Tired of I.T! » Health

Don’t let your innerspace become your Outerspace

Dave — Thu, 20 May 2010 07:32:54 +0000

Don’t let your innerspace become your Outerspace
Posted on: Thursday, May 20th, 2010 at 12:32am

I’ve had a few rough days since the last posting. My energy level has been sapped resulting in a serious lack of distance covered in my usual time. I’ve locked myself into some pretty strict deadlines for end of day locations due to upcoming meetups with friends, and to receive packages sent from people. I made it into Kamloops in a decent time the other day, only to be given a one way climb on busy Highway #1 traffic with no shoulder, with 6-8% grades. To make it worse, a rainstorm came out of the blue and soaked me before I could get a chance and put on any rain gear. Stopping would have slowed traffic and caused accidents on the busy stretch as well. The only choice was to keep pedalling, dodging the river flowing down the hill along with the massive amounts of garbage it was bringing along.

Sitting out the storm resulted in a few hours lost for my day, which I needed to use to pick up a box from Greyhound to return my old laptop. I had prepared the system to be backed up and moved to a replacement system earlier in the day. Another climb for 4km got me to the store where I needed to pick up a new computer, but guess what! No Stock, and no suitable replacements for me.

I left empty handed, feeling that I put myself through 3 hours of torture for nothing, cursing along the way, over to my Warmshowers Hosts. My GPS was telling me that I had 505km to go, and I had to rely on alternative directions and methods of getting there, resulting in me arriving way later than what I had told them. They were fantastic, feeding me, and enlightening me with cycling stories, but I couldn’t help but hold onto a chip on my shoulder from the last 3 hours of my day. It took the rain and some failed expectations to cloud me over turning from cheerful to unpleasant. I couldn’t sleep until about 3am, knowing that 8am was coming soon.

The next day, skies showing signs of sun I pedaled off to my destination, Vernon taking a route that was suggested by the previous nights host. 122km was on the estimated plan, and I struggled climbing the hills out of Kamloops, taking my average speed to 9km/h – I’m double that normally. I stopped and had lunch figuring that I’d recharge a bit with a break, trying to take in some very wonderful rolling scenery with open ranged livestock, mountain goats, cows and horses dispersed between forests of Ponderosa Pine, prickly pear cactii and Sage brush. I ran out of fuel and couldn’t get my pasta to soften properly, but ate it anyways. Then came the rain.

This time I scrambled, put on my clothes and proceeded to cycle – Immedfiately feeling a leak in my pants. I’ve spoken about this before, but now I was fuming. $200 for a pair of cycling pants, and they don’t work a single bit. I devised plans to write a public letter to them, ripping into them, demanding something to be fixed, cursing, and glaring long after the rain stopped as my pants underneath were now soaked including the insides of my boots (again). Bike becoming heavy, with the newly added load of 2 months of mail, and a computer box I couldn’t return, I struggled up the normally easy rolling hills. Chafing was starting making me very uncomfortable, seriously burning my bits.

I stopped many times throughout the day, no energy, trying to load myself up with food from the convenience stores, not helping with the limited selection of chips, chocolate bars, energy drinks, and just plain out unhealthy offerings. Stopping at the side of the road after my 8th hour, only travelling 80km by this time I became overly frustrated and lied down, napping on the shoulder. The winds were strong and I was now down to 4km/h going down hills! I started questining my sanity, and hadn’t smiled at all to any passing cars. Any people I would run into in stores would get brief one word answers from me and any locals were not giving, nor getting any time of day. Caught in a funk I spiralled downwards, pushing myself until I made it to my destination, which turned out to be an alright stop – outside of Vernon on Westside road in an Indian Reservations community park. They saw me come in and were looking well after it became dark for me, but I was stealth. Nothing but 3 cans of beer for food and porridge packages. I drank them and went to sleep. 10.5 hours of cycling doing me in.

I awoke many times throughout the night, finally wide open. I thought about the past few days, how that I didn’t want to go through another set of those – making me miserable, and really thinking what were the overall causes of it. Was it because I had higher expectations? Did I plan out my route too strict? Did I not leave room for errors? Did I just need to chill out?

I thought about one of the mantras I think about quite often – Don’t let your Innerspace become your Outerspace – basically, I look at it as if you’ve got something going on in your head bothering you, don’t project it onto other people, as they’ve got enough to worry about. I stopped to think who could help me get out of the funk. The list equated to 0 people. Just me – Really I’m the only one out here. I’m homeless, and rely on the good willed nature of strangers, Warmshowers Hosts, family to help me acheive this journey. Do I want to make their experience and memory of me a negative one? I’ve been on the road for nearly 45 days and these 2 are riding over me like a black cloud, memories of a dark storm that had the potential to cause some significant damage. Packing up the tent today, I told myself I was going to have a good day, not complain when something goes out of the ordinary, but look at it with a different set of eyes, realizing it is all part of the adventure – Like really, what do I have to be upset about? I’m following my dreams doing things that so many people wish to do.

Hungry, I pedalled the 20km to the nearest store, and had a breakfast of wonderful pastries, skipped the coffee, and went towards today’s destination of Westbank, BC. It’s the backroad to Kelowna, not very used, crappy shoulder, and some serious climbs. I managed to have the computer register 12% climbs! The sun was shining, the on the other side of the climb was a fast descent, and I looked forward to the descent not letting the first part of the challenge break me.

My toes have been giving me some issues lately, I can’t put pressure on my right foot, otherwise I experience serious amounts of pain. I hit a gravel patch, pulled my right foot out of the Powergrips and placed all my weight on the foot. It was such a shock I tipped over, flying off the bike faceplanting into the gravel. I lied there, covered in dirt, sweat, scratches, with all my handlebar bag contents strewn all over the side of the road and just started laughing. I laughed for a good minute talking to myself about that I wanted to organize that bag anyways some day before moving forward.

It wasn’t that far after I realized that if this had happened the day before, I likely would have started cracking pretty hard, with mind running places deep and dark. I attribute today to myself waking up, thinking about the positivity that there is in my life, and how I’m not going to let a few wrinkles not get me down and shape my or other peoples experiences. With that, I met 4 strangers today with a big smile on my face, shared great conversations, made it to my family’s house in good time, and continued to be positive. Optimism over Pessimism, if you let your negative thoughts take over, it’ll emit from your energy, so – I figure if you are having a bad day, why not stop and pull out something that assists in getting you out of your ‘woe is me’ funk and continue being awesome by smiling?

Just some late night thought’s I wanted to put to the blog. This isn’t the last of the tough days, but I know to watch out for them. I’ve just hit 3000km, a pretty impressive feat for me just in BC!

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Day 7 – No rest just a recharge

Dave — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 04:05:50 +0000

Day 7 – No rest just a recharge
Posted on: Saturday, September 19th, 2009 at 8:05pm

Distance Travelled: 87km
Total Distance: 724km
Cape Lookout, Oregon

The rain came in around 6:30am, so I rolled over, covered my ears, and waited till it ended. At 10am I exited my tent, to see various stirring outside from other bikers and proceeded to deal with the pack-up, this time clipping the tent fly to my back and running around to get the wet off. I left my bike exposed to the rain and the sadddle decided to bend a little bit. My butt isn’t affected by it, but IS dealing with Oregon’s fine choice of toilet paper. It hurts to sit down, due to some. Err.. ripping. I’d like to find out who in their right mind thought it was the best solution to put a tree and rub it against a sensitive part of your body? Bring back the bidet’s please. Http://www.biffy.com gets my vote any day.
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Instead of resting, like Matt and Chelsea decided to today – I moved forward and seem to have fallen into a little groove of bikers each day. It chilly out, but definitely a nice ride on the coast, checking out all the boats, and quite a bit more traffic than usual, until I realized it was Saturday.. Got a chance to see a Steam train powering up and making all sorts of horrendous noises, and kept on going towards Tillamook, where I heard rumors of a cheese factory that offered free samples. I found it.

After 5 go arounds of the sample table it was time to leave, but not without leaving with a bag of curds to munch on along the way. I exitted the 101 and headed down the 103 – which gave me solitude, and severe side winds. I passed a fellow biker up a steep hill during this side trek over the “3 capes”, and ended up at Cape Meade, and had the opportunity to check out a bizarre tree known as “the octopus” and get astounded by some technology made in the mid 1800′s – the cape meade lighthouse. 70% of the fresnel lenses are still intact and you are able to get right up close and personal with them, while at the same time taking in some astounding views. I snapped some photo’s, talked to some visitors and munched down on some of their food offerings before making the trek over to Cape Lookout State Park.

I got alot of my growlies that I had the night before out of my system, and came very close to pulling out the MP3 player to listen to some tunes, but instead let some bizarre tunes by Toecutter and Maladroit fill my head for a while. As I pedalled on the coastline towards Camp Lookout many rescue vehicles whizzed by me. 15 minutes later, while I was paying for my camping fee (again Oregon, you out-do yourself with $4 camping fees), I heard from the person on staff that a paraglider had gone straight into the cape. I setup my tent in the hiker-biker sites, which consisted of old growth forest and beach access and enjoyed (???) a blueberry ale I had picked up at the last grocery store. We heard a tremendous noise and witnessed the US Coast Guard hospital fly out of the rocks and right onto the beach in front of us, transporting the injured parasailer into a stretcher, and then take off again, spraying sand and water everywhere in a huge perimeter.

My tent was soaked still so letting it air out for an hour helped incredibly, and I took the time to walk out on the beach, and just chill right out waiting until the sun had completely set on the horizon into the Pacific Ocean.

Dinner tonite is ‘Cock Soup’ something that has been in my cupboards for a while, with Couscous, and dried cherries mixed in. It’s not the best, but is covers the majority of my food groups. I’m doing my best to put fruits into my system daily, and am going to test out how salad fares in my panniers, as a good dose of veggies would do me right well.

After 7 days I’ve had some good days and bad days, but overall, still very content that I am doing this. I’ve noticed, and found that each biker that I meet, is on a similar vision quest – doing it because of a) b) or c) or just “why not?”. While I do miss some of the comforts of back home – pretty much just girlfriend and cat, I don’t think there will be any issue in stopping me from moving forward on the “big” tour.

Before I go…

An open letter to ‘Mustache Ride 09′ and ‘Country Ride G7′:
Your continued vandalism of bathrooms, campsite benches, and road signs, are simply causing unnecessary work by Parks, Highway, and Utilities staff to clean up after your tagging. While I appreciate your quest to complete your goals and dreams, your promotional tactics need re-aligning. May you forever be cursed with flats.

On being injured….

Dave — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 02:59:52 +0000

On being injured….
Posted on: Friday, August 7th, 2009 at 6:59pm

This week has been interesting to the say the least. In a fit of celebration Jen managed to topple off her bike last Saturday night while we were returning home after watching the Celebration of Light fireworks in Vancouver. I sprung to action, had her brought over to the side of the road (while 400,000 people left the downtown area) and quickly built up a plan to get her back at home away from all the loud noises and madness that usually ensues on our streets at 11pm.

She sprained her knee pretty well. A couple sad days of watching her hop around, before we were able to get her onto some crutches opened both our eyes to a potential issue… “What if something like this happens on tour?!”

I’ve gone through similar (I managed to step on something in June and cut my foot open enough that I couldn’t ride a bicycle for 2.5 weeks, let alone walk comfortably) yet this is all new for Jen. Just papercuts and grease burns for this woman. Clearly, if one of us is hurt, regardless of the severity, one of us is on our own deailng with the cooking, camping, fetching of supplies, and care for the other person, saddling that person with huge amounts of stress.

I’m well versed in my first aid training, and am going to ensure Jen has enough so that she feels comfortable with dealing with little to big issues. Outside of my training, I’ve read books such as the SAS Survival Handbook but one book of note that is offered for free by Hesperian Publishers is ‘Where there is no Doctor: A Village Health Care Handbook‘ also available at Amazon.com in a a softcover pre-printed.

[amtap book:isbn=0942364155]	[amtap book:isbn=0061733199]

This book covers various topics, such as how to examine, and care for a sick person. Dealing with medicines, dosages, and antibiotics, and whole chapters dealing with Skin, Eyes, and other internal issues. It is a gold mine of information for those touring cyclists who wish to carry in their panniers, or hold on their Netbook for later review. Hesperian Publishers also has a number of other titles which may be of interest to you.

Look out for the article posted soon regarding “What’s in my First Aid Kit?”. This should aid any cyclist going on long term journeys.