YEEEEEEEAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!

Feels good. Really good.

For those of you not aware of the schedule, we have arrived in Bali. In fact, we completed our final cycling leg Tuesday morning, and have been kicking back and cutting loose solid for the last 48 hours. OK, so maybe we slept a bit. Or perhaps we slept a lot, but honestly I think we earned it.

As Two Beat mentioned, the time between full posts has been very long, which does a lot to dull the emotional intensity of many of the things you've all been hanging on the edge of your seats to read about. I'll try now to give a bit of a blow-by-blow account of the final stages of the trip, and what we've already managed to get up to now that we have some excess energy to burn off.

We had our first genuine rest day in Solo, the day we spoke at the high school. By genuine, I mean that our total altitude gain was less than 1km, and in fact it may even have been close to zero if Intan's dad hadn't convinced us to visit what turned out to be a truly spectacular waterfall. Definitely a great way to relax and recover.

It came as a surprise how little the rest day did to help repair our legs. I know for my part at least that the burning agony of any kind of height change whilst walking around had remained relatively unchanged. It may also surprise, however, that this really doesn't seem to have too much of a negative effect on cycling ability. Starting off is all kinds of painful, but once the blood gets flowing to your legs and you find a rhythm everything feels better, and if you're really lucky you may even feel good enough to enjoy the scenery.

Fortunately our legs actually improved in the following days leading up to our final mountain, Semeru. This was our biggest yet, and required two days to complete. It was a relatively light hike on the first day, which we completed in around 4 hours of walking, with a lunch break in the middle. We managed to dodge the rain, which was nice - a large group of mostly girls who were also doing the hike were not so lucky. We were quite worried about how much of a hard time they must have been having, and were going to have, but were later to discover that many of them were not climbing the volcano, only hiking to one of the camps.

Unfortunately, Two Beat came down with a nasty bit of fever/flu/something, and had to sit out the summit ascent. I suppose I should say sleep out, because the walk to the top began for me and Matt at 3am. We reached the summit at about 6, and it was one of the most spectacular views I have ever been lucky enough to experience. During the climb, before sunrise, we could see the lights from cities and towns surrounding the mountain. After first light civilization became much harder to see, so that the landscape appeared almost prehistoric, complete with Bromo, a very active volcano, smoking in the background.

The hike back from base camp to the crew was unpleasant, despite a spectacularly beautiful turn in the weather, because we didn't bring enough water. We did have a large variety of seafood flavoured chips, but they really were no substitute for fluids.

Then began our final three days of riding. Two Beat, who was still feeling quite sick, described the situation quite accurately when he pointed out that previously, we weren't sure if we had it in us to complete our journey, so we had to ride. Now that we're so close, we know we can do it, so what's the point? This became even more the case when we arrived on Java's east coast, and began riding down to Banyuwangi. Why were we doing it? We were AT the eastern coast, and all that remained was to reach our self-selected, arbitrary stopping point.

But make it we did. Fortunately, the ocean wasn't particularly close, otherwise our bikes may have been cast out to sea in celebration. As it happened, just getting off them for the last time was enough.

Now on to Bali, and good times for all. Our first full day we spent at WaterBom; similar to Adventure World, only with superior slides and far less people. We also visited Uluwatu Temple, where we watched the sunset. I thought that this was one of the more relaxing and beautiful places I have been to. The mood was only occasionally broken when one of the local inhabitants attempted to steal things from you - we saw one monkey try to take the glasses right off a woman's face. I would like to digress here about how perceptive monkeys are about whether you are paying attention to them, as tested by Two Beat, but I really should finish off.

Yesterday we went jet skiing, and by previous jokes about the instability of some of our group members came back to haunt me. Whether it was the prophecy of the bikes and the ditch coming true, or revenge for my comments about his mental state, or just that I am the one who is unstable, I managed to come of the back of a jet ski that Two Beat was driving, and rather badly bruise my rib. Irritatingly, it hasn't left so much as a discolouration, so all of my moaning and groaning seems a bit over the top, but I promise you it really did (and does) hurt.

Now it is Saturday, and we are preparing to end what has definitely been, from my point of view, the holiday with the greatest number of ups and downs, both in mental state and in altitude.That said, if you ever get the opportunity, I would strongly recommend this style of holiday. The pleasure to be had from working so hard to achieve a goal really can't be properly expressed in this blog. Hopefully the relatively few posts we've managed to put up are, if not always strictly positive, at least sincere enough to inspire some others to try something similar. I look forward to reading your own posts about whatever it is you decide to do :-)

Signing off,
Smokin' Mike

Also thanks for the comments

We've been reading them and are glad to hear from you.

We prepay our hills

If you are cycling uphill for about an hour and you think you're near the top, then you realise you are looking at a truck arrester bed, then you know what it is to be depressed.

We've been there and done that but it's been so long since the last full post that all of the emotional ups and downs have become indistinct. Many things have now happened that we could never have expected and each of these are worthy of a real retelling. The reality is, However, that when something worth telling happens you are not usually in the position or the mood to talk about it on a blog. When we are back you can hear these stories in full.

The first thing to relate is that we were in a car accident; it was a rainy day and two people on a scooter ran into our car as we were crossing an intersection. The driver of the scooter broke a wrist and lost some teeth but there was a long time when we thought it was more serious than that. We all jumped out when it happened and the crowd that gathered round were torn in interest between the crash itself and top-cat who was standing in the rain in his underpants. Three of the crew took the men to the hospital and negotiated with the family while we were left at the scene. In the end the owner of a restaurant we ate at let us stay in his house for the night. In the morning we got out of there as soon as it was light enough to see. 

We also climbed another mountain. Interesting aspects of this were the guides, one of whom did the climb barefoot until he chanced upon a pair of shoes along the way and neither of whom did any guiding whatsoever.

Today we spoke at a high school. Intan's dad was already scheduled to do the same and he invited us along. We said some things about self belief and perseverance, took photos for a newspaper and had a meal with the staff. Many thanks to the staff and studnts of SMA San Joseph.

For now we are in a city that people call Solo, preparing for the last stage of the trip. Mostly it will be long flat rides from here to Bali with a mountain thrown in for fun as well. If it turns out to be easier from here it's because we've done the hard yards already; we never go down a hill without climbing it first.

 If it turns out to be hard then that's ok too because that's what we're here for.

Until we all meet again. 

Ian "two-beat" Patullo  

Midday quickie

Just a short update to whet your appetites for later, hopefully this
evening.
I've made an interesting observation over the last few days. It seems
as though, by spending so much time with them, our bikes are starting
to reflect our personalities. Allow me to elaborate:
Top Cat has been having serious problems recently with his chain - it
keeps breaking. Despite this, he continues to blaze the trail, and in
fact the first time the chain broke and the toolkit wasn't present, he
fixed it with a hammer, a rock and a nail. I have interpretted this
particular event as reflecting that moment long ago when Top Cat used
the iron crowbar of his will to beat his personality into compliance.
Two Beat is becoming unstable. His bike is constantly toppling over
when left to it's own devices. A few days ago, it fell over and
knocked my bike into a ditch. I don't think this augurs well for me.
I'll keep you posted...
As for myself, the similarities have been largely external. My bike
has been getting more and more dirty and disgusting as the days go by.
It has also been making odd noises under stress. However, at our most
recent stop, it got a good clean, and is now looking like the lean
mean machine no-one suspected it was :-)