Hobart - RodneyOlsen.net

Last night I had that same old dream, it rocked me in my sleep, and left me the impression that the sandman plays for keeps. – Larry Norman

I did indeed have the same old dream last night. It’s a dream that comes around now and then.

I dreamed about preparing to cycle across Australia.

Let me assure you it was a good dream. It wasn’t a panicked nightmare that had me waking up in a cold sweat. It was a happy dream. A very happy dream.

The dream was another reminder that it’s been way too long since my last Nullarbor crossing in 2003 when I rode from Perth to Hobart. It seems almost a lifetime away from my first of five crossings back in 1987. The picture above is me looking a bit nervous in Kings Park as I was about to begin a ride from Perth to Canberra. (Click on the photo to get a better look at my worried face.)

I’ve cycled across Australia in my twenties, my thirties and my forties. I’m now in my fifties and while nothing’s in concrete, I’m making plans for another crossing. Probably in 2018.

While my heart remembers endless days of cycling, battling wind, rain and hills, and the thrill of overcoming, my body keeps trying to remind me it’s not as young as it once was. Even the gap between my 1990 ride to Adelaide and my 2000 ride to Sydney let me know that body parts wear out and a lot more training is needed to go the distance. I can’t even imagine the amount of preparation my body would need to get ready for another crossing.

1987 – Perth to Canberra
1988 – Perth to Canberra
1990 – Perth to Adelaide
2000 – Perth to Sydney
2003 – Perth to Hobart

I’ve taken part in dozens of rides throughout Western Australia and even a couple on the Great Ocean Road in Victoria, but none of them compare to pushing the pedals for thousands of kilometres to cross our wide, brown land.

So … are you interested in taking a month to ride across Australia? Let me know and I’ll keep you informed if anything comes together. 🙂

In the mean time, I’m only a couple of weeks away from my annual ride from Albany to Perth, the Ride for Compassion. If you want to support children in poverty through Compassion, you can donate via this link.

I’m not sure if I’ll ever get to ride across the Nullarbor again, but I can certainly keep dreaming …. and planning.

Do you have any big dreams you’d like to fulfill? Are you making plans towards those dreams? Take a first step and share that dream in the comments section of this post.

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Fishing Tasmania’s Mercury newspaper is reporting a rather fishy story.

In the article, Lost jewellery found in fish, we’re told that a 25 year old woman named Kristy was kneeboarding behind a boat south of Hobart when she was tossed from her board in rough conditions.

In the fall she lost a nose stud from a piercing she had done only a week before Christmas.

Her fiancé was fishing with a friend three days later in the same area and caught a decent haul of fish. When he was filleting a flathead he noticed something shiny.

Kristy was watching on and recognised it as her lost nose stud. The flathead must have swallowed the stud a few days earlier.

You’d be pretty pleased to find something that small after losing it in something as large as the ocean. Which makes me wonder why it’s so hard to find much larger items like lost keys when you misplace them somewhere in your house.

Just for the record, Pauline found my keys for me today after I left for work. Nothing quite as exciting as inside a fish but I’m glad that they’re safe.

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