Kept waking up last night thinking it was morning. The moon was pretty bright and it the sun doesn't come up till 8am now. I probably wouldn't have woken up as much had I bothered to zip up my sleeping bag rather than just drape it over me. When I woke up for good, I stared at the bushes/shrubs on the hillside across the field. Right there was Mr. Vladimir Lenin! Really. I couldn't get a picture of it since it was too dark. Once the sun came over the top of the hill it disappeared.

I rolled out around 9am. I didn't have the greatest motivation for moving. Nice scenery and everything, but was a little mentally stagnant. I spotted a bumper off in the weeds with a license plate still attached. I parked the bike and walked back to the bumper. It had a "homemade trailer" license tag on it also, heh, must not have been built the best or something bad happened. Pulled out my tools and spent a good 20 minutes liberating the license plate. I rolled into Murchison around noon. It was a lot bigger than I thought it was going to be. It had a store and a few hotels, plus the other town type stuff. There was some sort of secondhand shop and I went in. The woman told me to "mind my bag" because of all the glassware. Tons of very breakable glassware were perched on every little edge of every cabinet. I wonder how much they sold due to breakage and how much they sold like normal. I found a Vera Lynn 8- track....might be worth something on ebay to those hardcore Pink Floyd collectors. They also had a bunch of promo cds, including a Tori Amos one. I would have bought it on the spot, but all their CDs were priced at 6 bucks, regardless of how long they were.

Went and quick checked my email...and to see if the Tori CD was worth anything, 8 bucks US...I'll pass. (Tori is really collectible, I learned this from the record store).

Read the newspaper at the cafe. Looks like Bushy lost another guy working for him...one that even worked under Reagan and Bush #1. Oh well.

Headed out of town around 2pm. The biking book said that there was a "bikepackers" about 40km up the road, so I shot for that. Right as it got dark I reached the farm area were it was...but it wasn't there. I kept biking and eventually it showed up, yay! (I thought). I turn and go up the road and there is a big "no vacancy" sign. NV at this time of year (when hardly anybody is biking) means that they are closed. I saw a light on and though about just asking them if I could camp in the yard...but said heck with it and decided to bike another 15km in the dark to the DOC campsite. After about 2 minutes my rear tire started to go flat. Things only went downhill from there, except the road...which went sharply uphill in a 250m climb. I continued to pedal up the hill, then another rear spoke broke. I cursed the Bikeshop in Karratha, Western Australia again (for the 26th time or something) and kept pedalling. I had to stop every few minutes and put air in the tire.

Eventually I reached the top of Hope Saddle and started down the other side. Pretty soon the air wasn't staying in the tire at all. It looked like I wouldn't even make it to the campsite so I found a spot off the road in some trees. It is pretty cold, though I'm in my tent now it isn't too bad. Had a big spaghetti dinner and am going to bed. Going to Nelson tomorrow and will take a few days off there. Don't like the idea of waking up and having to fix a tire, but that is the way it goes.