PRAISE FOR FAT CHICK GOES AWOL
“Most people dream about chucking it all and taking o on wild
adventures. Few actually do it. Anna shows us exactly how it’s done. In
Fat Chick Goes AWOL, Anna drags us along through all the highs and
lows of making your life your own, and will inspire you to grab life by
the horns and steer it toward a life uncommon.”– Nancy Sathre-Vogel,
Family on Bikes, author of Changing Gears, Twenty Miles Per
Cookie, What Were We inking?, and Roadschooling
“An exquisite travel memoir in a fresh and authentic writing voice.
Hugely entertaining – laugh out loud in many places, too numerous
to mention, well written and loaded with distinctive and hilarious
characters. A brilliant book.” – Christine Elliott, author of Unmasked
“I once worked brie y for the BBC. I was given scripts andtold ‘Make
this funny’. So I know funny. And THIS is FUNNY.” – Tahnee Woolf,
author and co-creator of e Ten Terrains of Consciousness
“ is book is not the sort of thing I normally read, but I was pleasantly
surprised. Having just nished Cheryl Strayed’s book Wild I couldn’t help
but compare the two and I must say I enjoyed this one more. I was hooked
from the rst sentence. Fat Chick Goes AWOL is very funny, down to
earth and inspiring.” – Anna-Lee Fox, Melbourne, Australia
“ e story held me so well it was a relief when I got to the end of an
adventure so I could nally take a break to get up and go to the toilet or
eat.” – Julie McLaren, Melbourne, Australia
“I hope you’ve got as much arse to spare as Fat Chick – because you’re going
to laugh it o reading this book. And with her no-nonsense wisdom and
handy tips, you’ll also be motivated to get up o it and take action on your
own dreams.” – Kate Kornacki, Melbourne, Australia
FAT CHICK GOES
AWOL
A TRAVEL MEMOIR
by
ANNA MITCHELL
Published in Australia by:
P.O. Box 144 Malmsbury VIC 3446
Email: [email protected]
www.fatchickgoesawol.com
www.annamitchell.net
First published in Australia 2016
¤ Copyright Anna Mitchell 2016
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of
the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding other than that in which it
is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry
Creator: Mitchell, Anna, author.
Title: Fat Chick Goes AWOL / Anna Mitchell.
ISBN: 9780994649300 (paperback)
Subjects: Mitchell, Anna--Travel.
Bicycle touring--Australia.
Recumbent bicycles--Australia.
Hiking--Western Australia.
Australia--Description and travel.
Dewey Number: 796.640994
ISBN: 978-0-9946493-0-0
Cover layout and design by Intelligent Design
Illustrations Part 1, 2, 3 Cover layout and design by Estella Vuković
Book design by www.ipublicidades.com
Printed by Gri n Press
Typeset in Caslon 224 Book 10.5 pt on 15pt
Poem Soft Chains © 1979 Mary Barnard. Extensive e orts were made to obtain permission
to use this work, but the copyright holder was unable to be contacted. Anna Mitchell
respectfully acknowledges the owner of this work.
Disclaimer
All care has been taken in the preparation of the information herein, but no responsibility
can be accepted by the publisher and author for any damages resulting from the
misinterpretation of this work. All contact details given in this book were current at the time
of publication, but are subject to change.
e advice given in this book is based on the experience of the individuals. Professionals
should be consulted for individual problems. e author and publisher shall not be held
responsible for any person with regard to any loss or damage caused directly or indirectly by
the information in this book.
For Billy Bob
Turns out you were right.
For Christophe
Turns out you were r-r-r…r-r-r…rrrrrrr-rr-rrrrr…whatever.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
e stories in this book are true, to the best of my recollection.
Except for the one where I blackmail Santa to get my recumbent trike.
e real Santa is the real Santa, Mrs Claus is a lovely, respectable woman,
Bogan Boy was a faithful boyfriend (who did have a gig as a shopping centre Santa),
and I paid for my trike out of my own pocket, same as everyone else. Honest.
However, many of the names of the people involved have been changed, either to protect
the guilty or simply because I have C.R.A.F.T* Disease. e exception to protecting the
guilty is Christophe the Cruci er. In his case I’ve used his real name, because you must
be able to identify Evil when you meet it. Before it gets its claws into you.
*Can’t Remember a Freewheelin’ ing
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE: IN THE BEGINNING,
THERE WAS A FAT CHICK ................................................. 9
e Rules for Fat Chicks ............................................................... 9
PART ONE: FAT CHICKS DON’T CYCLE ........................ 11
1. Dear Santa: Gimme a Trike or I’m Going to the Tabloids .. 13
2. e Trike Maker and the Chariot of Fire ............................ 21
3. Not My Dream .................................................................... 33
4. Soft Chains Are the Hardest to Break ................................. 41
5. On the Road ........................................................................ 51
6. e Usual Questions ............................................................ 61
7. Low Level Ecstasy ............................................................... 69
8. e Most Enjoyable Christmas
in the History of Backpacking .............................................. 75
9. e Most Disappointing New Year’s Eve
in the History of Backpacking .............................................. 83
10. Domestic Bliss With Ron .................................................... 93
11. e Place Whose Name I Dare Not Speak ........................ 103
12. Humanus Insanus Extremus ................................................. 113
13. Okay, Maybe I Could Ride to Albany ............................... 121
PART TWO: FAT CHICKS DON’T HIKE ....................... 131
14. Fat Chick vs. Christophe the Cruci er:
e Battle Between Good and Evil – Episode I ................ 133
15. Fat Chick vs. Little Chinese Lady:
Houston, We Have a Problem ........................................... 141
16. Change of Plan .................................................................. 147
17. No Damn 2 Minute Noodles! ............................................ 159
18. If You Go Out in the Woods Today ................................. 167
19. How to Become One of Bob Cooper’s Stories ................... 173
20. e Power Point in the Bush ............................................. 183
21. Be Careful What You Wish For ........................................ 191
22. Fat Chick’s Final Word on
Carrying a House on Your Back ........................................ 199
PART THREE: FAT CHICKS DON’T PADDLE (YET) ... 209
23. Fat Chick vs. Christophe the Cruci er:
e Battle Between Good and Evil – Episode II ............... 211
24. Domestic Bliss with Iggy ................................................... 215
25. “You’ll Never Get Fifteen Kilos Onto a Pushbike, Love” ...... 223
26. Humpty Doo, Kakadu, and One Pissed-O
Saltwater Crocodile ............................................................ 229
27. e Local Fauna ................................................................. 239
28. e Most Impressive Tan Line
in the History of Cycle Touring ......................................... 251
29. Old Farts Who Haven’t Read the Bloody Memo .............. 259
30. Mary Lou and Mary Kate’s Excellent Adventure ............... 265
31. Not Most People ................................................................ 275
32. Secret Men’s Business ........................................................ 283
33. Never Attempt Full Body Wrestling While
Mercury’s in Retrograde ..................................................... 291
34. e Cows Are Loose! ......................................................... 303
35. Fat Chick vs. Christophe the Cruci er:
e Battle Between Good and Evil – Episode III ............. 313
EPILOGUE: IN THE END, THERE WAS
STILL A FAT CHICK ....................................................... 317
e Winner of the Battle Between Good and Evil ................... 320
JUST FOR THE RECORD ................................................ 321
What Happened to Everyone After the Book Finished ............ 321
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .............................................. 325
ABOUT THE AUTHOR ................................................... 329
9
FAT CHICK GOES AWOL
PROLOGUE
IN THE BEGINNING,
THERE WAS A FAT CHICK
Once upon a time in the far, far west of the land that Time
forgot, in a little apartment in the inner city, there lived a Fat Chick
and her two u y cats.
Fat Chick spent all of her spare time lazing about in an
armchair. It was a comfortable armchair, and she loved to laze about
in it. It was just as well she loved that armchair, because the three-
seater sofa was taken up by the two cats, and they showed no signs of
ever giving it back.
One day as she lazed about, munching on her favourite junk foods
and reading yet another adventure travel book, Fat Chick decided she
too was going to have adventures. She was going to cycle, hike and
paddle around the entire world.
en she remembered e Rules.
THE RULES FOR FAT CHICKS:
FAT CHICKS DON’T CYCLE.
FAT CHICKS DON’T HIKE.
FAT CHICKS DON’T PADDLE.
She thought about e Rules. She thought about e Rules
some more.
She drank a litre of Coke, and thought about e Rules some more.
She ate a tub of ice cream, and thought about e Rules even more.
She slowly worked her way through all the junk food in the
apartment, all the while thinking lo-o-o-ong and ha-a-ard about a-a-a-all
those Rules.
10
Anna Mitchell
Finally she tossed the empty bucket of fried chicken into the bin
and said to the walls:
“Fuck it, I’m gonna do it anyway.”
e two cats breathed a sigh of relief. ey were the only things
left in the house to eat.
11
FAT CHICK GOES AWOL
13
FAT CHICK GOES AWOL
C H A P T E R O N E
DEAR SANTA, GIMME A TRIKE OR
I’M GOING TO THE TABLOIDS
Now, you all wouldn’t know this, but I used to go out with
Santa Claus.
No I’m not takin’ the piss.
1
Everyone has a past, and before the
marketing geniuses at the Coca Cola Company got their hands on
this Fat Boy, and styled him into that wholesome favourite-Grandpa
type you all adore, it was a whole other story.
When this story begins, Santa is a 19-year-old Aussie Bogan.
2
He drinks bourbon, smokes dope and hoons
3
around town in a Ford
Cortina station wagon painted Kermit the Frog green. I know, right?
But this is long before he hits the big time and buys that fancy sleigh,
back when he’s a dirt-poor pizza delivery boy and can’t a ord to be
picky about his wheels. At least it’s a Cortina, one of the few models
your self-respecting Aussie Bogan Boy would be seen dead in.
When this story begins, I’m a 23-year-old Aussie girl with letters
after my name,
4
a degree-quali ed accountant. Since Australia is
wallowing in Prime Minister Paul Keating’s ‘recession we had to
have’, that bachelor’s degree isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on, so a
year after graduating I’m still o cially unemployed. To pay the rent
on my cheap dog-box apartment in the inner suburbs of Perth, the
1
Taking the piss = Aussie slang for joking/bullshitting.
2
Bogan = Aussie slang for ‘poor white trash’. Usually seen sporting annel shirts,
ugg boots, Metallica t-shirts, mullet haircuts, and a can of beer or Jim Beam in
their hands. Often have children with more than one partner, none of whom
they’ve married.
3
Hoon = drive like a maniac.
4
Letters after a person’s name signi es that they have a university or college education.
14
Anna Mitchell
capital city of Western Australia, I’m working as many shifts as I can
get delivering pizzas, which is the casual job I had while studying.
e world of pizza is where Bogan Boy’s path crosses mine.
He’s one of the drivers who deliver twelve orders in twelve minutes
and are forever on the brink of losing their licence. His mad driving
skills will come in handy later on when he has to cover the planet in
a single night, but right now they’re not doing his licence – or his
wallet – any favours. I’m the driver who delivers two orders in twenty
minutes and never once comes to the attention of the boys in blue.
e guys make fun of me for being the granny driver of the crew –
but only while they have demerit points to spare and aren’t con ned
to kitchen hand duties.
A year into my Pizza Chick career, the two-site pizza business
explodes into a chain; half a dozen shops open almost overnight. My
boss sets up a central phone room to take the orders for all of them. I
become the mistress of the phones. Literally.
“Hey, come ’n’ ’ave a listen to this chick. She sounds like a
double-oh, double- ve number,” the punters tell their mates. It’s
true. My voice on a switchboard is professional voice-over quality,
with a strong hint of phone sex.
Unfortunately I don’t look like a phone sex girl. Hot Chick is
not how the males of Australia refer to me. I’m the Fat Chick. Even
my 180cm (6’) tall, heavy-boned, Amazon woman frame can’t hide
the fact I have enough body fat to make it into the ‘obese’ category. I
passed the 100kg (220lb) mark when I was still a teenager. My adult
weight has settled at 130kgs (287lbs) – not much less than my all-time
high of 142kgs (313lbs). My calves are the size of tree trunks. ey’re
bigger than Arnold Schwarzenegger’s. I’m not kidding – I looked it up.
His measured 50cms (20”) around. Mine are 52.5cm (21”).
If my calves are the size of tree trunks, then my thighs are the size
of California redwoods. My size 22 (US size 18, European size 50) jeans
have trouble holding them in, and the inner seams wear out quickly.
15
FAT CHICK GOES AWOL
My 22DD-cup (US size 44DDD, European size 100F) breasts
could be associated with a 0055 chick, but like they say, tits on a fat
chick are like abs on a skinny guy – they don’t count. Besides, when I
look down, my stomach sticks out further than my boobs do. I can’t
even see my California redwood thighs.
My butt? Not a chance. Long story short, I am not a Debbie Does
Dallas piece of arse. I am a Debbie Does Donuts piece of arse.
You are what you eat. I grew up the poster child for junk food
and couch potatoes. roughout my childhood, my mother worked
for a biscuit manufacturer. e man she married when I was thirteen
worked at a Coca Cola bottling plant, and soon she was working
there as well. I was screwed from the start. By the time I got to uni, I
was better at the junk food and sofa thing than the two of them put
together – and they were good. If I did sex like I do food, I’d be an
award-winning porn star. But I’m not a porn star. Because 23 years
of junk food and sofa dwelling do not sculpt you into a Debbie Does
Dallas piece of arse.
On the phone though, I am a sex goddess. Even the sober
men wonder if they’ve rung the wrong number. One day a brothel
owner called to place an order. He ended up o ering me a job as
the brothel’s switchboard operator. I laughed my big fat hairy white
wobbly arse o , and politely declined.
I don’t try to sound like a 0055 operator. at’s just what my
voice does when I’m on a switchboard. Away from a switchboard,
most of the time I sound like an Aussie truck driver.
e phone room is located at the chain’s North Perth shop,
which is an old inner city neighbourhood shop front with a crappy old
weatherboard house attached to the back of it, that my boss lives in.
e ‘central phone room’ is ten touch-dial phones and one desktop
computer in the crappy old sleep-out at the back of the house.
Bogan Boy is working here tonight instead of at his usual shop,
as the North Perth shop is short of drivers. He’s on his way to the
16
Anna Mitchell
toilet, which is just beyond the sleep-out. I’m dealing with the bane
of the pizza shop phone operator’s life – the people who don’t know
what they want, what change they need, or even where they are. I wait
until they’ve hung up, slam down the phone, and go o in
Strayan.
5
“Fucken bloody useless piece a –”
e phone rings again. I pick it up re exively and nish the
sentence in my sophisticated, honey-toned, sexy-time phone voice.
“Tippy’s Dial-a-Pizza, may I help you?”
When I nish taking the order I look up to see a Fat Boy with
gorgeous corn ower-blue eyes lounging in the doorway, grinning at
me. On our next night o , he’s taking me to a movie.
After the movie we go back to my dog-box at. I put on a video,
Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. Bogan Boy, hoping for his own
excellent adventure, proceeds to get us both stupid drunk on bourbon
and Coke.
I don’t like bourbon and Coke – as far as I’m concerned it’s a
waste of good Coke. I don’t like alcohol at all in fact. I can handle
the occasional beer, but that’s about it. But I’ve never been out with
a Bogan before and I like this one, and I want him to think I’m cool,
so I suck it up and suck it down. At least it’s mostly Coke, which is
about the only thing I drink.
It only takes about a glass and a half to work. Bogan Boy nds
this – pretty much the only lightweight thing about me – amusing.
So amusing that he nicknames me ‘the Cadbury kid’. After the
famous commercial for the chocolate company that wanted to make
sure we knew their chocolate contained ‘a glass and a half of full
cream milk’. In case anyone was under the impression that chocolate
is not a health food.
Curled up together on the torture-rack sofa that came with my
cheap dog-box at, this cheap date progresses to periodic games of
5
Strayan = Australian spoken in a rough manner, usually with lots of swearing.
17
FAT CHICK GOES AWOL
tonsil-hockey. Bogan Boy’s hands begin to wander, and this 19-year-old
horn bag is convinced he’s onto a sure thing. At three a.m., much to his
dismay, I send him home. He might be a Bogan, and I might be a cheap
date, but I’m a Good Girl. As they say, opposites attract. At this point I
have no idea of the irony – that he’ll go on to become Respectable Santa,
and I’ll go on to break all of the important rules in life.
e excellent adventure was followed by Looney Tunes cartoons.
At three a.m., as we’re tripping over one another all the way along
the corridor, down a ight of stairs, and out into the car park, we’re
whispering “Shhhh. Be vewy, vewy quiet. I’m hunting wabbits.”
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Bogan Boy gets in the frog and attempts to drive himself home.
Instead he writes the frog o , wrapping it around a tree. I nd out
about it the next day when he calls.
Oops. I didn’t think he was that drunk. I was that drunk, but that
was just a warm-up for him. ose pizza boys drink as hard as they drive.
Lucky for me Bogan Boy forgives me for sending him home
without getting laid, and we date some more. Pretty soon he’s staying
the night, and the two of us are going straight to Hell.
So there we are. I’m his Bitch, he’s my Toy Boy, and we have all
the pizza we could ever want.
In addition to his pizza job, Bogan Boy has an annual gig as
Santa. Each year when the silly season arrives, he puts down the
18
Anna Mitchell
bong and the bottle of bourbon, slaps on the red satin suit, and goes
o to spread joy and happiness at the local shopping centre. is year
I go with him.
“Ho, ho, ho,” he booms as he settles into his throne outside
the supermarket.
I turn and x him with my steely gaze.
“Listen up, Toy Boy. You call me a Ho one more time, and I
will squash you like a bug.”
“Bitch, get over here and sit on Santa’s lap, let the nice man take
a photo.”
Yeah, that’ll happen.
And it does.
I can’t believe I’ve done something so clichéd as be swept o my
feet by a man in uniform.
Anyway, the kids turn up, and I’m standing at the back of the
crowd with my bottle of Coke, watching this whole thing go down.
All these cute, innocent little kids are looking at him in wonder. He’s
looking at them all sweet and kind and benevolent. And I’m laughing
my arse o . Because if any of those parents had the faintest idea
of what sweet ol’ Santa got up to at my place last night, Christmas
would be cancelled immediately.
A couple of years later I’m no longer going out with Santa Claus.
I nd this out in a most un-excellent way. Turns out this Fat Boy
has an addiction to the whole Santa thing, and a once-a-year gig
imitating the big man in Perth’s suburban shopping centres ain’t
gonna cut it. He’s got his sights set on the top of the Christmas
tree – the star position, Santa Claus Esq., CEO of North Pole
Enterprises. And since he’s not ‘wholesome’ enough to pass the
background checks and get the job legitimately, he’s adopted the
tried-and-true alternative method – sleeping his way to the top.
I turn up at his place one day to nd him having sex with someone
19
FAT CHICK GOES AWOL
who isn’t me. Someone who looks suspiciously like the wife of the
CEO of North Pole Enterprises. And between the moans and the
slapping of esh, I hear her tell him he’s got the job, just as soon as
they get rid of the real Santa Claus.
I’ve come to Bogan Boy’s place after a solo photography
excursion along Perth’s picturesque Swan River, so I happen to have
my SLR camera with me. I lower my backpack onto the oor of his
lounge room, and pull out my camera bag. Five minutes later I have
photographic evidence of Mrs Claus’ handbag, the hot mess of her and
Bogan Boy’s discarded clothes leading to the bedroom – including her
distinctive monogrammed red satin panties – and the two of them well
and truly making it onto the Naughty List for this year were I to show
these photos to e Man at North Pole Enterprises.
e nal photo is of their faces gawping at the camera. A
perfectly framed and focused shot if I do say so myself – and since it’s
mid-afternoon, there’s no lack of lighting. e judges of the monthly
competition at the amateur photography club I’m in would be proud
of me.
Bogan Boy springs o the bed with surprising speed for a Fat
Boy, tugging on his other pair of black denim jeans, which are
thankfully within arm’s reach. e red satin whore yanks the bed
sheet across her naughty bits.
I lounge against the bedroom doorway, SLR in hand. Saying
nothing. Grinning. Santa yelps as he catches his pecker in the zipper
of his jeans. I crack up laughing behind my grin.
“What are you doing here? How did you get in here?”
“Door was open. You really should be more careful, y’know.
You don’t know who might walk in. What am I doing here? Oh, just
earning a bit of Christmas cash. If you get my drift … ”
Bogan Boy looks at Mrs Claus.
He doesn’t have the money to buy my silence, and she knows it.
20
Anna Mitchell
She also knows North Pole Enterprises can’t a ord a scandal
like this.
e red satin whore gets her fat arse o the bed, locates her
handbag, and pulls out a cheque book. Five minutes later I’m walking
out of Santa’s life with an even bigger grin on my face. is Grotty
Boy-Person has just learned you can mess with this Fat Chick, but
it’ll cost you.
A few months later I see him in the media releases from the North
Pole, wearing a far more expensive red satin suit, with somebody else’s
wife hanging o his arm. e stylists have done an excellent job of
making him look like the real Santa, but I know it’s him.
I don’t call the newspapers though, or the TV stations. I don’t
even tell my friends. I can keep a secret. Especially for eight grand,
the current price of a primo round-the-world plane ticket. I’ve been
hanging out to travel around the world ever since I spent a year on a
working holiday in Europe at age nineteen. He can have his red satin
whore and his Santa dream. I’m going travelling.
As if anyone would believe me anyway. I mean, really, a Ford
Cortina station wagon painted Kermit the Frog green? No self-
respecting Aussie Bogan Boy would be seen dead in a station wagon,
especially one painted Kermit the Frog green. Even if it was a
Cortina. ey do have some standards, y’know.
21
FAT CHICK GOES AWOL
C H A P T E R T W O
THE TRIKE MAKER AND
THE CHARIOT OF FIRE
Bogan Boy is replaced by Huggy Bear before I get to go on
my round-the-world trip. He’s a Fat Boy too, but that’s where any
similarity to Santa Claus ends. is Grotty Boy-Person is a brainiac
who loves a good intellectual discourse, and whose humour of choice
is puns. He doesn’t smoke or do drugs, and drinks wine instead of
bourbon. He has a day job as a computer programmer for IBM, and
a mortgage on a new three-bedroom unit in an inner city suburb. He
separates his recyclables, and drives a Hyundai Excel hatchback in an
orderly fashion – when he’s not riding his bicycle. He’s also a hugger
– and a really good one, hence the nickname Huggy Bear. We end
up moving in together.
I’m glad Bogan Boy didn’t become Santa Claus the legitimate
way, and take me with him. I was never big on toys as a kid, happy
enough with a few dolls, some LEGO and a colouring book. As an
adult, I’m still not into toys. In high school I once asked my friends
what they would buy if they won a million dollars. e standard
response was along the lines of a big house, ash car, jewellery and
lots of gadgets. My answer was a backpack, a pair of hiking boots
and a round-the-world plane ticket.
Ten years on from high school, nothing’s changed in that
regard. I’m still a travel nut, but not the least bit interested in ritzy
hotels or luxury cruises. I like independent travel – backpack, boots,
and I’ll tell you where I’m going when I know, which will be when
I get there. at year in Europe got me hooked. I loved it all. e
freedom. e adventure. Walking along streets drenched in history,
22
Anna Mitchell
even if I was too lazy to nd out what that history was. Seeing how
other cultures lived. Eating their food, learning their languages.
e di erent currencies. Even stupid little things like domino-sized
brown cardboard bus tickets that the drivers would punch little holes
in on the date and time boxes. I couldn’t get enough of travelling.
When the year was up and I had to go back to Australia and nish
my accounting degree, I made my way onto the plane like a dead
man walking.
I’m still determined to go around the world. e only di erence
is these days I’m leaning towards human-powered travel instead of
planes, trains and automobiles. For that strain of madness I blame
Anne Mustoe and Bill Bryson.
Anne Mustoe was a 50-something headmistress of a posh
English girls’ boarding school, who one day packed in her job, sold
her London at, and set o to cycle around the world alone – despite
the fact she had never gone cycle touring before and had no idea
how to do even basic repairs like x a at tyre. Bill Bryson is a writer
who hiked a serious chunk of the 2,200-mile Appalachian Trail in
the USA, despite being middle-aged, married, overweight and not
having a clue what he was doing. ese two people have messed me
up for life with their travel memoirs. Bryson nearly put me in the
damn poorhouse buying all his books at 35 bucks a pop on a pizza
driver’s wages.
Since then I’m pretty sure I’ve read every human-powered
travel memoir in print, from Full Tilt, Dervla Murphy’s solo cycling
adventure through Europe and the Middle East in the 1960s, to
Jesse Brampton’s Promises to Keep¸ a solo long-distance hike of the
Appalachian Trail in the USA, to Ben Kozel’s ree Men in a Raft¸
a paddle down the length of the Amazon River. I’m thinking of
spending the rest of my life cycling around the world, thru-hiking
23
FAT CHICK GOES AWOL
long-distance trails along the way, and throwing in a few long-distance
paddling trips as well.
No sooner do I get this idea into my head, than the Universe
sends me a cyclist for a boyfriend. Huggy Bear may be a Fat Boy,
but he’s a Fat Boy who loves to ride his bicycle. He rides it to work
every day. He rides it to the supermarket to buy groceries. He rides
it dozens of kilometres to friends’ houses. He rides it on social rides
with the local cycling club, and he’s ridden it hundreds of kilometres
on proper cycle tours, including in places like New Zealand.
He may be a Fat Boy, but he’s a Fat Boy with legs and lungs of
steel. is guy can power his 118kgs (260lbs) up a steep hill as fast
as those Real Cyclists who are so skinny you’d lose ’em if they turned
sideways. And he can belt out a tune while he’s doing it. I’m in awe.
I also hate him. I do not love to ride my bicycle. In fact, I hate it.
I hate the seat, which gets more and more uncomfortable the longer
I ride, until it bruises my tailbone. I hate the padded cycling knicks,
or ‘nappy pants’ as I call them, I have to wear to combat this – they
look hideous on me, and their protection doesn’t last long enough. I
hate the pressure of the handlebars on my hands – the padded cycling
gloves don’t help for long enough either. I hate the pressure on my
shoulders and neck from having to lean on the handlebars when my
butt gets too sore, and from craning my head upwards to see the
scenery. I hate having to stand up on the pedals to get enough power
to get up hills, and having to maintain a minimum speed or else
you’ll fall o .
In short, I hate cycling. Which is a bit of a problem when you
want to travel the world by bicycle.
Huggy Bear talks me into going on the ‘On Your Bike Tour’,
a seven-day cycle tour in rural Western Australia. I’m not keen on
the idea of spending seven whole days in a row on a bicycle, but
on this cycle tour trucks carry your luggage for you to each night’s
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Anna Mitchell
campground. ere’s also a ‘sag wagon’, a mini-bus that will take you
and your bike to camp if you just can’t make it under your own steam.
I’m glad I let him talk me into it, because it’s on this tour that
the Universe gives me the answer to my predicament. ere are about
a hundred and twenty people on this tour, and on the third or fourth
day I notice that two of these folks are not like the other ones. One
afternoon they glide past me on low, three-wheeled, tadpole-shaped
bicycles that look to me like mobile deckchairs. ese two people
look awfully comfortable … Unfortunately I’m pu ng too much to
talk to them, and I don’t run into them again.
My relationship with Huggy Bear dies a horrible death the
following year, after we spend three months backpacking through
North America. It was in trouble before that trip – it had been slowly
deteriorating during the year or so we lived together – but travelling
together was the death knell. I should have known back when we
were planning the trip there’d be reworks. Huggy Bear wanted
a detailed itinerary of every day of the three-month trip, with all
accommodation and transport booked in advance. I wanted to just
pack my backpack and get on a plane. Sure enough, after a couple
of months on the road, there were reworks. I move out not long
after we return to Perth, but it’s an amicable split and we remain rm
friends. However, from now on I’m sticking to solo travel. I realise I
like it better. While it was nice to have someone familiar there all the
time, I found we became a bit of a self-contained unit, and interacted
with people far less than I did when I was on my own in Europe.
And having my boyfriend there all the time just made me lazy; he
was willing to do all the hard stu , and I just let him. Plus, since his
salary far outweighed mine, he paid for nearly everything, and I felt
like a freeloader.
While the cycle tourist boyfriend didn’t work out, the idea of
travelling the world by bicycle, and those funny-looking three-wheeled
25
FAT CHICK GOES AWOL
bikes, sticks. But I don’t know what the funny-looking three-wheeled
bikes are called, and even if I did, there’s no time to do anything
about it anyway. After breaking up with Santa and leaving the world
of pizza, a couple of years after I graduated from university, I landed
a job in Planet O ce. It wasn’t much of a job, only data entry and
ling, but it led to a career as an o ce temp, and once the temp
agencies realised I was reliable and I knew what I was doing, they
wouldn’t leave me alone.
In addition to that, the recession has done a one-eighty into a
mining boom led by Western Australia, and there are jobs galore.
I’m now 29, and over the past few years I’ve worked my way up to a
degree-quali ed accountant level job via every low-level shit kicker
admin job known to woman. With that broad experience plus my
accounting degree, I have a unique perspective of the accounting and
admin function, and am in demand for the results I can get which
other accountants can’t. Graduating in the middle of a recession
turned out to be a good thing after all. Go gure.
e Internet is a mainstream thing now. One day it occurs to me
to see if I can nd out what that funny-looking three-wheeled bike
is called.
e Internet tells me it’s a recumbent trike.
e Internet also tells me the world’s premier manufacturer of
recumbent trikes is Greenspeed, which happens to be in Australia. I
go to their web page and in pretty short order I’m drooling over their
touring model. Unfortunately it costs nearly eight thousand dollars.
And they’re located in Melbourne, on the other side of the country.
I have the money. I’m on contract to a large manufacturing
company, and they were so impressed with my work that when
I started talking about going travelling, they threw a $7,000 bonus
and a rate rise at me to get me to stay there another year. It’s not as
if I need to blackmail Santa or anything. Honest. Trust me, I’m
an accountant.
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Anna Mitchell
e problem is I’d be handing over eight grand for a piece of
gear sight unseen, to a business I’ve never dealt with before. I haven’t
spent eight thousand bucks on a car before, let alone a bicycle. I
haven’t spent eight hundred bucks on a bicycle.
I don’t even know if I’ll like riding a recumbent trike. What if
I’m only in love with the idea of it, and when I get it I nd it’s not
that great and I’ve wasted eight grand? I want to try one rst, but as
far as I know there aren’t any in Perth.
I get on the phone to the North Pole. Santa is not pleased to
hear from me.
“I’m not giving you any more money, so don’t even ask.”
“I don’t want money. I want a name.”
“What do you mean, you want a name?”
“I need a recumbent trike maker in Perth, if there is one.”
“A what maker?”
“Recumbent trike.”
“What the hell is that?”
“You’re commander-in-chief of the global toy business and you
don’t know what a recumbent trike is? How’d you get that job, by
sleeping with the boss?”
I email Santa a picture of a bicycle that has two wheels at
the front, one at the back, a big mesh deckchair style seat, and no
discernible handlebars. When he opens it, he bursts out laughing.
“ at is nuts,” he says.
I don’t think it’s nuts at all. Instead of balancing on your bum
and your fanny on a tiny wedge of leather that cuts o circulation
to both and leaves you feeling like someone’s beaten them with a
baseball bat, you get a nice comfy deckchair to cruise around in.
Instead of leaning on a metal bar that cuts o circulation to your
hands, you wrap your hands lightly around two upright handlebars
at hip level. Instead of craning your neck upwards to avoid staring at
27
FAT CHICK GOES AWOL
the road surface all day long, you lean back slightly, and the world
unfolds before you like a movie on a cinema screen.
Recumbent trikes have been nicknamed ‘armchairs on wheels’.
Since I’m a professional couch potato with wacko dreams of cycling
around the world, I like the idea of an armchair on wheels.
“You wanna go around the planet on that?” says Santa. “ at’s
ridiculous.”
“Oh, you mean as opposed to a sleigh, a bunch of reindeer and
magic dust.”
Santa shuts up and searches his database.
Turns out there is a trike maker in Perth – King Martoon. He’s
the new kid on the block of recumbent trike manufacturers, and his
reputation is good. Santa gives me his contact details, then tells me
never to call him again.
“Yeah, yeah, whatever. Go check on your wife; see if her red
satin panties are still on her.”
“Listen—”
A screeching voice interrupts him. “Claus, who are you talking to?”
Santa slams the phone down on me. Karma grins at me from the
corner. I dial the number for King Martoon.
King Martoon is a 50-something-year-old Yorkshire man who
can talk the hind leg o a donkey. I like him instantly, and not
because he’s the maker of the one toy I can get excited about.
King Martoon works from home, in the shed, where all the best
things in Australia are accomplished. He has a demo trike for me to try.
As soon as I sit on it, I know I’ve found my chariot.
It’s so comfortable. ere’s no pressure on my butt, or my wrists,
or my neck.
It’s so easy to steer. I can turn on a dime, and it corners like it’s on rails.
e brakes are so good. I nearly get whiplash when I apply
them suddenly.
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Anna Mitchell
And no more craning my head up to avoid looking down at the road.
My neck is so happy it could kiss me.
I am reclining, but only at an angle of 45 degrees. ere is
another angle for recumbent seats that is much more laid back, 30
degrees, but that’s for racing. People think recumbent bikes are bikes
you lie down on. I don’t feel like I’m lying down at all. I feel like I’m
sitting in an armchair.
As King Martoon and I ride through his neighbourhood, I can’t
stop raving about the trike. I didn’t expect to like it this much. I’m
not complaining. I’m relieved I wouldn’t have wasted my eight grand.
Turns out it’s not going to cost me anywhere near eight grand
either. King Martoon’s trikes are half the price of a Greenspeed, but
every bit their equal in quality. Even my untrained eye can tell King
Martoon is a master welder, who takes pride in his craftsmanship.
“How soon can I get mine?” I ask him, sounding like a druggie
in need of a x.
King Martoon needs some details before he can answer this
question. ese are not mass-produced bicycles. Each one is built by
hand, and customised to the buyer.
He starts talking Boy Language at me – 20-something moly
chromey tubey internal Sachs tripply hubby geary thingy thing
things. I stop him before he has somebody’s eye out and tell him I
want three things:
One: Build me a tank.
I’m hard on my gear. I tend to neglect it. I don’t want to know
how it works. I want it to be high quality, and just work. I want
something that can take a lot of abuse and not take revenge at the
worst possible moment, out in the middle of nowhere. I want a tank.
Two: e lowest gears on the planet, bar none.
I suck at riding up hills. I’ve sucked at hills since the day I rst
got on a bicycle. I still suck at hills a decade later, and I don’t think
I’m ever going to stop sucking at hills.
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FAT CHICK GOES AWOL
ree: Yellow seat. Red frame. Fire engine red.
e rest he can do however he wants.
King Martoon builds me the toughest and coolest human-powered
vehicle in town. It’s got disc brakes, like a car. A huge luggage rack
that’s a welded part of the frame rather than a separate rack that
bolts onto the frame. Yellow mesh deckchair-style seat and cute little
matching yellow pedals about the size of a deck of cards that my
cleated cycling shoes clip onto. Orange safety ag on a thin bendy
pole, to attract the attention of the Car People. Bike computer. And
an air horn, to scare the crap out of the Foot People who hog the
dual-use cycle paths and ignore the cyclist’s bell.
It also has the lowest gears on the planet: a Schlumpf Mountain
Drive. A Schlumpf Mountain Drive is gearing so low it’s absurd.
We’re talking gears low enough, as King Martoon puts it, “to pedal
up Mount Everest.”
Coo-o-o-o-ool.
King Martoon has also made it with a ‘Big Bum seat’, as he calls
it, so the Fat Chick may travel in even more comfort.
Awes-o-o-o-o-me.
It’s even got a handbrake, so it doesn’t roll o down the road
when you stop halfway up a hill because you have to go pee. Or stop
halfway up a hill because you suck at hills and could never make it to
the top in one hit.
is is my chariot. is is even worth drinking that bourbon
shit for.
King Martoon delivers him the day after Christmas. My friends
from down the road, Maeve and Stephen, who I call Mauve and
Stooph, have come up the road to check it out. As they watch, King
Martoon unloads my trike and his, and we take o for a test run.
Stooph later describes the scene, from the rear view, “as if two alien
creatures, each with a long orange antenna, had just landed on the
planet and were o to reconnoitre the territory”.
30
Anna Mitchell
Unfortunately, when I placed the order, I forgot men are colour
blind. ‘Fire Engine Red’ comes out of the kiln a manky burnt orange.
“It’s bloody red,” insists the King.
“It’s bloody burnt orange,” insists the Fat Chick.
“It’s bloody red.”
I turn and x him with my steely gaze.
“Show me a re engine that colour.”
“Well ... it’s re red.”
“Fire red is not re engine red. If re red was the same as re
engine red, you wouldn’t be able to see the re engines for the re.
And where would that get us, huh?”
“Kid’s gonna be a lawyer,” my granny used to say. “Got the
arguin’ gene, that one.”
Don’t get me wrong, I still love my chariot, but for cryin’ out
loud. I’m a Girl. Okay, so I’m not much of a Girl. I don’t wear
makeup or buy shoes. I don’t giggle and irt and act all stupid and
helpless when there are Boys around. I’m not even fussed when men
leave the toilet seat up. I do, however, understand, as all Girls do,
how important the colour of your chariot is.
e Grotty Boy-Person continues to insist this colour is red.
“And you lot rule the world.”
It’s still a beautiful thing, my chariot of re, so I forgive him his
colour blindness and give him his money.
When King Martoon and Mauve and Stooph have gone, I sit on
a milk crate in the garage and stare at my chariot.
What will I call him? He has to have a name.
I remember a passage from a book I once read, a travel memoir
by a West Australian author named Jesse Brampton, called Promises
to Keep. Jesse was a farmer who was lying on his bed one day with a
shotgun in his hand, about to blow his brains out. At the last minute
he decided to go thru-hike the 2,200 mile Appalachian Trail instead.
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FAT CHICK GOES AWOL
As you do. Anyway, in Atlanta on a bus shelter was a piece of poetry
called Soft Chains. It stayed with him, and it’s stayed with me too.
Soft Chains
soft chains are most
di cult to break.
a ection, ease.
the spirit, wide-eyed,
limp-muscled; nestles
on its side,
and waits.
Soft Chains are the things that keep us shackled to the Comfort
Zone, never sailing out beyond the safety of the harbour, never
living our dreams, never knowing what might have been. A steady
job, a regular pay packet, a comfortable house, a familiar routine.
Electricity, running water, reverse-cycle air conditioning. Family,
friends, churches and groups. Career advancement, social acceptance,
the protection of the herd. A familiar city. Favourite TV programs.
e Stu we’ve spent a lifetime accumulating.
During the past few years I’ve become acutely aware of the Soft
Chains and how they bind. How powerful they are with their siren
song of comfort and ease. How di cult they are to break. How many
times I’ve dreamed of travelling the world, then sat in front of the
TV all evening doing nothing about it. How I can blink and it’s ve
years later, and I don’t even know what happened to that time.
I sit on a crate in my garage in suburbia, and stare at my Chainbreaker.
33
FAT CHICK GOES AWOL
C H A P T E R T H R E E
NOT MY DREAM
As soon as Christmas break is over, I ride my trike to work. My
co-workers all know it’s coming; I’ve had a countdown on the aisle
window of my o ce for a month now, marking o the days one by
one. It’s not the done thing for an accountant, but I don’t care. I’m
excited. My dream is coming closer.
It was never my dream to be an accountant. It was my parents’
dream. e dream of all peasant farmers who migrated from southern
Europe to Australia in the 1960s: a nice big house, a car or two, and
kids who go to university and have a profession. It’s a reasonable
dream. at they should have a better life in Australia than they’d
ever have back in the old country. at their kids should wear a
suit to work, use their minds, make good money, and be somebody
important, instead of wearing cheap cotton and being enslaved to a
life of meaningless manual labour and poverty. It’s a lovely dream.
It’s just not my dream. Does any kid ever grow up dreaming to be an
accountant? I don’t know of any. Most of the accountants I’ve ever
worked with have only been in it for the money and the status. Most
of them have been miserable sods too.
I’m lucky. I managed to avoid becoming one of the miserable
sods. I managed to make being an accountant tolerable, even
enjoyable, by working my way into systems accounting, which is
what I’m learning in this job. Systems accounting isn’t really about
accounting. I know just enough accounting to make people think
I’m an accountant, but I stay away from the accounting part as
much as possible. Systems accounting is more like detective work
– guring out why the accounting system is producing the wrong
gures, xing the problem at source, and implementing a process
34
Anna Mitchell
that will stop it from happening again. I like problem solving. I hate
accounting. If I’d had to do accounting like a normal accountant, do
the CPA course and live in a world of endless journal entries, cash
ow statements, budgets, balance sheets and tax returns, I’d have
gone postal by now. But guring out systems, making them work
better, and making the lives of my co-workers easier with a solution
they never had before, or a quicker way to do things, now that’s an
accounting career I can handle, even enjoy. is, I could stand until
I retire.
As long as the jobs are temporary, and there’s a helluva lotta
travelling in between. Because when all is said and done, in the big
picture, it’s still a life of meaningless labour. I just get to sit down
to do it. I get more money than my dad did as a brickie’s labourer
and my mum did as a factory worker. And people think I’m doing
something important with my life. I’m not; I’m just making my
parents proud. I’ve made the nal part of their immigrants’ dream
come true. I nished high school, graduated from university, and I
have a profession. I’m a Good Girl.
A Good Girl who dreams of throwing away all of her parents’
hard work, and cycling, hiking and kayaking around the world instead.
A Good Girl who’s not prepared to wait 35 years for retirement
to do it.
A Good Girl with a new recumbent trike.
For four years the accounting recruitment agencies who have
been placing me in contracts have been asking me if I’ll consider a
permanent job instead of temporary work. For four years I’ve been
saying no. ey probably think I’m weird. e other temps I’ve
encountered, who are only temping until they get a permanent job,
de nitely think I’m weird. Who doesn’t want a stable, permanent
job? Especially if you’re an accountant. Accountants are stable,
permanent people.
35
FAT CHICK GOES AWOL
e reason I won’t do it, apart from the risk of dying of
boredom, is there’s not enough leave.
If I were to do accounting the normal way, with a permanent
job, in Australia I would get four weeks’ annual leave per year. For
a traveller, that’s not even close to enough time to do any decent
travelling. Especially when you live in Perth, the most isolated capital
city in the world, and it takes a couple of hours of ying to even get
out of the state. In Europe you could jump on a train in London and,
after travelling on that train for 24 hours, you would have crossed the
borders of half a dozen countries. From Perth, you travel on a train
for 24 hours and you don’t even cross the state border. From London
you could y to Moscow, a capital city on a whole other continent,
in three hours. From Perth you can y for three hours and not even
reach the capital of the same country.
ere’s long service leave, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to
work ten years in the same job to get three months of long service
leave, then wait another ten years for another three months. Besides,
even three months isn’t long enough for the kind of travelling I have
in mind. Slow travel. Very slow travel.
Turns out as a contractor, it’s even worse. ere’s no o cial
leave at all. You get paid a higher hourly rate instead. I haven’t had
any time o , apart from weekends and public holidays, since I started
temping four years ago. at’s what you get for being good at your
job – nishing one contract on a Friday and starting the next one on
the following Monday. It’s nice to be wanted by Planet O ce, but
it’s just not my dream to be an accountant for 48-52 weeks of every
year of the best years of my life.
It seems I have two choices. One, wait until I retire to hit the
road. Two, space my world trip out over forty years, travelling the
world in bite-sized pieces, a month at a time.
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Anna Mitchell
I don’t want to wait until I retire. ere’s no guarantee I’ll live
that long, especially with all of the crap I’ve eaten since I was a
young child. Even if I do live that long, there’s no guarantee I’ll be
physically able to cycle the world when I’m 65. Fat Chicks tend not
to age well, and joint problems and lifestyle diseases such as diabetes
are common. Besides, by the time I get to 65 and am eligible for a
pension, the retirement age might be 75. Worse, there may not even
be a pension.
I don’t want to travel the world in a stop-start way, having to
pack up and go home just as I’m getting into the rhythm of the road.
I don’t want my travels tainted by the spectre of having to return to
work. I don’t want to have to deal with several hundred emails in my
inbox every year when I return.
Since neither alternative is acceptable, I’m just going to have to
do this whole thing without leave. AWOL. Absent Without O cial
Leave. I’ll stick to contract accounting, go travelling for up to a year
at a time on my own dime, then come back to the Real World and
get another contract until I’ve saved up enough to bugger o again.
A series of guaranteed ‘mini-retirements’ throughout my working
career, instead of gambling on one big retirement at the end of it.
at’ll work.
Absent Without O cial Leave. In an armchair on wheels. I like
the sound of that. And now I have the armchair.
Well, I had the armchair. Until I got to work. Now a bunch
of my co-workers are arguing over who gets to have a turn on
the armchair next. Nobody’s ever seen a recumbent trike before.
Everybody, from the top of the Finance Department to the bottom
of the warehouse, wants to ride it. Especially my boss, Schle o
the Magni cent.
Schle o is Schle o because Aussies love to shorten names
by chopping o the last half and replacing it with ‘o’; e.g. David
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FAT CHICK GOES AWOL
becomes Davo, Jonathon becomes Johnno, and Daniel becomes
Danno – which is what they’ve done with his hard-to-pronounce
Belgian surname. Another much-loved shortener is ‘zza’; e.g. Terry
becomes Tezza, Barry becomes Bazza, Warren becomes Wozza.
Schle o is the Magni cent because Schle o is the best, most
precise, fussiest systems accountant in the history of the free world,
and what he can’t do with an AS400 server or an Excel spreadsheet
isn’t worth doing. When Schle o as a teenager in the 1960s
undertook the aptitude tests for a job at IBM, he did the math
questions without a calculator, as was required in those days. e
tester’s only comment after marking the test was, “You didn’t need
to answer the questions to seven decimal places – two decimal places
are su cient”. Schle o the Magni cent in his spare time is building
his own aeroplane. ere is no way in hell you would get me into
a homemade aeroplane – unless this grey-haired fusspot built it.
Schle o the Magni cent, also known in the Finance Department as
‘2DP’ (Two Decimal Places), is not a person who is easily impressed.
Schle o is wildly impressed with my chariot. He does bog laps
around the car park like a 19-year-old Aussie Bogan hoons around town
in a Ford Cortina. He won’t get o .
“Get o my trike you Grotty Boy-Person, or I will squash you like a
bug,” I yell as he races past, missing me by inches.
Schle o screeches to a halt and gets o my trike.
Satis ed I’ve trashed the dullness of Planet Job today, I change
back into my street clothes and pedal home.
e Car People, impatient in the peak hour tra c, don’t even
try to squeeze past me in the roundabouts. ey don’t know what the
hell I am, so they slow down and hang back, to get a good look. It’s
awesome. is would never happen if I was riding a wedgie bike.
6
An
6 Wedgie Bike = the recumbent rider’s ever-so-slightly derogatory term for a
normal bike.
38
Anna Mitchell
evil laugh erupts from me. “ e power, the power,” I bellow as I pass
through roundabouts unmolested.
Along with the power comes fame. Everybody is staring at me.
And I mean everybody. Pointing at me, staring open-mouthed as I go
past, and talking about me. Even waving to me.
I’m going to get that a lot.
e attention is a bit embarrassing. But the power to hold back
peak hour tra c, to be able to go through roundabouts without being
smooshed up against the kerb by a tonne or two of steel, is awesome.
As I ride past a bottle shop, a little kid in a station wagon in
the drive-thru leans out of the window and calls out to me, “What’s
wrong with you?”
I later work out he must’ve thought it was a disabled bike.
I’m going to get that a lot too. e big orange ag on a bendy
pole, a standard on hand crank bikes and motorised wheelchairs,
doesn’t help. Even though people can see I’m using my legs, it seems in
their minds orange safety ag equals paraplegic.
Funny how the world wants us to exist in pre-de ned boxes.
Only disabled people have orange safety ags. You must have a
permanent job, and aspire only to Marriage, Mortgage and Mini-
Mes while doing time on Normal Drive. You only get to pursue your
dreams after 40-50 years of this, when you retire. And Fat Chicks
don’t go cycling, hiking and paddling around the world. At any age.
Fuck it, I’m gonna do it anyway. Normal is boring. And, if you
ask me, a little insane.
Schle o and I discussed the whole Normal thing once. He didn’t
have a high opinion of it either. While he’s happily married with
adult kids, a steady job and a mortgage, he’s rebelling against Normal
by building a plane in his backyard. at’s what he lives for, not his
job. He’s not game enough to break out of Planet O ce – mostly
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FAT CHICK GOES AWOL
because he’s close to retirement and gures since he’s done this much
time on Normal Drive, he might as well serve out his last few years.
But he sees through it, as I do. Schle o calls us corporate
whores. I realise this is worse than being a regular whore. Instead of
merely selling our bodies for money, we are selling our entire lives
for it.
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