Day 5

Day 5 saw us leave the Great Eastern Highway and head south on the Coolgardie-Esperance Highway for about 170km to Norseman. It rained a lot the night before and in the morning the sky was completely gray and it was drizzling. O and it was 9 degrees which was cold when taken along with the rain.

We started out in the drizzle and started to make reasonable speed, but after a while for some reason the speed "died" and the average ke4pt creeping lower and lower getting below 23 at one stage. Although the terrain didn't seem uphill, we suspect it was gradually creeping up. By the time we stopped for morning tea most of us were freezing. I had certainly under estimated the clothing I needed and piled some more on at the break. The temperature had managed 10 by this stage. Some time later we pulled in at a small roadhouse/pub for a toilet break and Jim offered us all coffee or hot chocolate out of ride food expenses. Great psychological boost.

The rain stopped at around 12:30 and the clouds cleared at around 2pm. After the moring tea stop our average speed started to creep up and continued to do so for the rest of the day - in the end respectable.

This day we had expected to be the worst for traffic issues. The road rarely had any shoulder so we had to be riding to the right of the edge white line all the time, and there was nowhere to get off should a road train pass (mostly ore carriers along this route). However the truck drivers were all extremely cooperative and we had no issues. Our road support vehicles were able to talk to the truckies as well as to the riders (three of whom carry lapel CB radios), so truckies knew exactly what was going on, when it was safe to pass, and so on. nA number of trucks let us know that they had passed us more than once over the last five days as the went about their business. One even told us he had acted as a roadie for a Bike for Bibles ride 10 years ago.

During the first half of the run there was significant evidence of wildflower season getting under way. Apart from lots of wattle, there were many other flowering shrubs - difficult to work out
what through rain blurred goggles.

Didn't take any pictures today as I didn't want a camera getting wet in my back pocket.