cycling

so i am three days into a month-long experiment called ‘is kt fit enough to cycle from seattle to LA?’ at this stage it feels as though the answer is ‘no, she most definitely is not fit enough and should stop the lunacy immediately'. but i don’t have a good history of stopping silly things until i have had a really good crack at them. so i’m going to persist until my legs... or my bottom... or my slightly/hugely unstable emotions get the best of me.

i’ve cycled a little over two hundred kilometres in the last three days. aside from a three-week frenzy of cycling in may when i got home from africa (mostly because i’d lost lots of weight and wanted as many people as possible to see me in lycra before i chunked up again) this is probably more than i have cycled in the last five years combined... and i’ve only covered ten per cent of my total journey. people should really train a bit more than i have to undertake this type of adventure. i guess.

the last twenty-four hours sums up pretty well how i feel about the whole situation. after a massive eighty kilometres yesterday of unrelenting hills and head-winds, i pitched my one-woman tent which looks and feels a lot like a coffin. 

me and my tent/coffin... fake smile

i went to bed on a pile of rocks, as has become my custom in the grass-free washington state parks. i got my usual few hours of sleep and spent the rest of the night trying to get comfortable on the rocks... ‘yep, if i get that rock just under my hip and that other one just above it, it’s almost like a form fitting mattress... almost.’

my feet standing on my 'mattress'

then it started raining and i discovered my one-woman tent isn’t completely water-proof, or water-proof in any way at all. the night was awful. i began to look forward to the pain of being back on my bike because then at least the rocks wouldn’t be severing my spinal cord anymore.

i got up early and packed my mountain of gear onto the back of my bike, leaving all my wet stuff hanging off the back to dry... ambitious... it was still raining. then ten kilometres down the road i got a flat tyre... it was still raining.

flat tyre... rain... gear on the side of the highway 

i pretty much hated my life and wondered why on earth i do these things to myself. the truth is, i just really love to challenge myself and i find that i learn the most extraordinary things when i do... things like... sometimes big interesting pieces of bark in the middle of the road look like squashed possums. i never would have learned that if not for this trip. the glass is most definitely half full.