The weekend before leaving on this trip, my good friends gave me a Mohawk haircut. It was done using a rechargeable moustache trimmer whose life was obviously over. A minute into the haircut and it stopped dead. Even recharging didn’t help much and the haircut was barely finished by the next morning. It doesn’t raise an eyelid in a city like San Francisco, but I never quite felt comfortable riding around central California with a Mohawk. So today I got it cut off.

Cheree was telling me about a horse fair in Bishop this weekend and thinks I should go see it. During the day she called the local radio station to see if I could get a lift with anyone but no luck. Tonight she made a sign out of a linoleum flooring sample which she thinks will help me hitch a lift there with no problems. It reads “TIRED AUSSIE NEEDS RIDE”.

Cheree drove me to the top of the pass this morning so it was an easy lovely downhill ride to highway 395 that runs along the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. There are Joshua trees everywhere, I feel like I’m Bono and it’s 1987. The “TIRED AUSSIE …” sign was on the back of my bike in the morning and while I was at a rest stop a family asked me a bunch of questions. The teenage girl walked away shaking her head and muttering “crazy … crazy …”. They offered me a lift even though they were going a short way up the road and had a pick-up full of gear. I wasn’t tired yet so I politely refused their offer. No one else offered me a lift. I was enjoying riding for the first time. No significant hills, an emergency lane the size of a truck to safely ride on, and a warm heat emanating from the desert. Tall snow-capped mountains to the left of me, wide empty desert to my right and nothing but asphalt in front of me for hundreds of miles.

I’m now officially “into” this biking thing. I don’t even check my miles any more, let alone worry too much where I’m gonna camp for the night. I took down the “TIRED AUSSIE…” sign. There’s no way I’m gonna miss a mile of this.