Merna Morna HS to Hawker

Distance 54km

Another good day, bad day. I got up early and was on the road at 7:25am. I was hunting for the missing pannier, and I thought if I could be first on the road it wouldn’t get run over. I rode the 3km out to the highway, and just as I got close to the highway, twang! another spoke broke. I didn’t want to fix it straight away so I took the risk that riding with a broken spokes would not cause a cascade of more broken spokes. I kept going up the Moralana road I had come down the previous afternoon. Then 3km up the road, I found it. The pannier sitting in the middle of the road undamaged. No-one had been along since I was there just before sunset the day before.

So I stop down the road and go through the usual. The broken spoke is another drive side spoke, and I replace it with my last spare drive side spoke. So I have to make some decisions. I ride back to the highway, and get fringe phone service. I try to ring my son Sam, but it’s too fringe, and we can’t talk. So I send an email and texts to get him to express post some spokes from Bicycle express in Adelaide to Hawker. I then decide that I cannot risk riding the Mawson Trail to Hawker, I will have to stick to the highway. So 5 hours later, I arrive in Hawker, and camp in the Hawker Caravan park.

So I wait. Sam has sent the spokes. The locals say I might get them tomorrow, or I might have to wait another day.

A nice picturesque location to fix broken spokes
Another picture of a broken spoke

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