LifeAthlon

Cycling Sumba + Wrap-Up 2023

‘Well,’ Ceci says, as we ride along a peaceful seaside road. ‘I don’t think today’s going to add much to the overall uphill of the trip…’ Two minutes later, the road ends. ‘Huh.’ I say. On paper, the day was all downhill. All of 34kms with 600 metres of cumulative downhill. We even slept in…

Cycling Sumbawa + Flores 2023

‘Kiri-kanan, kiri-kanan, kiri-kanan, kiri!’ It’s 0530, dark still. Ceci & I have stopped cycling to spy on a schoolyard. A sergeant is yelling in Indonesian, but the military singsong is impossible to miss. It’s the classic ‘Left-right, left-right, left-right, left!’ of a marching drill. The kids marching in line chant back in unison, matching the…

Cycling Bali + Lombok 2023

Ceci sticks her tongue out in concentration. Or maybe it’s one of those stick-your-tongue-out selfie poses? She’s trying to capture the essence of two large demonic sculpture, but the tiny little screen on our GoPro makes it hard to tell whether they are properly in frame. It seems like they are carved out of sheer…

Cycling Java 2023

Tutup, looks up. Looks up again. The morning breakfast of fresh greens falls out of her mouth. An expression of crosseyed bewilderment twists her face, followed by such an expression of joy that it almost looks like pain. Before she knows what her legs are doing, she runs. Runs, skipping and leaping wildly into the…

Cycling Sumatra 2023

Banyu Hadi looks up. Looks up again. His face, still swollen from sleep, still dripping from the morning’s ablution, expresses many things in the next seconds. Consternation, first. The knit brow, the glance over his shoulder. Then, the true facial acrobatics begin. Confusion, perhaps even awe. Surprise certainly, fluidly transitioning into wide-eyed, slack-jawed, befuddlement; before…

Why? WAM 50k, 2022

It’s dark, soon to be 5am. After a 5 hour sleep, after three days of carpooling from Nelson, after some 300km of training, the WAM 50k stretches out before me like a serpent in the dark. There is no gun to run from, there is no destination to run to. Only an arbitrary line drawn…

Love in the Time of Corona – A Squamish Hibernation

Rain. How quickly things become normal. How quickly damp and cold becomes simply the way a body feels. Winter in Squamish creeps into the soul with such subtle artistry. And sure, at first we keep the inner-fire alive, stoking the low flames with memories of sun, the smell of cooking earth, of winters spent in…

Cuba 2020

‘Cinco pizzas por favor.’ I’m not sharing. Ceci can get her own. When I was a kid, or so my grandfather always reminds us, my brother & I would chuck full garbage bags against the garage door of his cottage and say that our utmost ambition in life was to become garbagemen. And to this…

A Day in the Life of a Brusher

No one is a human being at 3am. Not party till dawn 3am. Tossing and turning, have to get up for work 3am. In the grips of withdrawal from a modicum of sleep you don’t even remember consuming, you drag on your threadbare button-up shirt. Wafts of laundry detergent and gasoline, drift in your stumbling…

TranSierra Norte

Take a swig of this, te va a rehidratar! The day is over, we’re in a rusty carcass on wheels sucking diesel. Through the dusty windshield ahead another miracle of engineering running on black smoke and buena suerte is transporting the bikes. I’m looking through the Gatorade bottle that’s being handed down to me, at…