I’m not going to talk about the entirety of the drive home from Bathurst yesterday as most of it was pretty standard stuff. I’m fortunate enough to be able to handle long distance driving quite well, though some would argue the distance between Bathurst and Sydney is not that long, but that wouldn’t be my only example, but I digress. For the most part it was a pretty straightforward drive. Some people going well under the speed limit, then speeding up when overtaking lanes were available, then slowing down when those lanes ended, and some people speeding pointlessly, but it was an easy and enjoyable drive.

On the way back home I’d planned to stop off at Black Cockatoo Bakery in Lawson to buy two baguettes and some coffee. Normally I’d stop at my favourite bakery in The Blue Mountains but it’s closed on Sundays and Mondays, and I like the baguettes at Black Cockatoo. I left Bathurst at around eleven a.m. as, despite wanting to stay a bit longer, I’d have to deal with a lot of traffic from people leaving The Blue Mountains and returning to Sydney if I left Bathurst later.

When I reached The Blue Mountains I stopped at Mount York to take some photos and give myself a slight break. I was operating on a low amount of sleep and I like the view from there. I also had until four to get to Black Cockatoo. Stuffed around there a bit, decided to look up how long it would take for me to get to the bakery. About forty minutes. Easy. Stuffed around a bit more, decided to make sure the bakery closed at four. It was closing at two.

I reached Mount York around twenty past twelve. When I hopped into the car and drove off it was almost one.

Thankfully the trip to Black Cockatoo was pretty easy. There was some traffic around Blackheath, but I was able to get to the bakery with twenty minutes to spare.

I bought two baguettes but no coffee as they’d already cleaned the machine. Put the baguettes in the car, bought coffee from somewhere else. Hopped in the car, did some brief playlist prep and drove off. Stopped at the traffic lights at The Great Western Highway, started the playlist at The Young Gods’ “Kissing the Sun”, and, once the lights changed got on the highway just before the song’s main part kicked in.

The baguettes were in a paper bag and I wanted to eat one during the rest of the drive. I didn’t want to take one out of the bag because I didn’t want to leave crumbs in the car, so I held both in the bag in one hand and started eating one of them, and it was not a graceful moment.

If this writing seems matter of fact, it’s because it is, and it also describes how I was eating. I was driving down The Great Western Highway holding two baguettes whilst eating one of them like it was the most standard thing in the world, and I was blasting “Kissing the Sun” with the car windows down because it was hot. A couple of times I put the baguettes down so I could drink my coffee, but otherwise I was eating, and quite quickly too.

So I’m driving and blasting music and eating, and I was going the speed limit and still going faster than everyone else. It wasn’t long before I reached a ute driver who was going a bit under the speed limit. It was somewhere around this point where the baguette bag tore at the bottom and all this flour stuff and breadcrumbs spilled onto me and my seat, and it was annoying but I kept driving because I wanted to get home. Anyway, I went to overtake the ute driver and not long after I started, they started speeding up.

I don’t know how it is in other places, but something I’ve noticed is that a few drivers don’t like being overtaken, and especially don’t like being overtaken by a provisional licence driver, and as such will tend to speed up and prevent lane reentry which, as far as my understanding goes, is illegal. I consider it a shitty move, but what am I gonna do?

So I was overtaking this driver whilst eating one of the baguettes I was holding whilst blasting music and they started speeding up, and shortly after we were in rough alignment the driver slowed right down. There was no nearby turn-off, and so I had to wonder if they looked into the car and saw me holding two baguettes and almost inhaling one of them whilst covered in baguette flour and crumbs whilst blasting music that isn’t considered “traditional” in the stereotypical Australian public cultural conscious (At this point the playlist somewhere between The Living End’s “Universe” and Cave In’s “Reckoning”; both of which are more traditionally rock than “Kissing the Sun”, but still not quite Australian traditional) and decided to let me get far away from them. As said before, my eating wasn’t a graceful moment. That said, I didn’t care if it was or was not; I don’t drive to look dignified and I was quite hungry.

Anyway, I finished the baguette in around fifteen minutes. It was quite delicious.