More than a woman

Over the weekend … as I was attending my high school boyfriend’s birthday party and taking my mum on a Nelson Bay cruise … I didn’t know if the youngest was alive.

She’d gone bike-packing on her own. And because she doesn’t do anything by half measures, her destination was the top of Australia’s highest mountain, Mount Kosciuszko.

I did my usual begging and pleading for her to not risk death at the hands of a serial killer by travelling alone. But she never listens to me, so I switched to pleading with her to borrow a safety beacon from the National Parks and Wildlife Service.

Thankfully she paid attention to me on that one.

On Friday morning she sent me a pretty photo of her car and bike, then pedalled off into the wilderness.

For the first day there was enough mobile phone reception for me to track her on an app called Wahoo. And she sent me two pictures from the top of the mountain …

Then everything went radio silent for the next day and a half.

It was very unsettling.

I kept reminding myself that my generation’s parents – in the era before mobile phones – had no idea where their adult children were most of the time. Your kid would go backpacking in Europe and you’d be lucky to hear from them once a month.

But that is not my parenting era and I found 48 hours without contact deeply unsettling.

She reappeared on Sunday evening and confessed she’d hit some mud and gone over the bicycle’s handle bars. Fortunately she didn’t break any bones, but agreed that an emergency beacon was a good idea in those situations, just in case it was a nastier stack (especially when cycling alone).

The picture above is her frozen bike surrounded by frozen grass. It was also very cold in Kosciuszko National Park over the Anzac long weekend.

But that wasn’t the end of my stress. She drove for two and a half hours after that – in the dark – to get to her accommodation for the night. Her “I’ve made it back” message arrived at 10.48pm on Sunday night.

Far out, I wish her only speed wasn’t full throttle.

I talked to her for a few minutes as she was driving and she told me the weekend had been “type 2 fun”. I asked what that meant and she said the type that’s fun in retrospect.

Ooooh, I replied, that’s what every holiday with your father was like!

Well, without the insanity of cycling up mountains, sleeping in isolated huts and surviving on protein bars.

And then I saw on Instagram that she’d posted a photo (with the soundtrack of the Bee Gees’ “More than a woman”) captioned: “KNP solo mission complete – 200km & over 5000 metres of elevation (slightly brutal)”

Slightly brutal?

I have no idea where she gets it from. Definitely not from either of her non-sporty parents.

I am praying she finds someone as crazy as her to cycle with in the future. The solo thing is totally freaking me out.

Song of the day: Bee Gees “More than a woman”