Right to the Edge: Sydney to Tokyo By Any Means by Boorman Charley

Author:Boorman, Charley [Boorman, Charley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Published: 2009-10-01T00:00:00+00:00

It took me an age to get to sleep. I’m not sure why exactly, but after a great day on the bike I lay in my hammock with all sorts of thoughts swirling around in my head. We only had one full day left in Indonesia and much as I had enjoyed the country, and the people in particular, I had been frustrated by its officials. Things are actually very tightly controlled here beneath the friendly surface. On top of that there seemed no way to sail to the Philippines now, which meant we had to fly.

At first light I took a walk along the beach and found our fisherman friend surrounded by bottles, curled up by the embers of the camp fire. He was sound asleep, wearing just a T-shirt and shorts; I’d been so cold in the night I’d had to put my clothes on. It had been great to camp though, being in the open air with the sound of waves crashing on the beach. Definitely the right call.

Minto, a policeman in his ‘real life’, had to ride back so he could go to work, but Dal and Ivan were coming with us all the way to Manadao. We saddled up and left early, while it was still cool. I was back on the Suzuki, dossing about as I always do and waving at villagers laying out half shells of coconuts to dry.

The roads were pretty rough for the first part of the day - lots of dirt and mud and very little tarmac. But at least it wasn’t raining, not yet anyway. It did look like it might, though. All morning the skies were plagued by an ever-thickening blanket of cloud. It was still beautiful, though - the sea was blue green and mottled with hundreds of the canoe-style fishing boats we had seen Guntur building back in Ujung Lero.

Manadao Province looked a bit wealthier than most places we had seen. Crossing a river on a temporary bridge, we left the last of the dirt and hit smooth, black tarmac. Just as well, because finally those clouds began to dribble. A few raindrops would patter on the visor of my helmet for a while and then stop. It would start again and then stop. The tarmac looked polished and quickly it became very slick. Any road racer will tell you that you want it either wet or dry. What you do not want is that undecided in-between, because then the surface is just greasy and you can be down without ever knowing why.

It didn’t stay undecided for very long. The last few hours into Manadao it absolutely bucketed down. The closer we got to town, the worse it got. It was torrential, the road almost flooded and I was wearing just jeans and a jacket and a pair of canvas shoes. I was soaked to the bone. I don’t think there was any part of me that wasn’t wet through and I was amazed when a couple of guys from the bike club came out to meet us.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.