#90: Heat Exhaustion, Stomach Bugs and Steely Thighs
Happy Friday!
Apologies for the late arrival of this email - yesterday I was suffering from mild heat exhaustion and a stomach bug. It's quite hard to cycle in 30+ degrees heat while unable to eat or drink anything without getting stomach cramps.
But on with the show!
A Morning in the Life of a Steely Thighed Cyclist
0505: Wake up needing the toilet. Hold it in.
0515: Alarm. Switch off with eyes tightly shut.
0520: Open eyes. Stretch out back in child's pose on air mattress. Fantasise about a spa day. Search for glasses.
0525: Struggle into shorts from yesterday. They are damp. Start packing away unused sleeping bag. Keep searching for glasses.
0530: Pack away sleeping mat and other camping detritus in hope of finding glasses.
0535: Emerge from the tent into the morning dew. Wipe hands on grass and rub into face. Fetch shovel and biodegradable toilet paper from Calypso (the van) and find a suitable patch of ground for the morning constitutional. On the way back, make a cursory hunt for glasses.
0536: FIND GLASSES! Conclude that today will be a good day.
0540: Pull out the gas hobs to make porridge for 15 people with cinnamon, dates, nuts and banana.
0600: Eat sufficient porridge for the first 60km of cycling. Enough to make standing up uncomfortable and sitting down impossible.
0610: Throw bowl into a bucket for the wash up team. Jealously guard one's own titanium spork.
0615: Grab the shovel and biodegradeable toilet paper for, etc.. Realise that you've left your glasses somewhere. Conclude that today will be a complete horror show.
0620: Dismantle tent, shaking out the dew in a futile attempt to combat the overpowering smell of damp for tonight. Discover that, no matter which way you roll the flysheet, it mathematically cannot fit inside the bag. Resume hopeless search for glasses.
0630: Prepare bike for the day's ride. Discover a slow puncture, and fix same.
0635: Pull on a damp t-shirt, damp socks, damp shoes and damp cycling cap. Complete the look with a damp helmet and inappropriate prescription sunglasses.
0640: Fill pannier bag with last night's leftover dinner for lunch, hoping that it won't go fizzy by lunchtime (it will).
0641: FIND GLASSES! Conclude that today will be a good day, and that happiness is not found in life's vicissitudes, but in how you face them.
0645: Leave camp with a spring in your saddle for a 140km ride into the unknown...
Thanks SO MUCH to everyone who has put money into the Khora pot. Here's Strava proof of my steely thighed efforts - only another 6 days of cycling to go before Sofia! The small matter of the Carpathian Mountains coming up all too soon...
>> INPUT
Carbohydrates.
Water (insufficient quantities).
Trip in Bali, No Drugs Required (Playboy) A sensible article with a silly title about conscious breathing.
Peace in a Highland Bothy by Alastair Humphreys.
The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock by TS Eliot.
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table
OUTPUT >>
Abu Falafel (August)
Diavata Camp, Thessaloniki (August)
How travel works on the mind (August)
...COMING UP...
Everything's Queues, Episode 3 of Foiled, 18:30BST on Monday. "New tickets for Boyzone Live have been released, and Sabrina is determined to be first in line. And she is. Apart from the 804 people in front of her."
Now On: The Victor Frankl 5-a-day Book Club!
Membership Criteria: Read 5 pages a day of Man's Search for Meaning to complete the whole darn text in only 28 days. I'll be tootling through the text at just 5 pages a week, so you've got plenty of time to catch up.
Day 16
In today's pages (p84-88), Frankl addresses head on the question of the meaning of life. The search for this meaning is in itself a matter of life and death - for the deterioration of a man's courage and hope bears a direct correlation to the deterioration of his physical strength.
Quite simply, those prisoners who hoped the war would end by Christmas were very likely to die by New Year.
The only cure for this malaise was to follow Nietzsche's advice: 'He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.'
To start reconstructing their 'whys', Frankl and his fellow prisoners needed to make a 'fundamental change' in their attitude to life:
[I]t did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life - daily and hourly.
Because 'life' itself is unique for each individual, the 'meaning of life' can never be summed up in a single sweeping statement.
Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfil the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.
One of the tasks that life set for Frankl and the other prisoners was how to bear the suffering of a concentration camp. Frankl repeatedly refers to this suffering as a 'unique opportunity':
Once the meaning of suffering had been revealed to us, we refused to minimise or alleviate the camp's tortures by ignoring them or harbouring false illusions and entertaining artificial optimism. Suffering had become a task on which we did not want to turn our backs. We had realised its hidden opportunities for achievement.
This is a remarkable statement, bordering on incredible. It is no surprise that many people craved suicide. Although it was against camp rules to save a man attempting suicide, Frankl and others were able to persuade potential suicides from getting that far.
They did this by 'getting them to realise that life was still expecting something from them'. This is unique to the individual: some future that could not come to pass without their continued existence. Perhaps a child waits for their release, or they have scientific research still unfinished.
Frankl ends these pages with an absolutely humdinger of a paragraph, which is worth reproducing in full:
When the impossibility of replacing a person is realised, it allows the responsibility which a man has for his existence and its continuance to appear in all its magnitude. A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the 'why' for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any 'how'.
---
We continue next week...
Much love,
- dc
CREDITS
David Charles wrote this. David is currently gallivanting around Europe and will be talking to refugees in Greece. He is also co-writer of BBC Radio sitcom Foiled, does copywriting for The Bike Project and is almost always available for work. davidcharles.info // @dcisbusy
Comic by Gojko Franulic at Sephko.