Six Months In

Matt? Writing a blog? Correct. Do not adjust your browsers.

But needs must – we’ve headed into the Japanese Alps to enjoy the promise of cooler temperatures at night, the Autumnal colours of Japanese maple trees turning fiery red and the quiet life of mountain villages. 

We’ve got all that, perhaps too much. It’s dropped to around 3 degrees at night, the forecasted storm has finally rolled in, but hasn’t rolled out according to schedule. One or two nights at this site has become a very cold and wet four – with us moving our tent underneath the kitchen building for a bit more shelter! We’ve been keeping warm by visiting the same nearby hotel four nights in a row to jump in their sulphuric hot springs (and hide our battery bank on charge behind a fire extinguisher). It’s tested us a little!

So with that context, and the fact that in the last week we’ve celebrated our ‘6 months since setting off’ and ‘10,000km of cycling completed’, I thought it might be an opportune moment to add in some reflections from the trusty 4Ls model (eye roll from colleagues in my improvement-work world…)

4Ls I hear you say? Yes – nothing to do with liquid lunches, lacking libidos or listless lives – more to do with taking a pause and thinking. And maybe even doing something different as a result. This is from my perspective, not Sarah’s or ours – so you’ll hear the word ‘I’ a lot on purpose. So what have I Liked, Learned, Lacked and Longed for?

Liked

No surprises – I’ve liked riding my bike every day. My bike is a happy place for me – it makes my busy brain calm down, it distracts me from (unwelcome and welcome) thoughts and I love the feeling of getting somewhere and seeing things. This trip has been full of that. Be it a day of steep climbs, cold winds, wet days… there’s no place I’d rather be. As for touring by bike, it’s a wonderful machine to travel with. Walking is slow and you have everything on your back, a car is too fast to see things and isolates you from everything outside the tin can you’re sitting in. The bike allows exploring and interacting at the perfect speed.

Living outside day and night has mostly been a joy. I’ve noticed more about the seasons, plants, changing architecture, festivals and culture than I’ve ever seen before. There’s always something to see or talk about, which can be a bit exhausting too! I’ve spoken with hundreds of people – often where are you from, where are you going, why are you doing this, etc. But often far richer conversations. No-one owes us anything on this trip – it’s our choice to be doing it, and we’re financially comfortable enough to always know we can check into a hotel should we need. But the kindness from strangers at sometimes much-needed but also at bizarre times has been a constant theme. Free cakes at supermarket bakeries, farmyard camping after an accident, staying in guesthouses for the same price as the camp ground outside, ice creams and noodles from neighbours at campsites. We’ve always believed the vast majority of people in this world are good, and this trip has reinforced that.

Unsurprisingly, I’ve also liked not working (but see also, lacked). Work has often been stressful for me, but with COVID and the changing landscape of the NHS, I’ve found the last few years somewhat frustrating and testing. A break from that is nice – and has given me some perspective on what makes me happy and what I want to do on my return. Related to this, I very much enjoy stopping for a wee whenever I want and not having to wait until a 30 second break between online meetings.

And of course, food. I love food. But I’ve already blogged about that.

Learned

A big thing that I keep trying to remind myself about is ‘the game keeps changing’. Just when you’re mastering the art of hot weather camping, rainy cycling, Thai culture, Turkish drivers, Korean campground etiquette, etc… then the game changes. There’s always something to consciously forget and let go of (we’re not in Kansas anymore, Dorothy) and to re-learn and begin to accept. If you wanted it that way, you should have stayed there! But just like that – we’ll miss the ‘new normal’ (eurgh) when the game changes once again. 

And sleep. Sleep is so important. We sleep indoors once or twice a week, which helps recharge and reset the accumulated filth, but when you’re putting your body through all kinds of hell lugging a 28kg bike up a mountain in horrendous heat or plugging into a steady riverside headwind for 8 hours, you need to recover. We try but it doesn’t always work. Sleep, be it in the tent or indoors, often evades us – maybe due to wild doggos, noisy neighbours or just a busy brain trying to remember which country you’ve just woken up in. I’m at my worst when I’ve slept badly – worrying I won’t make the most of the opportunity of the day ahead and definitely the least patient with Sarah or myself.

I’ve also learnt I’m at my best when someone needs something from me. Be it someone back home, or the mini-pocket rocket who just needs to sit on my wheel for a bit on a rare day of tiredness. This links back to my feelings about work, something I’m lacking… (next bit!)

Sarah and I make a really great team, and I think a really great couple. We can ‘achieve‘ so much (sadly not that). This trip is also a bit of a pressure cooker for us. I think we’re getting on really well, but of course with a few challenges. One of those challenges is remembering that we’re actually a couple and not just a team. At the end of a long day when my eyes are droopier than ever before and I’m cocooned inside my sleeping bag, a goodnight kiss probably wouldn’t go amiss. Or maybe when cresting a mountain, having a chat about something fun rather than checking in on bladder status and tyre pressure would help with marital relations. Maybe.

Lacked

Though I’ve liked not working (as in paid job work, this trip has been hard work at times) I’ve missed the feeling of helping people. It’s what drew me in to the NHS in 2007 after deciding not to pursue a career in teaching, and it’s something I’ve taken great pride in doing, and achieving, ever since. This trip can feel self-indulgent at times: its only beneficiary is us, and that’s not what has motivated us in the past. It’s a novel and sometimes uncomfortable feeling.

This big trip we’re on has always been about having a bit of a palate cleanser after our fertility journey, but also to answer a few questions we had about our lives going forward. It’s helping on both counts – but we’ve got far less time to think, chat and decompress than we realised. One of my fears before setting off was that our abundance of time we’d have on this trip could feel like too much at times; what if each day we get to the campsite at 4pm and then put the tent up, eat and it’s only 5.30? Will I get bored of reading? Will I finally do some yoga? (Answer: 6 months in – nope) The reality is, there’s always a job – cleaning something, cooking something, fixing something, booking something, working out which route gives the better weather/safer riding/better camping/shop availability. And when all those jobs are done – you just want to sit and stare at the view, mindlessly watch another episode of The Office (US) or sleep. The amount of ‘alert’ downtime is quite limited, which is definitely a result of how we’ve decided to cycle tour around, but it’s different to what we imagined. 

Longed For

I long for things to reliably work. It’s easy some days to forget how everything does fall into place – but just of late a lot of things have gone wrong. My gears have broken, my bottom bracket is creaking, our tent has leaked, our sleeping mats have become unfixable and deflate, my sat nav was broken for a month, my down bag has got wet, our waterproof jackets are no longer waterproof, our tent inner has ripped and we’ve had a fly invasion, we’ve had un-forecasted storms and slowed down for storms that didn’t happen, google maps has sent us through the thicket, roads have become rubble, shops and restaurants in the middle of nowhere that promised to be open online were closed. Of course things have previously worked – but after six months of daily hammering in freezing days and sweltering nights, things are starting to give. We don’t carry much with us – everything was good quality, but we’ve worn some of it out. It’s maybe time to reinvest and repair some things, which isn’t that easy when you’re tired, don’t have an address and the outdoors shops are a bit… wack? But this is also a reminder to remember all those other 179 days of usage where there were no issues. Isn’t the human brain a complex thing?

Bit left-field here, but I miss shelves and cupboards. And fridges. And drawers. Sarah loves a good tidy up which is a great skill set from a tent-mate – but it’s also infuriating to get the saucepans out the saucepan bag which has been put in the cooking bag in the rear right pannier bag for the fourth time that day. Everything has its place and there’s a place for everything – you have to keep tidy, but… aren’t cupboards great? And shelves… at home a cup doesn’t fall over due to the wind or an errant twig underneath it. I didn’t have to check my beer can for a drunken hornet doing the front-crawl (swilled one into my mouth just last night!) The comfort of a house compared to the tent can be more than a little tempting but only on those days when you’re lacking warmth or dryness. Sitting peacefully by the sea and cooking your dinner as the sun sets is worth every half coffee cup lost to the grass.

So…

I hope you’ve found the above interesting. Some of it might be obvious, some of it might resonate and some of it might sound like the ramblings of a sleep deprived mad man. Whichever way, I share none of this in the spirit of woe-is-me… so none of it needs any soothing words in the comments! We’re having a great time; we’re also aware that we’re only having this amazing adventure because we’re putting ourselves in the way of quite a few obstacles in our path. I wonder how the ‘game will change’ next?