Insight in my thoughts….

Today started like most other days, the sun was shining and we were filled with motivation to continue our big adventure. Our cloud had other plans with us although… After only half an hour it started pouring and it would continue untill we stopped at our hotel 500 kms further down in Russia. So no fancy pictures today!

These are some insights in my thoughts : You cannot imagine how awful I feel right now, I’m cold, wet and have a pain in my neck that is almost making me vomit! Ok, so I’m driving with a Goretex suit and there is no single drop of rain leaking through, so why would I complain? Well, the first reason are my shoes. It states on the side of both my shoes that they are ‘waterproof’ which they are defenitely not! After only (and I kid you not) 15 minutes of rain, the first drops start seeping in towards my toes. This makes that you get a funny feeling in your shoe, like your feet start drowning. At first you laugh it away, but after an hour or two your feet start to get really cold and if you could see them after a whole day in these shoes, it’s the same reaction you get when you stay in the bathtub for too long. Wrinkly, cold feet! Next to your feet that get wet, your hands also get soaking wet. Not in the least of course because I am driving with my cool and airy summer gloves, but even if I would put on winter gloves they would get wet after a few hours. The only downside with the winter gloves would be that you could NOT and I repeat not take them off once they are wet because you will never in hell get them back on again! So not only are my feet freezing cold and my hands soaking wet, but on top of that I start having unearthly neck pain! Why, you ask me, do you get neck pain, just by driving a bit through the scenic countryside of Russia? Well, I will tell you! The downside of driving next to a huge field (and I meen huge because it was kilometers long and wide) is that when there is wind, you get a windtunnel effect! And boy was there wind today! On top of the pouring rain there were winds of at least 80 km/hr that came roaring over the field and kept banging into us! I had to lean agains the wind with all my might to prevent myself from being blown off the road! When a truck passed you, the wind would fall away for a second and then there would be a brick wall of wind just as the truck passed you! Every time that took my breath away.

At a certain time I was thinking of something to best describe what I was feeling like and I came up with this: I feel like a wet icecream that has fallen on the ground, has been trampled on, smeared across the road and then licked by a scruffy dog!

A lot of times when I was driving today, I was cursing at Seb, even though I know that he was suffering almost as hard as I was and even thought he could never be held responsible for the weather. But the mind wanders when you are in pain and you start thinking the most awfull things like: why in hell am I here when I could be in the sun somewhere, I HATE this trip, I hate everything about it, I whish I would get hit by a car, break my arm and get to go home…. Fuck this shit, I give up!!!!

But then you get to your hotel, have a hot shower and take some medication for your neck which makes you a bit fuzzy in the head and you really have to laugh with the things you thought when you were on the bike. Will it be the last time that I have dark thoughts and suffer like this…. HELL NO! Will this make me give up and go home so I can sit in my sofa and sleep in my own comfy bed….no!

It turns out you have to suffer a bit for your trip to be worthy of the title adventure and ours just earned its stripes!!