Are you feeling jumpy from hanging around home? Tired of your local bike path? How about cycling the Australian outback?

It would be interesting for me, after a lifetime in the Northern Hemisphere, to go stargazing in the Land Down Under. No familiar constellations such as Orion, Taurus, the Big Dipper, etc. If nothing else, I’d need to learn how to find the Southern Cross.

I once read a book by a scientist who was studying one of the mass extinctions; one that occurred long before the famous K-T extinctions. He was in either Australia or South Africa. One night he was looking at the moon, and puzzling at its odd appearance. Then he realized that the Man in the Moon was upside down! I’ll bet that would be interesting to see.

Crossing the outback on two wheels is no picnic, as I expected. I wonder whether my Camel-Bak full of water would last from one “watering hole” to the next. And that’s when staying on the main route!

Electrolyte drink mustn’t be forgotten; and food! Fifteen days’ worth of food is a LOT to have to carry! I wouldn’t want nothing but bars, so what else could I carry? It would need to be compact and lightweight. Nuts, perhaps?

Or maybe I’d be nuts to think about cycling across the outback! Actually, the very idea has me feeling jumpy.