Day 24 - Cardwell to Bowen - 388kms

We camped last night in a tropical caravan park with plenty of shade provided by the mango trees overhanging our spot. What we didn't realise is that the tree would fill up with flying foxes (Giant Bats) in the middle of the night swooping our tent, eating fruit and making as much noise as possible. It took a while to get back to sleep when it sounded like pterodactyls were fighting right above your head but on the plus side they had knocked plenty of fresh mangos out of the tree. When we got up we found three big ones without any bite marks and had a nice fruit breakfast as we packed up the bikes. We stopped in Ingham a few hours later to top off the fruit with eggs Benedict and an omelette and followed the coastline to Townsville. With more things to do than we had time for we settled on a beer at the local Irish bar and a few hours in their aquarium looking at their man made replica of the Great Barrier Reef. Townsville looked like a great place to start a Whit Sunday adventure so next time we will fly in and rent a sailboat to tour the islands. From here we put the rubber on the road and caught back up with our schedule arriving in Bowen just after dark. On the way there my bike turned 30k old so I stopped and watched the sunset to celebrate it with her. She's not in as good of shape as she used to be and isn't much to look at anymore but she has seen me through some hard times so I guess I'll stick with her. On another subject at 388 kilometres for the day this is officially Alicia's longest ride ever. Congrats babe and you might set a new record before the trip is up.

Alicia's Comments:

Speaking of new records, the fastest speed I hit today on a Moto was 132km. (I plan to make a new record each day). Reaching this speed was not completely intentional as I found myself playing games like you did in the car when you were a kid, then I realised Christopher was hauling ass and I needed to catch up. The games included guessing what animal the road kill was on the side of the road (Joey, bird, fox and an oversized rat looking thing) and counting how many waves I could get from other Moto riders. I mainly played these games as I needed to distract myself from how sore my ass became.

The whole trip has been an absolute ball. Even the part where I find myself fighting against the wind when we reach high speeds. My head becomes one of those bobble head figurines you sit on the dash in your car. While resisting the wind force today we rode past a sigh saying 'Plan for Cyclones'. I spent the next 20 minutes looking for incoming cyclones and had images of me as Dorothy and Christopher as Todo being whizzed away on moto's to a far away tropical island with endless alcoholic beverages, food and fun water sports.

I am confident by the end of our adventure I will have gained extremely huge and strong neck muscles like the guys who whip their heads back and forth in heavy metal bands.