I’ve had a couple of people check in to find out where my diary has gone. Truth is I’ve still got nothing to say.
With a cyclone coming through NT a week back, Allan has now declared that the Huey won’t be going anywhere until the dry season. I still believe we could have beaten the weather, but we’d have had to be much more disciplined and driven with the maintenance as a real project. To be fair, that’s just not where Allan is at – and I can’t begrudge him that. I am his guest, after all, with absolutely zero claim or right to a particular pace or schedule.
So maintenance on the yacht dribbles on, as we tinker with this and that. My efforts are now merely to help Allan and to pass the time. It is constantly soo hot that we only get little bits done before we’re each a dripping mess and need to retreat to the yacht for cold water. Allan splurged and bought a tiny portable air-con unit that knocks a full 2 degrees (sigh) off the temperature in the cabin. For a couple of minutes that is quite a refreshing temperature drop, until our bodies adjust and figure out that they’ve simply been duped to think that’s anything like cool!
Meantime I’ve reverted to exploring other transit options, revisiting some of the earlier research.
- I can get the bike – but not me – on a boat from Darwin directly to Dili. Next scheduled for around Jan 30. I would then fly to Singapore and back to Dili (no direct route). I want to avoid planes altogether because it breaks the spirit of the trip and feels like cheating. But there’s a pragmatic issue as well. Indonesia and Singapore added Covid “vax” entry requirements late in the piece, after I’d set the trip in motion. I pressed on, expecting that would relax in the New Year just gone, as they catch up with the rest of the world. It hasn’t happened yet. I could book the bike, and hope the entry requirements are dropped in the meantime.
- I can get the bike shipped all the way to Singapore. That – would you believe – would be on a boat leaving from Brisbane. With no vax entry requirements, that is a no-risk scenario. But unlike Darwin-Dili, the bike has to be “crated”, adding a whole lot of expense to the transit notwithstanding the five days’ ride from Darwin and longer transit while I’m without transport.
- I could wait until dry season in May, and go with Allan. That’s plenty of time for the vax requirement to be dropped, but regardless of that I’m happy to run the gauntlet if I’m with the bike. Travelling separately to the bike, the risk of immigration issues would quickly become a big mess if I’m locked in some official’s office and the bike is buried deep in the docks behind a wall of paperwork. Yuck. At least going together with the bike on Allan’s yacht would reduce that complexity to a simple binary proposition that might or might not work. I’d take those odds.
- I could wait and “just see what happens”.
- I could stop being so stubborn (!) and give up, admitting I’ve been snookered and this crazy attempt to ride to London has failed to launch.
Not liking any of those options.
All that said, there was a brief flurry of excitement yesterday. On my morning run I came across a towering fortress of a cruise ship docked at the wharf. I got home and did a little research – the Westerdam is an 11-storey vessel of nearly 2,000 guests and 900 staff. It came in that morning early from Cairns, and was heading out 5pm the same day to an island in the middle of Indonesia. That’d do for me!
30 minutes on hold to a booking office and 3 minutes of conversation established that “due to Covid” one can no longer book only a single portion of a schedule. Due to Covid?! I would be a wealthy man if I had a dollar for every time that had been used as an excuse. It has become the catch-all for “we can’t be bothered any more”, for “it’s too hard”, for just about any sub-optimal reality. Anyway, that doesn’t change the fact that the policy (which would have permitted my travel otherwise) blocks that option.
Not to be easily put off, I rode back down to the docks to see if an in-person approach might get further. There were plenty of guests milling around, and a few security guards. But no one who had any non-security role and might be able to help me get a ticket.
So off sailed the 11-storey ship which wouldn’t have even noticed the boy and his bike stowed on board, blissfully sailing to exactly where I want to go… without me.
I am currently precisely snookered.
With plenty of time on my hands to ponder, but no options on which to focus said pondering.
I think it’s time for a coffee.
2 Comments
Can you get visibility of cruise ship arrivals in Darwin and suss out the viability of each ahead of the ‘day of’ – the boy is famous for not taking no for an answer,,,is there the possibility of a cruise ship lucky break? If not, and you can afford ($) downtime, strongly recommend you “carpe unplanned holiday”. Frame it internally as “ok, I’m on holiday in (wet) paradise – which of my hobbies could I do every day or two to keep me pleasantly distracted?”. Then go and buy some art paper and some oil pastels and create some lovely things you’ll keep forever….people, places, tropical fruit are all out there if you look for something to capture and be arty. You’re a man of a million skills – go enjoy one of them! Benson family rooting for you!!
Thanks Luke. Yeah I was inspired to check cruise ship schedules – next one isn’t until middle of Feb. I appreciate your encouragement on other counts and am trying (with limited success) to build momentum on a pastel drawing I started a week ago.