The dizzying delight of doing shit

Three glorious days on the Otway Rip.

The miracle wasn’t the weather. It wasn’t the fact that every decision – a route change, a meal choice – wound up being the right one. It wasn’t the sparks that flew between a crisp pint and cracked lips, nor the way my phone remembered the brewery’s Wi-Fi as if to say, You’re home now, Patrick. You’re safe.

No, no.

The miracle – the incontrovertible evidence of God’s presence on earth – was that Jake and I made a plan two months in advance and neither of us pulled out.

Two months!

In human years: an eternity.

In God years: still pretty fucking long.

We’d made a plan, back in August, to meet at Southern Cross Station on a Friday morning in October. We loaded our bikes onto the last carriage and the train whisked us west towards Warrnambool, mercifully stopping two stations short in Camperdown. It’s here that the Otway Rip – a 250km bike route – begins.

We cycled first to Timboon, then on to the Shipwreck Coast: Port Campbell, the Twelve Apostles, Princetown. We followed rail trails. Back roads. We swore up hills and squealed down them. We stopped for lunch. A beer. To cheer an echidna across the Great Ocean Road. We fell sixty kilometres short of our planned campsite and couldn’t care less because the beers we’d bought were still cold enough to drink. We paired them with noodles of the two-minute variety. Nutritious. Delicious. Packed with enough sodium to send legions of middle-aged men to their lycra-clad graves.

Pausing for content in the Otway hinterland.

Throughout the day I found myself marvelling at what was happening. We were out there. In the world. Doing shit. Three years since I bought a bike specifically designed for touring, or bikepacking, or whatever you want to call it, and finally – finally! – it was happening. I was on a bike. With my shit. Going somewhere other than work.

Ass aching.

Legs shaking.

Joy? Is that you?

Jake – I met him through a handsome mutual friend (g’day Jim) and followed his 2023 cycle from Kazakhstan to Scotland closely. He was, I came to realise, a man with experience. A man with indomitable quads. A man who had crossed the barren steppes of Central Asia subsisting on fermented horse milk and a goddamn dream. Surely he could show me the ways of bikepacking. Surely he could – at the very least – assist me in changing a tyre.

On our second day, we set out from Princetown determined to cover the 100 kilometres separating us from Forrest Brewery. We took the Old Ocean Road through the greenest valley you’ve ever seen. Almost Irish in its verdure. It was a painting, a poem. It was, Jake pointed out, a reminder of the destructive nature of colonial pastoralism – but by god it was gorgeous.

We summited Lavers Hill. Cut through Beech Forest. Swooped down sealed roads surrounded by towering mountain ash and, er, other cool trees. We pedalled up the other side of the valley; chains slipped, knees screamed and Jake became a dot on the horizon as I reminded myself it was my choice to be there.

This is fun, I said to myself.

Shut the fuck up, I replied.

And it was so.

We reached the brewery by late afternoon. Timber tables and stumps for stools. The sun was out, the beers were cold – what more can one dream of? A drunken woman became convinced I was someone famous and for a moment I believed her. For a moment, anything seemed possible.

Jake and I stayed until close. We lapped up lagers as well as my celebrity status. Between contemplative sips of beer, we asked each other – again and again – how we got so lucky. What had we done to deserve such a day?

I mean, it was only a bike ride. But for someone who has built a personality on being “there” rather than “here”, it was a gentle reminder that the things that make me feel something – anything! – can be found halfway to Warrnambool as well as the far side of the world. For someone who has spent an inordinate amount of time tinkering on a laptop, it was a gentle reminder that there are more important spaces to inhabit than the one behind a desk.

And now, a tenuous segue:

Back in Melbourne, a few days after finishing the ride, I wrapped up work and took my tender ass to a retirement home I’ve been volunteering at. I spent an hour having coffee with a new resident, a man who was moved from hospital a week or two prior. We spoke about his wine cellar, his parents, his childhood. Then he showed me photos; of his mum, his dad, of himself as an eight-year-old boy. It’s the only photo of himself he has kept, he said. It’s the only photo of himself that he likes.

After a brief silence, he told me he doesn’t want to wake up in the morning.

He told me he hasn’t for years.

Then he laughed a little and told me his parents would do this thing when he was a kid. They’d wake up and look at each other. They’d feign surprise, as if waking up was unexpected. They’d say to him: oh wow, we’ve got another day. They’d ask him: what should we do with it?

A gentle reminder, I suppose, that the real miracle is being able to do anything at all.