We all demonstrated quite effectively in Scotland that we are superbly unfit. We are all seized with renewed vigor in our quest to lose weight and become muscle machines.
The cycling we did in Indy in summer did nothing to prepare us for the hills in Scotland.
Now these were not large hills - more like undulations - but we had to walk up the higher ones - and if we did manage to cycle up the smaller ones we arrived at the top gasping and panting and needing a ten minute break to recover. I did not - unlike PK - have to lie on the road but I did flop over my bike on more than one occasion.
The bikes they gave us were very strange. They had no stands - so that when we stopped we had to lay them on the ground. They had no odometers - so the instructions saying ‘turn left in 1.2 kilometers’ were totally superfluous. We are stupendously good at getting lost. If it was an olympic sport we would be certain medalists.
On our first day - at our first intersection - we turned right instead of left. Then we descended for miles over an enormous pile of rubble with boulders the size of small cars - and arrived somewhere we had no knowledge of. It took us ages to get to where we should have been.
Worst of all they had no mudguards. It was always raining and often muddy so we finished every day covered head to toe in mud. When we picked them up the guy gave us pannier covers so that they did not get ‘mankey’. This was a new word for me - but I found out what it meant. He did not give us covers for ourselves and we got very mankey indeed.
The degree of our mankyness worried the proprietors of our B and Bs so we had to disrobe and de-shoe ourselves outside.
So we are starting our fitness regime. Cate has to start training for her walk next year. I think she is going too walk across the Gobi desert dragging a VW Kombi. I am going to train with her but my arthritis is such that I will have to cycle. We will go somewhere to find hills.
To start this process were are going to New Orleans in a couple of weeks to drink far too much and listen to music while eating mountains of cajun food.
Yea! Cajun food time! I love crawfish and shrimp étouffée and gumbo. I am headed north soon, though, to celebrate someone's 80th birthday and take my cousin to experience Vietnamese pho. It will be my first time to experience a corn harvest, as all the combine operating I did as a young man was in a wheat field and with ancient machinery. The new ones are guided by GPS units across the field.
ReplyDeleteI can releate to the out of shape condition, as business is in our heaviest month of the year. I need sleep but the dogs convinced me that they needed treats and I needed coffee even though I want to be asleep.
DeleteCan't believe you'd not heard of mankey before. I assumed it was an Aussie term but apparently brought from UK. It is an unfortunate state to be in when not in your own home! Have a good time in New Orleans, you gadabout.
ReplyDeleteDefinition of “manky”
DeleteIf you spell it erroneously as “mankey”, people will think you’re talking of a Pokemon creature.
DeleteYour Scottish fellow would’ve made himself better understood if he’d simply used a good old international adjective such as “shitty”.
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