Between February 2002 and March 2003 I circumnavigated 12,504 miles around the Australian continent on my bicycle, or push bike as they say there. After that I went to New Zealand for three months and met up with a friend and ended up pushing the total mileage to 14,115.7 miles (22717.02 km). I spent 269 days on my bike, 272 days not on my bike, and getting 67 flat tires over those 17 months.
I started and ended my 13 month lap around Australia at Luna Park in St. Kilda/Melbourne.. The distance around Australia (including Tasmania) ended up being about 20,281km (12,600 miles).
One fun thing I did during my trip was to visit six "confluences", which is where a whole-numbered latitude/longitude mark intersects for The Degree Confluence Project.
Craig
Duncan was in Melbourne today! He gambled on the fact that I'd be here in time for the Richard Buckner shows, he gambled correctly. I biked into town and we had a nice time catching up and eating and going to record stores and talking about bikes. (thanks for lunch man!) I came out of the store from buying blank CD's and his girly girl Al was on the phone so I got to say hi to her. Duncan and I said goodbye about three times (we kept running into each other on our separate ways out of town). I was glad it all worked out that he was down here at the same time I was so we could catch up again.
I cruised back to Steve and Katrina's. We ate dinner and I took the train downtown to see Mr. Buckner. Steve and Katrina were going to show up a bit later.
I got to the show and eventually Richard showed up before the opening band came on. I talked to the guy he was with to see if I could pop backstage into the dressing room. Went back to the dressing room and talked to Richard for awhile. Hadn't seen him in a couple years and it was good to talk with him and have a beer. He was interested in Tasmania and I told him a few crazy stories that happened to me in Tasmania. (that aren't on this website, heh) Met a few other people backstage too. Eventually I went out front right before Richard came on. The show was amazing, he opened with "Raze". The cool thing about this show was that he kept busting up jokes the whole entire show. One woman yelled out for "Here" which is a cover of a Pavement song that he used to do. He said he didn't remember it. She yelled out for him to learn it for tomorrow's show. "Are you giving me homework!?, I don't do homework!" he said. It was pretty funny. I wish I had a tape of the show, he is in definite funny mode that night. He closed the show with an acapella version of Fater, where he just went out to the end of the stage and belted the song out unamplified. I was glad Steve and Katrina got to see him end the show that way. It always has a nice effect on crowds. I've seen it a few times where the crowd is kinda noisy and this shuts them up pretty quick.
We headed home, boy am I tired.