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From the it-feels-good-to-breathe department:

I went up to the cottage on Friday with some friends. We brought a car loaded with the three of us, groceries, their new canoe and some tools.

And two bikes.

We spent most of Saturday finishing the deck and building new stairs to go on said deck. The only work remaining is to rebuild the railing. The railing for the cottage deck is special. Not only does it keep you from walking off the edge of the deck in a drunken stupor, it also provides you a place to sit and to rest your beer. Actually, many aspects of the cottage share this function.

With the weather and humidity the way they were, in conjunction with copious amounts of sawdust all over my body including hair and ears, as soon as the last nail finished the stairs I made for the lake at top speed. A quick swim was followed by my friends taking their canoe out and me following along in a kayak. Then we came back for dinner and later some pie. The evening ended with a sauna, and as always follows a sauna, the Best Sleep Evar for me.

I don’t know what it is about the sauna and incredibly restful and perfect sleep. It just happens. It is a mystery that I’m happy to leave unexplained as long as it continues to work its miracle.

HALF-TIME: I know that reading what I write is incredibly boring. AZROLB becomes zombie-like after only three paragraphs. So I thought I’d stick this picture of a strange-looking crawler that we found walking across the new deck while enjoying pre-breakfast restfulness on Sunday morning. We didn’t know what it is. Do you?

What Am I?

Sunday morning was a restful wakeup and breakfast followed by a packing of all things returning to the city. With only the fridge contents left to be packed, there was time for one last canoe/kayak adventure and a quick final swim. Then Sunday afternoon officially started.

It started with two of us walking our bikes up the cottage driveway hill. We biked to Palmerston before we stopped so I could get a bottle of water. We stopped again in Elphin so I could die of exhaustion a little bit on the stairs of a church. We stopped again in Lanark to eat food. We stopped again at hwy. 7 so I could die of exhaustion on the stairs of another church. Actually, lying in the grass in front of said stairs. We stopped once more in Carleton Place where I got a lime Misty from Dairy Queen (and refilled my water bottle).

Here is the progression of pain: (1) My butt starts to hurt; (2) my hands start to lose circulation a little; (3) my feet start to lose circulation a little; (4) my neck becomes sore from looking up at the road; (5) after awhile I cannot inhale to the full capacity of my lungs anymore; (6) my knees start to feel a dull, yet persistent, pain.

I try various things like letting my arms droop, standing up a little, sitting up and riding no-hands style a little, removing my feet from my pedals’ straps. These little changes seem to relieve the pain in one place by moving it to another, which, if not relieving, at least adds variety. When somebody is punching you, after all, is it not better that they stop punching you in the shoulder and move on to your arm for awhile?

Anyways, I have learned some things: (1) I probably won’t do that again without company. I need somebody to call 911 when I fall over and die next time. (2) I can actually bike 140km without falling over and dying. (3) The worst part is about 1/3 into the trip, after around 50 or 60km, when all of the above progression of pain has already set in and you know you need to go through it two or three times over. (4) The worst part doesn’t end until there’s around an hour left and you realize that you are not in fact going to fall over and die, and that you will be in eternal bliss before the minute hand of your watch returns to its position (where eternal bliss is defined as anywhere not pedalling on your bike, but especially involving a shower followed by lying on your bed with a fan nearby).

When I woke up this morning, I didn’t have too much trouble moving around, but my lungs did not function perfectly until mid-morning at work.

UPDATE: It’s now next Friday. That’s right, I procrastinated the simple act of posting an already-written blog entry for 5 days. Last night on the way home I saw this sticker on a truck:

Not the Dyke Dungeon!

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