Today was a lost day when I felt a bit like this bloke in this picture taken at the Armidale show my mother and I went to on Saturday and Sunday. In the final analysis you'd have to say that we just did too much driving in too small a portion of time. Friday we drove about 500km arriving in the late aftrnoon at Glen Innes. Up early Saturday, we snacked on pies and pasties in the centre of town and hit the road for an hour or so before having a cuppa at Inverell. From there we drove further out west and south to the Myall Creek Memorial Hall where we stayed for two hours or so. Then, back on the road again, we went east to Inverell and then south through Tingha and east to Guyra and, back on the New England Highway again, south to Armidale. That morning's trip covered about 300km mostly on a fairly good country back road. Overnight in Armidale with sojourns at the Sustainable Living Expo on both days for me, the second in the hot sun dressed in shorts and short sleeves - I was touched by the sun a fair bit - then back on the blacktop for a 600km drive north homeward arriving after darkness fell.

I didn't sleep well last night and then spent the rest of today moping around getting over a headache and general lethargy, with a trip to the dentist to complete the picture of utter decrepitude. I'm hoping tomorrow will be better, having slept off the drowsiness and the natural high that derives from interstate driving. To maintain a heightened sense of awareness for such long periods of time - driving on country roads is a challenge at the best of times, and so especially is negotiating the high-traffic expressways to the south and west of Brisbane that took us eventually home - can mean your body's producing chemicals that can unbalance the natural equilibrium suitable for day-to-day existence. So I had a case of landlubber's jet-lag, where the jet was a late-model 3.5-litre V-6 sedan and I was the sole pilot for a period of three days. An endurance test, sure enough!