35 cents per hour which is damn cheap. Libby especially has utilitised its excellent ice cream facilities to the full. We interrupted our internet revelries to commence a bold search for pad thai which sadly ended at a grill bar run by an Australian fellow where we had a pizza.

We ate some pre-lunch snack vegetables and rice at a little street stall. The woman was a little shocked when I realised that my hard-won knowledge of Lao counting was transferable to Thailand. I probably repeated sii-sip-haa baht to her a little loudly and enthusiastically. I'm worried she just assumed that I thought that 45 baht for pre-lunch snacks was such an unbelievable bargain that I had to yell ou the price. It is a pretty good bargain, but when bargain hunting amongst people with a fraction of my income I generally try to be more discrete.

I have also drunk a fair bit of beer. Nice beer, but not Lao beer. Beer Lao vanished the moment we crossed the border. I fear that my short-lived love affair is over.

We're also about to head off on a 12 hour train journey half way across the country. What's even more fun is that we're in third-class. Hurray. Twelve hours of sweaty pain for the price of a Sydney beer.

There was a fellow in the guest house this morning. He asked the guest house manager how to get to the border with Thailand. I'd just come from there, so I started to tell him how he could do it. He interrupted me and this conversation followed.

Man: Is that the market? I'm not going there. They'll try to rip me off.
Me: They're pretty nice. It wasn't expensive for me.
Man: They'll try to charge me 150,000 kip ($15).
Me: It's only 15,000 kip.
Man: No thanks. I'm not a walking ATM.

The conversation didn't even entirely make sense to me. I had thought we were just have a casual chat and then half way through I realised he was really angry at something (poor people I suppose). I'm not sure why he even asked the man in the first place. It's kind of like he has decided to boycott buying things to ensure he never gets ripped off.