The original plan was to drive to Adelaide to look at the car, sleep in the car overnight on the side of the road, then drive back. If I purchased the car, I fly over the next weekend (missing out on a race) and drive it back. A later thought was to take a gamble that I would purchase the car, fly over early Saturday morning, then if I bought it I would drive back to Melbourne the same day. If I didn't buy it, I would simply book a return flight later in the day and fill the time in wondering round Adelaide.
I realised how tired I was when I got on the plane and was asleep before the plane even travelled forward - I fell asleep before or during the reversing of the plane before taxiing to the runway. 1.5hrs sleep later I woke up as we were descending into Adelaide.
The taxi ride was...interesting. The driver was about 76 in the shade, and didn't know the street I was to go to, so he asked me to navigate using the Melways/UBD to get us there!!! Very amusing and you could only expect that in Adelaide, but at least I wasn't getting ripped off by him driving all over the city in the wrong direction. It was actually comforting.
The car was in great condition and worth the trip. The guy was a roady so we talked bikes and cars. Finance and paperwork all sorted, I stocked up with food for the trip back. I considered driving to Willunga Hill to have a brief look at the Tour Down Under, but it was 45 mins out of my way - ultimately adding at least 2 - 3 hrs onto my trip. I knew my mate Macca (who I've known for 15 years from Panther Cycles) was in Adelaide for The Tour and decided that if he was at Willunga then I would make the trip. I rang him and he was only 5 mins from where I was !!! A walk and talk up the road to check out a bike shop, and an hour later I was back in my new green machine ready for the 800km drive to Melbourne.
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| Macca & myself at bike shop taking me back to my Penrith westie days - a flanny jersey |
The drive was awesome - time to think, sing to myself, enjoy my new car, work out how many kms to a tank of fuel, see lots of mallee vegetation and lots of sky. Thinking on and off how my dad would have been proud of me for confidently making my own plans and following through. It was him that began my interest in cars - under the bonnet with him holding the light while he worked on the family car, taking the boys and myself to the drags out at Castlereagh - imbedding in me a desire to be a confident, independent female when it came to cars, which is so much a male-dominated interest. So of course I knew he was with me the whole trip.
It ended up taking me 9 hrs with breaks, and I was getting 650km from a 45 Litre tank - not bad for a 10 year old car. (That last bit of trivia took up so much of my time playing with figures and comparisons that I thought it important to include!!)
After lots of sleep on Saturday night, I had an enjoyable and very much fun mtb at Lysterfield with Kylie and Dave. Kylie came up with the quote of the day when Dave fell off his bike while standing upright and did a commando roll...'And he didn't even stop talking during it...' Very very funny couple of hours. Wonderful Dave then offered to drive me to the airport to pick up the Outback after yesterday's flight - or should I say 'his' Outback. Such wonderful friends and great fun to be around.
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