The Bike Rack

 

Mel’s dad had his doubts when he first saw our bike rack, but we were pretty happy with it.  Home made out of solid black some-kind-of-metal, bolted on to the spare tire at the back of the camper trailer, the previous owner had thrown it in with the trailer.  It was Sturdy, Convenient, and, best of all, Free.  I guess I never really put much thought into the see-saw action of a single axel trailer on an undulating highway.  Luckily, I did think about how easy it would be for someone to nick Mel’s spankin’ new bike off the back of the trailer, and I looped a couple of bike chains around the bikes and the trailer frame.  Lucky.

The old town of Nyngan, on the Bogan river, claims to be the gateway to the Outback, and it’s a pretty fair claim.  East of Nyngan a network of highways winds through fields and bush and rivers and little towns that are all fairly greenish.  West of Nyngan there is one brave and narrow highway passing through towns separated by hundreds of kilometres of red dirt.  It takes about a day to drive from one river to the next.  The next town, Cobar, looks like it has either been entirely painted rust red to fit in neatly with its surrounds, or else the whole town is covered over and permeated through with the red dust around it. 

Somewhere between Cobar and Wilcannia we heard a New Rattle.  New Rattles are always a little concerning, although 99% of them turn out to be just the spare change jar or some other trinket bouncing around the back of the car.  Most New Rattles just disappear by themselves, or with the help of some deft repositioning of rattly luggage on the part of the passenger.  This New Rattle, quietly clacketing away somewhere behind us, did not disappear.  Through it’s persistence, it became worthy of a Comment.  Something along the lines of: “do you think we should check out that rattle?”; which then became: “maybe we should pull over next time we see a bit of a shoulder?”;  and then: “do you think it’s getting louder?”.

We’ve all heard that a picture is worth a thousand words.  So I’ll leave it to you to figure what words go along with these ones:

        

        

So now I can tell you why the bike racks you can buy that bolt onto the spare tire say things like “not for use on caravans/trailers”. I can also tell you what happens when you drag a bike along the highway and 110km/h for as long as it takes for a little New Rattle to be concerning enough to make you pull over: the road pretty much shreds the bike frame into something unsalvageable. But even then, there’s room for some little miracle of grace. While my old beaten up bike was being shredded, Mel’s brand new one was lying safely on top, only centimetres from the vicious road, but still far enough away that the only damage to be found was a little tear in the seat and a row of scratches on the frame. Hallelujah. We laughed our guts out. And then spent about an hour untangling the bikes and figuring how to secure them to the roof. We were late into Broken Hill that night, but that just meant we got a chance to pull over outside town to see the outback stars.