Flight to New Zealand

Back to plan ' A '

It looks like we will have to go back to plan A. Here is what happened over the last 1 ½ weeks.

After we arrived home from our short ride on Wednesday, I mentioned to Werner that was a bit sore in my left Hip but nothing to bad. When I got up on Thursday morning it hurt to walk, thinking that I must have pulled a muscle. I was limping around for the next few days and applying deep heat. By Saturday evening it had moved into the groin and by the next morning I was not able to lift my left without a lot of pain. So we decided to head to Joondalup and see the after hours GP. He was not sure what exactly the problem was, so he gave me a referral to have X-rays and an Ultrasound. The earliest I could it get done was Wednesday. We also arranged an appointment with our Doctor for Thursday as we had to wait to get the results back.

The results was bad news and after a long consultation with the Doctor we came to the decision that we can’t ride our Tandem around Australia and have to go back to our original plan.

I have Bursitis of the Hip and it could take at least 5-6 weeks to heal with no guarantee it

will not return in near future if we pursue our plan of riding our Tandem. The risk would be too great of something going wrong along the Nulaboor or if we would make it to Cairns and coming back to WA across the top.

At the moment I’m going to try Physio treatment. If it does not get better soon I have to consider Cortisone injections.

!!!!!!!!!HERE ARE THE NEW PLANS!!!!!!

We will be heading back to New Zealand on the 2^nd of August visiting Family and friends for 2 weeks.

After we are back we might head of a week earlier, somewhere around the 30^th of August. I will be driving the Van while Werner is riding his bike. Werner will be able to cover a lot more km’s a day by him self. Like this we are able to stay at places we like a lot longer and be able to go and do some side trips with the Van we could not do on the Tandem. We will be taking my bike with us and hopefully in time I can do small trips with Werner when we stay at places for a few days.

3 Days of riding

Windmill for pumping Water

Monday morning we had planned to ride along Brand H’way to Gingin. We also had in mind to have an early start, but it was freezing and when I had a look at temperatures on the net, it said that Gingin was -1.2 degrees. So a little delay was justified and by the time we left it was close to 10 o’clock. It took us just over 2 hours to get there. We had a light Southeasterly wind helping us all the way. From where we joined the Highway to the turn off to Gingin we traveled about 36 km. The Road had one bend, the rest was straight and flat with an incline of 30 m.

City Center in Gingin

Once we arrived in Gingin, we went to the very nice Park and sat down on one the many Picnic Tables. We had a Coffee and Sandwiches we again brought with us. By now it started to warm up and sitting in the sun was most enjoyable. I had a look at the Anglican Church right next to the Park, took some Photos but the sad thing was, there was a quite heavy steel gate with a chain and Padlock wrapped around it. What a sad time we are living in!

The ride home was straight forward without any problems with a light head wind.

The side of first School in Bindoon

Tuesday we decided to head to Ellenbrook and drop in for a quick visit at Corrina and Caleb. This morning the wind changed and was helping us on the way there, but it will be another story on the way back. We headed for a Park, because Corrina was still out. Just as we were ready to start heading back, we got a SMS from Corrina telling us that she arrived back. So we headed to the house to say hello, have a Coffee and some Biscuits. Riding the 40 km home into a steady headwind was hard and by the time we got back, we were glad that we made it.

Processing plant along Gt. Northern H'way

For Wednesday we only had in our minds to do a small ride clock wise along Muchea East Rd, Chittering Rd with refreshment stop in Bullsbrock before heading back along Gt. Northern H’way. The riding was very nice and easy, as for a change we had no wind at all.

Flowering Bush along the ride

We have been very pleased with the way we went over the last 3 days and it was planned to have about 3 days of the bike. The forecast for the next few days wasn’t the best.