Available in e-book, paperback, and audiobook - free with an audible.com trial! http://www.amazon.com/Pushing-Rubber-Downhill-Adam-Piggott/dp/1514827875 Visit Adam's blog at http://pushingrubberdownhill.com/ Podcast coming later today.
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| To Push Rubber Downhill Intransitive Verb 1. To transport paying customers down a treacherous passage of inland water in a rubber raft. | |
| 2. An activity that is done with a bigger reward in mind Pushing Rubber Downhill is written by Adam Pickett, and the audiobook is recorded by Davis M.J. Irini Chapter 1. | |
| Perth, Western Australia, 1995 Sex is Power. | |
| That's all there is to it, particularly if you're a 23-year-old male, as in, you have no power and it runs roughshod over you. | |
| You spend most of your time thinking about how to get it, any way you can, and preferably with the most beautiful girl possible. | |
| So when you actually do stumble across a stunningly beautiful woman a few years your senior who thinks you're God's gift to women, well, you're in serious trouble. | |
| I should know. | |
| When I met Jodi and we hooked up, I was elevated to another plane on the social scale. | |
| I was that guy who went out with her. | |
| The two of us arrived at parties and people stared at her with open mouths. | |
| Then they looked at me and tried to work out what the fuck was going on. | |
| Hell, I didn't know what the fuck was going on. | |
| All I knew was that I was in love with the most beautiful woman in the world. | |
| But a few weeks into our intense relationship, she dropped a bombshell on me. | |
| She was moving to Sydney to become a model, and nothing could change her mind. | |
| She had purchased her plane ticket and given notice at her job before the two of us had even met. | |
| I tried to reason with her. | |
| I tried to make her see that something as special as what we had was so rare that it couldn't be tossed aside. | |
| At least, it was rare for me. | |
| Thinking back, maybe it hadn't been that rare for her at all. | |
| And then she blew my mind with the suggestion that I moved to Sydney as well. | |
| This was a pretty big deal, and something which I had never considered before. | |
| My entire life was in Perth, an oversized town perched in complete isolation on the left side of Australia. | |
| I had a job in a chic bar. | |
| I rented a groovy inner-city apartment. | |
| But the most important thing in my life was my band. | |
| We had worked hard to get to a point where we stood a chance of actually making it, and now this girl just blithely suggested that I chuck all of this and head on across to the other side of the continent. | |
| Like I said, sex is power. | |
| It took me about a day to make the decision to go. | |
| I told my bandmates on the night of what turned out to be both our most successful and final gig. | |
| They promptly quit in disgust. | |
| I couldn't believe it. | |
| I thought they could keep going with someone else, but apparently I was the glue that bound everything together. | |
| But I didn't want to be glue. | |
| I wanted to be with Jodi. | |
| And so I sat on my overloaded bike at the top of the low, scraggy hills above Perth. | |
| Jodi had already left over a month ago after the most obscene makeout session ever seen at a boarding gate. | |
| I'd divided the rest of the time between phone sex with her and packing up my entire life, and today was the day of my departure. | |
| I should have felt excited to be finally on my way, but the truth was that I was nervous and scared. | |
| Not just because I was about to ride my motorbike all the way across Australia. | |
| I had no idea what my reception in Sydney would be like. | |
| Jodi had hung up on me on our last phone conversation after I made the dreadful mistake of drunk dialing her to confess my undying love. | |
| And she hadn't answered the phone since. | |
| But I was still going because, hey, love conquers all, right? | |
| The thing is, when you're young and clueless, you really need to find these things out for yourself. | |
| And the only way to do that is to make terrible decisions like I was about to do. | |
| So I kick-started the bike's old engine and, after waiting for a break in the traffic, pulled out and headed east. | |
| There's probably an optimal way to ride a 20-year-old motorbike alone across Australia, but I didn't do it that way. | |
| First of all, you don't ride a bike that's almost as old as you are. | |
| In the desert, if you break down, you can die waiting for someone to turn up. | |
| Tourists check out like this all the time. | |
| So do Australians, though you think we'd know better. | |
| They'll be driving their vehicle down a lonely desert road and something will go wrong. | |
| Then they'll sit there for an hour or so wondering what to do until finally they make the deadly mistake that is common to all of these unfortunate deaths. | |
| They'll leave their vehicle and walk off looking for help. | |
| Fifteen kilometers is usually about as far as they get, depending on the time of year, and then they find a little tree, and they sit down, and they die. | |
| So if you're riding across Australia, you need to have some sort of backup plan. | |
| I didn't have one of those. | |
| And you need to carry a lot of water, assuming you don't want to die. | |
| Calling points at prearranged intervals to someone back home is also a very good idea, but neither myself or any of my friends or family thought about this one. | |
| A first aid kit in case you get bitten by a scorpion that was sleeping in your boot, or a snake crawls into your tent and snuggles up for warmth is also highly desirable. | |
| I did none of these things. | |
| I had a vague idea to travel 800 kilometers a day, I had a map, and my dad had given me a contact for one of his childhood buddies who now lived in Adelaide. | |
| I figured I would be okay because I was staying on the main highway. | |
| Well, after I loaded my tent, sleeping bag, inflatable mat, cooking stove, and a bag of clothes, I didn't really have that much room for things like water. | |
| I took a few liters, but that was it. | |
| Some tools would be good in case my bike broke down, but I was mechanically illiterate, so what was the point? | |
| On the evening of the second day, when I was well into the desert section of the trip, I began to worry about camping on the main road. | |
| I was concerned about being run over by swerving road trains driven by speed addicted drivers, their eyes popping from lack of sleep. | |
| I also wanted to avoid the chance of an unwelcome visit from any of the potential lunatics who roamed this sparse land, bored out of their minds and hoping to stumble across a lone traveler whom they could debase with unspeakable acts of savagery. | |
| In other words, I wanted to keep my white honky ass in pristine condition. | |
| So I decided to camp off the main road. | |
| I spotted a track and I followed it slowly for a few hundred meters as it wound its way through the desert scrub and became a small sheltered clearing. | |
| I figured this was nice. | |
| It was out of sight from the highway, and there was a flat area to pitch my tent. | |
| There was no sign of snake tracks. | |
| All good news. | |
| Then I waited for the sound of a passing vehicle. | |
| This spot was only good if they couldn't see me, and that meant a fire at night, which would stand out like well, like a fire at night in the middle of the fucking desert. | |
| After a time I caught a faint dull sound from a far distance. | |
| It gained intensity as it approached, and then it was a loud roar as it hurtled away on the flat desert road, its body reflecting in the evening light. | |
| I watched it for a while, and then I stepped back down into the little hollow and began to set up my camp. | |
| I didn't need an alarm clock, as the following morning, the tent became a furnace as soon as the sun hit. | |
| After making a coffee and packing up my little camp, I sat on my bike and pressed the starter button, and the bike started beautifully. | |
| Let's stop here for just a moment. | |
| What if it hadn't started? | |
| What on earth would I have done then? | |
| I'm half a mile from the highway. | |
| Do you think I'm going to be able to push my bike on a sandy track all the way to the main road? | |
| It's not happening. | |
| I would have to walk back to the road and hail a passing car. | |
| And it's probably over five hundred kilometers to the nearest mechanic. | |
| How much do you think that would cost me? | |
| They would lick their lips and take me for everything I had. | |
| That's if the bike was still there when we got back to it. | |
| But the bike started the first time, and I motorcycled slowly back to the harsh asphalt strip, and then I rode off into the new day in a state of blissful ignorance to how lucky I was. | |
| It took me five days to reach Adelaide. | |
| By the time I arrived, I desperately needed a wash and a decent bowel movement. | |
| More than that, I needed my head red. | |
| Five days alone in the desert, alone on roads that stretched for one hundred and forty six kilometers at a time without curve or undulation, alone at night in front of a fire that struggled in the evening wind, alone when I woke in the morning, not knowing where I was or even why, alone with my thoughts and with my doubts and insecurities. | |
| I'd realized early on that I'd put myself in this paradox. | |
| The closer I got to Jodi, the further we were actually apart. | |
| But there was still a small chance it would work out. | |
| So I kept going. | |
| Hope and sex are a gloriously self-deceiving combination, and nothing seems to make much sense when you're in the middle of doing it. | |
| So I arrived in Adelaide, and I negotiated the streets and found the address of my father's friend. | |
| The couple and their three young children came out to greet me. | |
| The kids looked at me as if I were an astronaut. | |
| I shooed them away from the hot exhaust pipes, as I didn't think giving them third degree burns would make me very popular. | |
| My host gave me a wash and a beer, and for that I was truly grateful. | |
| After dinner I answered questions about the trip. | |
| It was good to take my mind off my immediate problems. | |
| Did you meet any pirates? One of the little boys asked. | |
| Thousands, I told him, but luckily my bike was too fast for them. | |
| The kids ooed and odd. | |
| I stayed for a couple of days and explored the city, but I was eager to be on my way and aware that every guest is intriguing for only a very short time. | |
| The morning of my departure the kids helped me bring out my gear. | |
| I explained to them how to load a bike, and then they each posed for photos, sitting on the seat and straining forward over the gas tank to reach the handlebars. | |
| Then I shook hands with my hosts, thanked them for their kindness, and climbed on my bike. | |
| With a final wave to the kids, I gave it a dramatic kick start. | |
| Nothing happened. | |
| I looked at the controls and saw that none of the lights were on. | |
| The bike refused to respond to my increasingly desperate attempts to start it. | |
| My hostess had a look of distress on her face, and I didn't think it was concerned for me. | |
| The kids ran around, excited that I could stay longer. | |
| My bike had decided to die in the middle of a large city while I was a guest at someone's home, which in the possible circumstances was very fortunate indeed. | |
| As usual, I didn't realize at the time how lucky I was. | |
| I asked if I could use their phone, and they rushed me into the house. | |
| I didn't know who I was going to call until I picked up the receiver and dialed my father's number. | |
| The old fallback for tough bikers everywhere. | |
| When you get in the shit, call dad. | |
| Between the two of us, we worked out that my uncle knew a bike mechanic in Adelaide. | |
| Uncle Billy was a bit of a live wire, and accepting his help was fraught with unknown risks, but I didn't appear to have any other options. | |
| I called his Perth number and explained the situation. | |
| He called me back half an hour later. | |
| Adam, it's Bill. | |
| I've fixed it up. | |
| Oh, that's great, Uncle Bill. | |
| How'd you manage to do that? | |
| There's a guy there. | |
| He owes me a favor. | |
| You can't trust him on your own, like if you went to see him he'd probably do you over, but 'cause you're associated with me, it'll be righty. | |
| He's got a bike shop over that way. | |
| You call him up and he'll be able to get you sorted, but remember remember? | |
| He's not to be trusted. | |
| The words hung like danger in the phone line between us. | |
| You got that? | |
| I rang the mechanic with no little trepidation. | |
| Uncle Billy had briefed him, but I still needed to explain the specific details. | |
| I followed his instructions and the bike coughed and sputtered. | |
| I coaxed the throttle with careful desperation. | |
| It caught, almost died, caught again, and then it finally roared into life. | |
| I saw my hostess catch herself as she clapped her hands. | |
| I took the bike to the mechanic. | |
| The shop was in a battered structure of corrugated iron on the other side of the city. | |
| A cheap radio struggled to be heard above the sounds of a young apprentice bashing a hammer on an unidentifiable piece of metal. | |
| I parked my bike and located the small office. | |
| The man behind the desk had greasy hair that matched the stains on his overalls. | |
| I caught sight of faded tattoos on his hands and knuckles. | |
| I had visions of him asking me if I wanted to go out with him to rob a bank. | |
| He spent half an hour looking over the bike while I kept a respectful distance. | |
| It's fine, he eventually said. | |
| Really? | |
| I hadn't seen him doing very much to it. | |
| Yep, he looked at me. | |
| It's fine. | |
| Great, I managed to say. | |
| How much do I owe you? | |
| I saw a shadow of pain settle over his eyes. | |
| Nothing. | |
| You tell Bill that I did me part, okay? | |
| I'd lost some time, but I was on my way. | |
| From that point I was confident that the trip would be much easier than the nightmarish country I'd already travelled across. | |
| There were even parts of countryside that looked vaguely green as opposed to the death rattle brown which had been the hallmark of the journey to date. | |
| I pulled into a clean looking truck stop for lunch where I spotted an old bike loaded up similar to my own. | |
| I gave it a quick look over. | |
| What interested me was that it was old. | |
| A new bike, even loaded to the gunnels, meant the rider was older than me, wealthier than me, and wouldn't even want to talk to me. | |
| But this old piece of scrap metal signified that the owner was a fellow member in the traveling without a penny and a clue brigade. | |
| I pushed open the door with a little ding-a-ling from the bell and walked inside. | |
| There was a young guy standing at the counter dressed in riding leathers. | |
| He had long straight hair that almost reached down to his waist. | |
| I reckoned that he was my guy. | |
| The lady behind the counter wrote my order with a laugh. | |
| You two are a pair, she said, as she walked back to the kitchen. | |
| The other biker grinned at me. | |
| He had a friendly face and was about my own age. | |
| We stood in silence for a little longer, and then I decided to take a chance. | |
| Is that your Yamaha outside? I asked him. | |
| Yes, yes, are you a rider too? | |
| He had a French accent and a broad smile. | |
| Yeah, I've come from Perth. | |
| I'm heading to Sydney, planning on taking the Great Ocean Road. | |
| I flew into Darwin a few weeks ago. | |
| I got the bike there, and I too am going to Sydney. | |
| I thought for a moment. | |
| Perhaps we could ride together. | |
| It would be good to have some company, he said. | |
| I think this idea is good. | |
| So now I had a traveling companion, and I'd found one in the best way possible. | |
| It's usually not a good idea to begin a long journey with someone you know, the reason being that you'll probably be at each other's throats in a matter of days. | |
| You're thinking that's probably a rare case for best friends not to travel well together. | |
| Well, you're wrong. | |
| It's a rare case if things don't turn into a giant cluster fuck. | |
| When you travel with someone you have to agree on everything where to go, where to stop, what to do, where to stay, what to eat, what time to start, what time to finish. | |
| The list goes on and on. | |
| Pick the wrong traveling partner, and not only do you risk ruining the trip, you risk ruining a friendship. | |
| And you won't be able to fix your mistake during the trip. | |
| How do you say to your best friend that you don't want to travel with them anymore because they're making your life miserable? | |
| But someone you find on the way, like I had just done? | |
| This is the perfect situation because it's easy to ditch them if they turn out to be a flake. | |
| You want to go there? | |
| Oh, what a pity because I have to go to this other place. | |
| Gee, it's been great. | |
| Thanks for all the memories. | |
| Of course, you must be judicious. | |
| You can't just pick up any old potential freak that stumbles across your path. | |
| But this guy seemed cool. | |
| I got a good vibe from him. | |
| And most importantly, we shared the same travel budget. | |
| Spend as little as possible. | |
| Towards the end of the day we stopped at a town for supplies, and after a bit of searching, we found a good camp on the edge of some fields shaded by large river gums. | |
| The road curved away behind the trees and we were out of sight of a small farmhouse sitting in the distance. | |
| I went into the trees and found some dead branches while the Frenchman picked out some large stones from a weedy area. | |
| We cracked open some beers and I sat down by the fire and smoked a cigarette. | |
| Then we prepared some hot food and opened a bottle of red wine. | |
| Afterwards the Frenchman rolled a joint. | |
| I'm impressed, I said. | |
| You must have found that pretty quick. | |
| It's not so hard to find dope in a backpacker hostel in Darwin. | |
| He thought for a moment and then he frowned. | |
| I do not even know your name. | |
| I stuck out my hand in an awkward manner. | |
| Adam. | |
| Eve, he shook my hand. | |
| I looked at him. | |
| Is that a joke? | |
| No, it is my name. | |
| He seemed surprised. | |
| Adam and Eve, come on, you can do better than that. | |
| His poor attempt at humor made me suspect that I could be traveling with a moron. | |
| He laughed. | |
| Not Eve. | |
| I understand the joke. | |
| No, but I am French Canadian. | |
| My name is Eve Y V E. | |
| It is a common name where I come from. | |
| Well, this is a little hard to believe, I said. | |
| Adam and Eve travelling around Australia together? | |
| Who would have thought of it? | |
| The world is always strange, or we are the strange ones, and it is the world who is normal. | |
| We laughed and he refilled the glasses, and we smoked some more weed as the night grew dark at our little camp beneath the stand of river gums. | |
| So why are you riding all the way across Australia? he asked me. | |
| Is it a holiday adventure? | |
| I considered my options before replying. | |
| I'm moving to Sydney. | |
| My girlfriend's there. | |
| She moved across to become a model. | |
| There are no models in Perth. | |
| Apparently Sydney is where you go if you want to make it big. | |
| He drank from his glass. | |
| Have you been there before? | |
| Once, when I was a kid, to see my grandmother, she lives a few hours up the coast. | |
| But I suppose that doesn't count. | |
| Do you have plans for your work? | |
| I have no idea what to expect. | |
| I poked a stick in the fire. | |
| To tell the truth, I'm not even sure about my girlfriend. | |
| We had a bad phone conversation before I left. | |
| I was drunk, so I suppose it was stupid to call her and express my undying love at the time. | |
| My companion winced as I went into more detail, and I told him how I hadn't spoken to her since then. | |
| We spoke all the time when she first left. | |
| Quite graphic phone sex, if you want to know. | |
| Eve held up his hand. | |
| I believe you. | |
| I smiled. | |
| Yeah, fair enough. | |
| The really bad thing is that now, riding across Australia, the closer I get to her in a physical sense, the more I feel we are getting further apart. | |
| I ride all day, and then I sit at night and try not to think about it. | |
| About that moment when I get to Sydney, and either way, I'll know for sure. | |
| We sat in silence and sipped at our wine. | |
| I lit a cigarette and savored the harsh smoke in my lungs. | |
| All you can do is ride, Eve suddenly said. | |
| You must enjoy the ride. | |
| Then you are in Sydney, and then you must look at your problem. | |
| But here we have the wine, and the smoke, and the company, and tomorrow we can ride again to new places. | |
| It is good to ride. | |
| You must have concentration. | |
| No thinking of problems, otherwise you cannot see. | |
| Yeah, I suppose you're right. | |
| After a time he said, How long have you been with this girl? | |
| I sighed. | |
| About two months? | |
| Eve whistled. | |
| We should have got two bottles of the red. | |
| The next morning, my bike was dead. | |
| It wouldn't start. | |
| I didn't know what to do, and I was monumentally annoyed. | |
| I figured I had to do something, so lacking any better ideas, I walked off towards the distant farmhouse with a vague idea of asking for help, but halfway there my courage failed me and I turned back towards our little camp behind the stand of trees. | |
| Eve had my bike up and running. | |
| He nodded his head at me while he fiddled around with his own bike. | |
| What did you do? | |
| I felt stupid asking the question, but sometimes curiosity gets the best of you. | |
| It was not so hard. | |
| I put the battery from my bike in yours. | |
| Now I put it back in mine. | |
| You don't need the battery once it is going. | |
| I stood there, wondering what to say. | |
| No shit. | |
| I should have been able to work that out. | |
| One of us was enough. | |
| Lucky I bumped into you yesterday or I would have been stuck out here on my own. | |
| He gave me a gaelic shrug, and then we finished loading our bikes and headed back to the main road. | |
| We were close to Mount Gambier, a large town located just before the next state border. | |
| The plan was to get a real mechanic to find out what was wrong with my bike. | |
| We found a small motorbike garage. | |
| There were two mechanics working out the front in the early morning sun. | |
| They stopped work as we arrived and came over to look at our bikes. | |
| Honda 750, the taller one said to me. | |
| Is that the 76 version? | |
| Yeah, I said. | |
| It's a tough old beast. | |
| Where have you come from? The other mechanic asked. | |
| I pointed to my companion. | |
| He came from Darwin and I came from Perth. | |
| They both looked at me. | |
| You came from Perth on that? | |
| I assured them that I had, and then I explained the problem. | |
| They told me to leave it with them for an hour, so we walked down the main street until we found a nice place for breakfast, where we leafed through the morning papers and watched the locals walk by. | |
| An hour later, my bike was ready. | |
| The mechanics explained that the alternator had burned out, ruining my battery on the long run across the desert. | |
| I thanked them and asked how much I had to pay. | |
| The older mechanic shook his head. | |
| There's no charge, mate. | |
| I must have had a confused expression on my face. | |
| Bikers look after bikers. | |
| You had a lot of respect for this trip on that bike. | |
| Just a little bit we can do for you. | |
| I was blown away by this unexpected generosity, but I was careful not to make a fuss, as I didn't want to embarrass them. | |
| We all shook hands, and then Eve and I rode on. | |
| Over the next two days Eve proved to be a boon travelling companion. | |
| He rode his bike well, he was quick to come to an agreement, he was a good conversationalist, he held his drink admirably, he said he liked my cooking, and he didn't crawl into my tent in the middle of the night and murder me. | |
| But I had a dilemma that needed to be resolved. | |
| On our third night together we stopped on the Omeo Highway in the Alpine National Park, after a nightmare few hours spent negotiating rudded gravel roads that was made even more frightening by the frequent invasion of large groups of suicidal rabbits that sprang from the forest and darted between the wheels of our bikes. | |
| We found a campsite sitting in a lush meadow. | |
| A small river thundered over smooth boulders, and the mountains formed a protective bowl around the clearing. | |
| We placed some beer in the cold running water, set up camp, and prepared a meal. | |
| The light began to fade and the clear water reflected the purple sky. | |
| You could kayak that, I said to Eve, and he nodded and handed me a beer. | |
| We drank sitting at a rough picnic table, but my thoughts strayed back to the mountain stream, and I imagined the line I would take if I had a kayak handy. | |
| Tomorrow we arrive in Sydney, Eve said. | |
| I took a sip of my beer and peered at the rapids growing fainter in the evening light. | |
| What time do you think we can arrive there? he said. | |
| I'm thinking of taking a detour for a day or so, I said. | |
| I have an aunt who lives up in McGee. | |
| She'd probably be upset if I didn't stop in to say hello, and it's a sure bet that my mother would have called her to say I'm coming. | |
| I stared out across the meadow. | |
| It would be great if you could come, but I don't know if it'd be cool, me turning up with some other biker, and I haven't seen them in a long time. | |
| I've only ever met them twice myself. | |
| It's no problem, he said. | |
| It's probably best that I arrive in Sydney soon. | |
| I have to find a job, make some money. | |
| I don't want you to think that I'm ditching you. | |
| I just really don't know how they'd react. | |
| Don't worry about it. | |
| It's been a great trip, Eve said. | |
| The ride today was crazy with all those little rabbits. | |
| And we still have a good day's riding together tomorrow. | |
| We can track through Tumut and up towards Gundagai. | |
| It's an historical town. | |
| Let's have a look, he said. | |
| I got out the map and we plotted the route of our last day together, and all the while I was aware that these last few days with Eve for company had been a great distraction from the unwelcome reality that I was about to face in Sydney. | |
| We made the town of Bathhurst by midday. | |
| From there, Eve's route was a direct run to Sydney, while mine was a confusing weave of back roads. | |
| I gave Eve Jodi's address and we made plans to meet up in the next few weeks. | |
| Thank you for taking the chance to ask me to ride with you, he said. | |
| I smiled and shook my head. | |
| Thanks for everything. | |
| I will see you in Sydney. | |
| Then I can learn how things turned out. | |
| I held my hand in the air as he rode away, and I wondered if I had made the right decision. | |
| After numerous stops to consult my map, I reached the farmhouse at Cherry Tree Hill Farm before dark. | |
| My aunt and cousins welcomed me with open arms. | |
| I enjoyed the luxury of a shower, and then we sat in deep lounge chairs and I told them of my trip. | |
| My aunt was incredulous at my decision not to bring Eve, and I felt a deep regret at making the wrong decision. | |
| With my arrival in Sydney due the following day, I knew I could no longer avoid calling Jodi. | |
| I asked my aunt if I could use her phone. | |
| I had a cold feeling in the pit of my stomach as I dialed the number. | |
| Jodi answered, and my breath grew short at the sound of her voice. | |
| I tried to keep myself calm as I gave her the news that I was due to arrive the next day. | |
| Her reaction was non committal, and her voice was cold. | |
| I asked her what time she would be home. | |
| She replied that she didn't know. | |
| In my head I began to scream into the phone, demanding and pleading with her to tell me what was going on, but my voice stayed casual, as I said I would see her to morrow, and then I replaced the phone on the empty line. | |
| The weather was foul and the long run into Sydney unpleasant. | |
| It took me hours to find her address in the convoluted streets and steep hills of Paddington. | |
| Finally I lucked upon it and I pulled up outside a stylish terrace house. | |
| I had completed the physical journey all the way across Australia, and now I was going to know the result of my emotional odyssey one way or another Nobody was home. | |
| It was mid afternoon, about the time I told her to expect me. | |
| At this point you would have thought that I might have gotten the message, but there was still a sliver of hope. | |
| I had to know for sure. | |
| My clothes were still damp and a chill wind was blowing. | |
| I walked back to my bike and sat on the wet seat. | |
| I didn't have the energy to feel angry. | |
| Some people came out of the house next door and cautiously asked if they could help. | |
| I told them I had just arrived from Perth, and one of them walked inside and emerged a few minutes later with a large mug of hot tea. | |
| I wrapped my hands around the cup and spoke with them about my trip as I kept an eye out for anyone walking down the street. | |
| I think this is your group now, one of them said. | |
| I turned to look, and one member of the group broke and ran on seeing me and she launched herself into my arms, and I gave her a big hug. | |
| Hello, Susie, I said. | |
| It was Jodi's best friend. | |
| I'm so glad you made it safely. | |
| I got here a few days ago. | |
| I tried to look for you from the plane. | |
| I smiled at her joke, but my attention was fixed on the rest of the group, as Jodi detached herself and walked over and touched me lightly on the arm. |