Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
double up to haul them one at a time up and out of the trench and around the moat
sections through the waist-deep snow.
It was exhausting, wet work, and after an hour we'd covered only a few hundred
metres. We reached the top of a small rise and saw the trench and its string of
countless puddles and little islands stretching far ahead. We pushed on, still taking
care to keep ourselves and the bikes clear of the water, but as we progressed our
standards inevitably relaxed. Before long we were ploughing obliviously through
the water.
One of the puddles was deeper than I expected. My bike dived in up to the
handlebars, submerging my front pannier bags which contained a loaf of bread,
packets of biscuits and my tool kit.
We made seven kilometres before stopping to camp. We quickly lit a fire and set
to drying our clothes and sorting through some of the gear. I reached into a pannier
and pulled out a bloated roll of toilet paper that had put on almost a kilo during the
afternoon. Tim rummaged through his gear and found a bedraggled toy koala that
he'd been saving to give as a gift somewhere along the way. Its wet and matted fur
seemed so forlorn and the expression on its little synthetic face so homesick and
miserable that we couldn't help ourselves. We laughed until our grimy faces were
streaked with tears.
It wasn't until much later that we discovered Tim's bike had suffered a serious
mishap during the push that afternoon. A submerged stick had caught in the spokes
and tangled with his back gear-changer, breaking one of the jockey wheels, a vital
component.
Jockey wheels are meant to last forever and I hadn't packed a spare, yet without
it, Tim's bike was crippled. It was time, I decided, to improvise.
I cut a section of hardened plastic from the inside support of my front pannier
then sat by the fire while Tim took my turn at cooking dinner. I had a traditional,
bone-handled knife that had been given to me by a bear hunter we'd met along the
road. It was very sharp, and I set to work carving a replacement jockey wheel.
At midnight, with the fire burning low and my eyes glazing over with sleep, my
hand slipped and I sliced a deep gouge into the heel of my left hand. I went to bed
swearing. Tim could finish the job in the morning.
Amazingly, it worked and after a few hours of pushing through the wet and cold
of the trench, it seemed as though we had come through the worst of it. The puddles
slowly disappeared and the snow thinned out to be replaced by sloppy, oozing mud.
We were able to ride again.
