Leaving Brisbane

As I prepared for my trip, the days leading up to my departure were an absolute frantic mess. I gave myself two days to pack up my remaining things move out and prepare the bike for my trip. As the saying (questionablyu) goes: quality, speed, sanity, pick two. I think I scraped by with one and a half. So I finished work on Wednesday and spent the following days frantically packing and organising my belongings. My goal was to sell, recycle, or donate everything I could, which actually added quite a bit more complication than just throwing some things away - who knew mattresses were so hard to give away for free? On the eve of my departure, I hosted a small farewell party with friends and following the same ritual as my last BoBbing adventure, had my head shaved to mark the beginning of my fresh streamlined self.

On Saturday I managed to finally get rid of my old mattress, drop my meagre remaining belongings at my parents place and take care of my plants. My friend Gen and her good friend Nat kindly agreed to drive me and the bike to the airport and was an absolute angel, rushing to Bunnings just before it closed to grab straps for the roof racks while I did some last minute cleaning. Surprisingly, and probably because it was so deceptively simple, one of the biggest challenges was packing my bike into a bike box. The box that I had gotten from the bike store bin was just big enough but didn’t have a top, so we had to craft one out of cardboard boxes. And when one of the forks poked through the front we had only had time to tape some extra cardboard around it like a little growth around a metal splinter. The outcome wasn’t pretty but a bunch of packing tape made it very functions. The other basic step required to pack the bike is to remove the pedals. Unfortunately, I had already taken all my tools to my parents’ house and my little toolkit (rightly) didn’t have a spanner that size. I texted another angel, my neighbor, Murray, who came through with a shifting spanner just in time. I later learnt that the pedals can be turned from the back with an Allen key, which I had. Then 15 minutes to quickly crack open a bottle of champagne, shower and head off. Luckily, the bike box was a good few kgs under weight because we hadn’t had the time to weigh it before leaving.

So, all in all, a pretty chaotic start to this whole travelling business. But everything was intact and I was on my way. But first an 18 hour layover in Taiwan and and a chance to explore Taipei.

Some photos:

I can’t remember the context here for the life of me but I think it it’ll make a great before/after photo

Tradition

Cheekly glass of champagne before leaving