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September - November 2012 Australia - Kitebiking in the Outback -Part 1
See you soon OK ?
It's never easy to leave cities where we met wonderful people.
But we have to leave.
We have a guest today with us : Ko ! He's from Japan and only 19 years old.
He's done 6000 km in Australia, alone. We're surprised to see a boy like him set off alone, it's really brave !
- That's the best thing : a raw egg in the noodles ! - Yeah, we deserved it well.
- Enjoy your meal Koya ! - Enjoy your meal (in French).
We cycled almost from Melbourne to Adelaide with him. Thank you !
We just arrived at Shirley's place, who received our kites and a trailer for us.
It's Christmas ! (Singing Christmas song)
Look ! What's written in here ?
Receiving kite equipment and the trailer.
We're assembling everything and then we'll leave
- So #1 goes on the leading edge - I'm going to damage it, no ?
- Let's go ! We're leaving Adelaide to go in the Outback !
First attempt with the kite
So this must not happen while riding a bike
We have to manage to stabilize the kite on the edge of the flight window, so that we can keep some traction
But with that kind of kite it's not easy.
So once you're on the bike, the trick is to manage to keep some power in the kite
We're lacking some wind today for these attempts, but one thing is for sure :
we discovered that it was possible to more or less maintain a course
and we think that with more wind it will be doable.
Today is a big day with 200 km to meet Cathy
that we met in Port Augusta. She said if we could make it until there,
Actually Cathy offered to take us around town to visit, but we prefer to rest for a while.
So now it's going to be tough. We agreed on a strategy :
we will leave in late afternoon to ride in the evening and at night.
Then we'll have a short sleep to wake up very early and ride again when it's not too hot.
We will have a nap when it very hot to start riding again in the afternoon
This way, we'll cover almost 200 km in approximately 30h, where our next water supply is.
We've just learned that the police doesn't want us to go on the track.
That means they don't want us to cycle the 600km of dirt track we planned.
People who doesn't know us think we are crazy, but we're not.
We are people who measure and manage risks to go in remote places, knowing what to expect.
People told us the same thing when we crossed the Amazon or when we went down the Yukon river with our raft.
People told us not to go.
But if you listen to these persons, you don't do the trip round the world.
12.30 AM. We cycled 125 km. It seems we will go to bed pretty soon.
One technique to cross 200 km of desert before the next water supply : cook your rice before you leave.
This way we don't need to do the dishes and save some water. And also we save time to go to bed.