Across Continents

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Sweet Caroline

September 26th, 2011

Caroline and Eric were Dutch long-haul cyclists. A chance encounter on the Tok Cut-off, the road less travelled that runs east from the Glenn Highway to the small town of Tok and onwards to the Canadian border. They were two and I was one, so I’d pulled over to their side of the road. But a couple, or father and daughter, I wasn’t sure.

They would soon be heading north to Sourdough to camp that night. I explained I’d come from the south, so had little to offer about the road ahead. Other than there was a couple of dusty, coarse gravel sections ahead. And a small shop where the Cut-off met the highway.

They said I’d have to take a ride in a pilot car in a short while, not permitted to pedal through road works. I grimaced. Explaining that any break from the saddle was usually more than offset by the plain hassle of taking everything off the bike, only to refit it all a little while later.

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Double Dutch

May 4th, 2011

Gutural accents. Not German. Of that I was certain. Dutch or Danish perhaps? I’d ask. Evelyn and Eef were from the Netherlands. Travelling north in a camper van. From Sydney. Part of a year out before University. Sociology and psychology.

We’d met in the camp kitchen. Small but immaculate site. In a small town. Sarina. I had teabags. They had honey. We started chatting. Places to visit. Weirdos we’d met. There’d been a few.

Had they a website? Yes. A blog. In Dutch. Added that I had one. Photographs too. Hosted on Flikr. They laughed. Reputable site it might be. But, as they explained, in the Netherlands, the name means gay.

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