Pack up and team heads back to Alice Springs
As we didn’t have to get Roy back on the track to ride back to Alice springs in the race we were able to be a bit more relaxed with packing up the campsite. We still got up at a reasonable hour sometime around 7 o’clock. Wasn’t difficult to be awake as the cars that went off early had been revving engines and driving by since dawn. When we got up it was still beautiful early light but the air was full of dust and there was frost on everything. It was really cold. I put on my heated vest and a big beanie. We boiled the kettle; tea and coffee all round, made breakfast and sat around the fire to warm up. As the sun rose up so did the heat and it warmed up quite fast and things started to dry out. Everyone was fairly somber about the activities of the previous day where there had been a fatality of a young rider. Certainly, a lot of leftover disappointment from Roy & our team as well, as the vintage bike didn’t quite make it to Finke under its own power. On the positive side, Roy didn’t have to spend half the night rebuilding the motor so that he could ride back to Alice today. So, Roy would be driving back with me with the bike on the back this morning instead of riding so I didn’t have to drive the 144 km of red dust.
There seemed to be even more traffic than usual on the road and certainly more motorbikes which I don’t remember seeing in the past. The dust was so thick it was difficult to see where we were going or who was in front of us. We stopped briefly at Kulgera waiting for Graeme and Chris to catch up, then we are headed to Erldunda where we met up with Heinz and Luke as well and we all had lunch. Back at Alice we unloaded and had a bit of a rest and a lovely hot shower and a wash. Rich‘s sister Belinda had booked a table at the Gap Hotel. There was some confusion that she had booked the Gap Tavern but that turned out to be in Queensland, a bit far to go for dinner. The greater team of nine people all made it to the Tavern and had dinner there. Everyone was very tired and headed back for sleep nice and early.
