J. Peterman I ain't

January 15th 8:17 p.m., roughly 50 minutes left of daytime.

I rolled into the caravan park around 3:30 opting to pay the $12 for a shady patch of grass as I am still close enough to be considered within the sprawling outskirts of Perth. The grass was coarse, but not unpleasant to the touch . I laid out my sleeping pad and began to make lunch. Boiled water and rice. I stretched out and let it cook before separating the rice from the water, but not throwing it out. In the rice I mixed a can of tuna, a healthy dollop of olive oil (dense fat calories in lieu of the cheese we ate on the Atlantic; cheese would ruin quickly in this heat). To this I added salt, pepper, craizins, sunflower seeds and peanuts; all chosen for their low price and high caloric content. My eyes were skeptical that this trangas stove’s worth of food would fill me, but the density of the meal proved to be a gut-buster. Next I took the warm, milky rice-water, and I cut it with a little more water before brining it up to a boil. Adding a few pinches of single source tea leaves from the island of Ceylon (Sri Lanka), I had what might be considered my first pot of "billy" tea.

Sated and slightly warm from my “cuppa”, I lay down for a three hour nap. An hour or so was spent waking up in a dream in which the villain Beloch, from Raiders of the Lost Ark, was trying to steal 8 intaglio plates from me, which he did finally get a hold of because I was sleeping in my dream as well. I was not mad though, because even in the dream I could tell this was an epic nap.

I finally woke from my lion-sized cat nap way to pleased with myself, stretched a bit more, cracked a tepid tinny of VB (can of Victoria bitter beer) which I had been saving since the night before, and sat down upon my Thermarest® to write this blog.