TAKE NOTE PLEASE. THIS IS A POST FROM MY TRIP LAST YEAR AND AN EXCERPT FROM MY TRAVEL/REFERENCE BOOK ‑ 'Straight Down - Darwin to Adelaide' TO BE RELEASED LATER THIS YEAR. THE LOGICAL ORDER OF THIS YEARS TRIP CONTINUES WITH THE MOST CURRENT POST - SORRY FOR THE CONFUSION.

I've been on what feels like a never ending ride thru the Great Victoria Desert (it’s in SA mate, do a Google!) which in parts is some 80m BELOW sea level. However now I'm marooned in a lovely place called Pimba SA... "Where the Bloody Hell is Pimba you say?, well for those who don't know their .au geography as well as I do, (ahem) it’s in at the southern end of the Great Victorian Desert and just a few KLM's from Woomera where the refugee detention centre and USA nuke testing is (bet you didn't know that)!

At dinner last night I sat at a table with a bunch of contract pilots who fly around Australia for the Fed to bring the illegal’s from local authorities back here to be detained! Woomera is also home to the USA military base they used to use to test nuclear bombs in the past and according to the Pimbinians - the ones with 6 fingers on each hand...they still do! Could be why the T in my T Bone steak had an interesting green glow. This glow also matched the colour of the slime in the local water!

I've been in the world famous Spuds Roadhouse in Pimba since Sunday afternoon. It's next to the world famous Pimba junk yard. I was lucky enough to get the Honeymoon Suite - $40 a night buys me 3 single beds and a queen bed... go figure! Housekeeping has to come in every morning to vacuum the red earth that blows in under the door during the dust storms at night. Luckily for me the roof of the motel hasn't been nailed down well so every time there's a wind blast under the door the roof raises then flaps rattles and clangs like someone dropped a load of pots and pans down a flight of stairs.

The TV's gone - stolen or commandeered for another room so there's not much to do but write this while I'm waiting on my wheel with its new tire to come back from a Port Augusta motorcycle shop, I think about 400KLM away from here. I sure hope it actually comes back!

Seems the rear tire doesn't like the 6-800 KLM days at 150-180 KPH I've been tracking to make up for lost time (storms, helicopter crashes, broken thumb, and dropping my bike) so it melted from the heat and split open in the middle right down to the wire weave on the inside of the rubber! As there was nothing around but the road ahead, the road back, and the curvature of the earth in every other direction I slowed down to a brisk 50 KPH to avoid a blow out and the inevitable grating of my skin along the road like the shaving of a big Romano cheese for a pasta party... until I stop sliding of course. Would've been pretty ugly at 160 KPH!

Fortunately Pimba [population 26, me included] was only about 50 KLM away when I first noticed the rear tire. Interesting thing is I had just checked the tire about 300 KLM’s before. I think under these extreme conditions when they fail, they fail and it happens real sudden.

As luck would have it this happened on a Sunday and Monday was yet another Australian holiday (I love Australia) and no one other then the barmaid at the roadhouse was working and thank God for that. Tuesday morning I awoke at the crack of noon, dropped the wheel from the drive hub and sent it to the motorcycle shop in Port Augusta via the cargo hold in a Greyhound tourist bus! They changed the tire at the shop and sent it back on the next bus so it arrives here tomorrow morning (I hope)... so I should be back on my merry way soon!

Oh I almost forgot, seems the pub is out of bottled water, but not beer or bourbon so I thought it best not to drink the green slimy tap water that matched my green glowing T bone ... seemed like a good choice at the time tho my head hurts a bit now.

Funny but for some reason I'm not really that concerned now how long it takes my wheel and new tire to get back here!! As my fellow Pimbinians have been saying to me ...

'She'll be right mate, she'll be right!'