Hello from Loja, our final resting spot in Ecuador. Our trip from Cuenca proved to be as challenging as we thought. We had a few short days with huge mountains to climb and camped out in the rain quite a bit. Seth got sick again (luckily we were already in a hotel), and we ended up thumbing a ride to Loja.

Here are a few pictures from our last leg of the journey.

Sorry for the short post -- not a lot has happened, but figured it'd be good for people to know our status. Tomorrow, Wednesday, we board a bus for Piura, Peru. Then we'll bus through the coastal heat to Trujillo, where we'll be meeting up with a good friend -- Jared. He's coming with a fresh attitude and food from home. We can't be more exited -- friend, food, and a new country!!

Also, an article was just published in Women's Adventure Magazine, written by Dana McMahan (thank you, Dana!). She did a story on Kelly, you can check it out here:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/external_clips/565327/portlandtopatagonia.pdf?1393869376

There are several ways to describe occupational therapy, particularly because we, as occupational therapists, can address impairments in such a wide array of environments or situations.  Our profession is difficult to describe well in a succinct manner.  However,  this is a decent sentence to help clear things up a bit:

Occupational therapy is about helping people do the day-to-day tasks that “occupy” their time, sustain themselves, and enable them to contribute to the wider community.

Each day-to-day task, or activity of daily living (ADLs), can either be broken into tiny segments or evaluated from a more broad spectrum.  One of the ways to evaluate one's day is through his/her routines.  If you think about your day, think about how many routines, big or small, you complete daily.  Something as finite as wetting your toothbrush before you start to brush, or something as broad as waking up, coffee, then shower, then breakfast, then work, etc....  With our blog and Facebook posts, we have spoken to very broad manners.  With another guest appearance by yours truly, I decided to play my role as an OT and evaluate our daily routine and share it with you.

A typical day on the road, camping.  Things obviously change from a hotel.

Depending on forecasted high temperature, the alarm sounds between 4:30-5:30am (the hotter the climate, the earlier the alarm).  Seth is not a morning person.  I am.  However, I really like lazy mornings drinking coffee.  None of this has changed much since leaving the comforts of home.  We have realized we need about 2 hours from the time we actually climb out of bed until we are rolling down the road.

I get dressed first, my clothes laying on the tent floor next to the sleeping bag for easy access.  Pack up my pillow and the compartmental bags of clothes (thank you, Blank Brand) into my pannier that's sitting in the vestibule next to my tent door.  Grab all of the small things that attach to my bike that are too valuable to leave on due to theft or rain -- light, the GoPro, and items from my handlebar bag like my wallet and phone.  Pack up the electronics, the Nook, iPad and headlamps.  Pack up the journals that go into my Camelbak bag.  Set all of these separate bags next to the door so that when I get out of the tent, I can easily reach inside and move them outside.  Seth has yet to start his day at this point. He's awake, but not moving.  It's too difficult for the both of us to move around too much at the same time.

I climb out of the tent, in the process evaluate the saturation of the rain fly (lately, it's absolutely soaked with rain or dew)...  I grab the bags I've just packed and start to pull apart our bikes, unlock them and open the trailer bag to remove the standing water from the top.  While I start to organize our stuff outside the tent, Seth is getting dressed and packing up the remainder of stuff in the tent -- included the sleeping bag and folding up the sleeping pads.  I advise him on the layers of clothing needed in the outside temperatures.  Then I unpack the stove and get water boiling for coffee.  

We try to move constantly.  There is always something to be done.  While the water is boiling, I remove other small bags from the trailer bag so that I can repack it properly (sleeping bag and tent have to go in the bottom or the puzzle just doesn't work).  

Seth's wheelchair fits under his side of the vestibule but it blocks him in.  I unzip his side of the tent, allowing him freedom to get out and continue with the morning.  By this time, the coffee is typically ready.  I have a titanium cup and he drinks from a Kleen Kanteen bottle.  This is the only time we stop.  If possible, I sit down with my coffee.  We typically take a moment to enjoy the scenery, typically mountains waking up amongst the clouds with us.  Once the coffee is gone, though, it's back to work.  Clean the pot, pack the stove and have bags lined up along the trailer to organize them before packing them up for the day.  Seth is disassembling the tent and I start making breakfast.  Breakfast is usually a white bread product with peanut butter.  I fill up Camelbak bladders and bottles with water I've hauled from the day before. 

Put all the panniers back on my bike, load up the trailer bag.  Seth gets on his bike and we take off in the southern direction, hopefully before the sun has poked its head up over the mountains.  

We try to ride for about an hour before having our first stop with consumption of more simple sugars.  If the riding is easy and we lose track of time, it's 2 hours before our first stop.  Seth will eat some orange slices, I prefer a Gu or gel product.  If possible, we've stopped at a place that I can pee in the bushes.  

And we continue.  We try to stop at least every hour for a bite to eat...sometimes more or less frequently depending on the road quality.  We have a mid morning snack, typically consisting of a granola bar.  Through Ecuador, we've been drinking iced tea or coke as well.  As we ride, we stop to buy items where ever convenient or necessary.  The tea and coke purchase is typically in the morning so we can sip throughout the day.  Around 1-1:30 we have lunch.  Depending on our supplies, it's a repeat of breakfast, but sometimes it's that same white bread product with cheese.  Sometimes fruit, too.  And coffee.  We typically make enough coffee in the morning to make a 'road coffee' - filling the kleen kanteen for the day.  I clean up and we continue.  If the afternoon grows long, we stop for another sugar snack -- orange slices and gu.  But we try to plan our lunches so that it will carry us to the end of the riding day. 

Since we don't know what the towns will be like, what they will have or how frequent they will be, we stop at gas stations or stores when we can.  Seth will typically take advantage of the toilet at a gas station since camping toilets are non-existent and squatting is not a possibility for him.  We will get snacks for the afternoon -- chips, nuts, more fresh bread, but most importantly WATER. Because of the weight of water, we try to save this purchase for as late as possible.  But I will carry it all day if needed.  

Depending on the terrain and the long term goals, we start looking for a decent camp site in early afternoon.  Things we consider:  the next day's terrain -- are we coming close to a HUGE climb that we can't finish today, so lets get as close as possible and hit it hard in the morning?; are we meeting someone soon and have to make so much mileage in a day to get there?; do we feel awesome and just want to keep going?; do we feel like shit and just need to call it a day?; don't want to pass up this perfect campsite?; we need supplies, so we HAVE to keep going?; etc -- there are several things to consider.  After 5 months on the road, this is getting easier....  

If the day goes as we hope, it's about 3:30 when we find a camping site, look for a person to ask permission, and start evaluating the ground.  Where do we put the bikes?  My bike is far too heavy to stand on it's own.  It does best with a wall or something solid for stability.  If no wall, Seth's bike will do.  Where do we put the tent?  Flat land, away from water, shelter from wind, shelter from the road and any potential people who are going to want to talk to us all night and the next morning.  Where can I go pee?!  My bladder is about to burst!!  

Set up the bikes, Seth gets out of his and we start setting up the tent.  If there is someone who wants to riddle us with questions, Seth entertains while I set up the tent.  Before I put on the rainfly, I put down the sleeping pads and sleeping bags, then throw in the electronics, my Camelbak bag, get out a headlamp.  Then put on the rain fly.  I put our clothing panniers under the vestibule.  Then I jump in the tent, clean off as best as I can with baby wipes and change out of my riding clothes, leaving them next to the sleeping bag in preparation for the next morning.  Seth is probably still talking to whomever.  If there is a dog, I'm attending to him/her and beginning to get out snacks to replenish our system before dinner.  

It gets dark around 6:30 and it's nice to be in the tent by then.  So we cook dinner and eat around 5 or so -- typically as many calories, grams of carbs and protein we can pack into one pot.  We eat a lot of rice, pasta, eggs, tuna, peanut butter and bread.  Not really exciting, but it does the trick.  We clean up with as little water as possible since we are usually using drinking water.  I put everything back into the trailer bag but not packed completely since I'll be getting the stove and pots out for coffee in the morning.  I pack up everything water tight for any potential rain and lock up the bikes.  We pee and brush our teeth.  Seth jumps into the tent first so I can put away his wheelchair.  Then I get into the tent.  We read and write in our journals.  Darkness falls and if it's quiet, we are fast asleep with no problem.....hopefully through the night for about 10 hours.

The ideal campsite consists of what is so easily found in the US:  level ground with decent shelter.  But most luxurious of all -- running water and a toilet.  But given the rarity of these, we are continually finding ways around whatever obstacles come our way....like spending a day in the tent in the middle of no where when we were both exploding in both directions.  Luckily we make a pretty good team.  We are opposite in almost every sense of the word.  We see things differently and are able to use each other's opinion to make the best of most situations.  

If I were to go through our routine from a hotel, it would be pretty similar -- we plug in and recharge our electronics and take a shower!!  A shower both in the evening and in the morning.  We have learned to never pass up a good cleaning -- especially if there is hot water.  Now we're really talking luxury!     

And in case you were wondering, Seth and I like a wet toothbrush before we brush.

Quito is a city struggling against it's own topography.  The center of town, stretches down a narrow plain, hemmed on one side by steep, volcanic hills, and on the other by tumbling erosion that bottoms out at rivers lying more than 2,000ft below.  It seems a curious place for a capital, for as the city expands the bare concrete construction is forced to cling to ever steeper slopes.  When we arrived in the northern outskirts, after climbing 2,200ft from a warm night in Guayllabamba, there was still 20 kilometers of surging, fuming city streets to navigate before finding our rented apartment, still on the north end of downtown.  

Already a week in country we were both still struggling with the altitude and the equatorial sun, intensity magnified in the thin air.  Luckily, we didn't have much to do in Quito other than meet Stevens, the jovial, square-faced Colombian that runs the Maximus project.  Stevens happened to be in town for a few days, meeting with his Ecuadorian counterparts as they work to raise a rugby team amidst a non-existent disability culture.  It's a difficult task, as Xavier (in charge of Maximus's Quito efforts) explained when the took us out to dinner at dark, chic little pub in Quito's restaurant row.  "We have about 8 players that come out to practice, but probably only two will actually class into the sport.  The others are amputees with too much function.  We just can't find people with quadriplegia."

"In a city this big, they have to be out there somewhere." I said.

"Yes, the are here.  Just hidden." Stevens said with a pained look on his face.  It's a problem he deals with on a daily basis.  "After the hospital they disappear into the city, sometimes hardly ever leave their house.  Yes, they're definitely out there, but..."

In Latin America, and much of the world, this is the problem.  With no infrastructure or culture of empowerment, a traumatic disability often translates into a sentence of life-long dependency, especially for those at the low-end of the function spectrum.  People are cared for by their families and never learn the skills, or are able to afford the equipment, that would allow them to function in the world.  Anyone who's been involved with wheelchair rugby knows the power of sport to empower independence.  It's no different in Ecuador, but even getting people out of the house and to a practice is a monumental challenge.  

Unfortunately, Xavier didn't have anything going on during our short stay in Quito that would allow us help with the rugby team.  We hope there will be plenty more opportunities for that.  If nothing else, hopefully our trip can raise the visibility of persons with disabilities throughout this amazing country.  Whether it's through newspaper coverage, or the dozens of people everyday who stop ask us where were going and what were doing, many of the who see us probably didn't know it was even possible for someone who uses a wheelchair to pedal a bike.  

Not that we've been pedaling anywhere quickly since entering Ecuador.  Our progress has been strung between topography lines.  We're either moving really slow or really fast, but the fast never lasts long enough to make up for the slow.  Such is life in the Andes.  The scale of the terrain here takes some getting used to.  It's a strange thing to be able to pedal your bike between different climates.  One day we're riding amongst Mango trees in the Chota Valley and after a big climb the soil was nourishing potatoes and carrots.  At sea level, the transition from tropical fruits to root vegetables takes many thousands of miles; here it's compressed to a few thousand feet of elevation. 

Our climbs are now measured in thousands of feet rather than hundreds.  We climbed a little over a thousand feet over 8 or 9 smog choked miles leaving Quito, battling buses and taxi cabs for right of way in the slow lane.  After descending back to our starting altitude, we again started climbing and found ourselves exhausted after only 23 miles.  Camping in a buggy field behind the truck parking at a gas station would prove our best choice of the stretch between Quito and Riobamba, for the truckers were more interested in sleeping than talking to us.  

The next day would prove a tough one, for my blood sugars had gone wonky through the night, staying high as I slept.  High blood sugars make me have to pee more than normal (in addition to a variety of other physiological problems) and I woke up dehydrated and sluggish.  Blood pressure problems ensued and climbing steadily throughout the day, I had one of my worst days of the trip on my bike.  4 hours of pure suffering brought us less than 10 miles down the road, though I felt like I'd done a century.  Worse, the exercise and insulin were doing little to lower my blood sugars.  Diabetes is something I rarely talk about (either in the blog or with people in general).  It's partly because I've had it for so long that it's become a manageable, if annoying, part of my life. It's something I have to deal with, but it's rarely more than peripheral to my day.  The other reason is that, for some reason, everybody seems to have an opinion about what I should be doing to manage my diabetes.  Even after long years of learning how to adjust insulin to compensate for Paralympic level physical training, or riding a bike for 6-7 hours a day, people often get a confrontational attitude about things I should be doing differently with my diabetes care.  Unless you're an elite-level athlete with diabetes and quadriplegia, or my Endocrinologist (Hi Dr. Beard!), I'm not going to listen to your tips about how to better control my blood sugars.  Thus, I prefer to keep it private.  Anyway, obviously something was wrong and it was wreaking havoc on my physical output.  After checking again and finding continued high blood sugars, I switched to new bottles of insulin and waited to see if they'd do the trick.  Luckily, after setting up camp in a school yard and cooking dinner over the unleaded flame of our stove, the blood sugars had come down and I went to bed finally feeling back to normal.  

The next day we kept climbing, another 7 miles or so, straight up above 10,000ft. For the first time since the Baja, I felt really good on my bike.  As it seems to go on this trip, Kelly felt like shit.  Fortunately, when Kelly feels like shit, I can actually keep up and we moved at more or less our normal pace.  Up at the summit, the road rolled gently through a high pine forest and the breeze blew sharp like Portland's east wind in the spring.  Riding at speed in chilly weather put a grand smile on my face and even the descent cooperated, shallow enough that we actually covered 30 miles by lunch time.  Unfortunately, that afternoon, after covering a South America best 43 miles, we repeated a Mexico mistake and set up camp in a town plaza on a weekend.  Lesson learned, again: you cannot sleep in a Latin American town plaza on a weekend!  Well you can try.  But between car stereo jams and a late-night soccer game where the teenagers kept sending the ball flying into our tent, it wasn't the most restful night.  Yes, shithead teenagers suck, but as our grand political orator G.W. once said: "fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again."  Anyways, hopefully we won't get fooled by a peaceful looking town plaza again.

We beat a retreat at sunrise and descended into the sprawling, grimy town of Ambato, only to have to climb out of the river gorge it straddles, up probably the steepest hills of the trip so far.  Climbing is one thing when you're in the mountains, with clear air and sumptuous views, quite another when it's accompanied by fumes, Ferreterias (repair shops), and gawking townies.  Seeing our stop/start struggling, some local good samaritans came to push us both up a particularly nasty stretch.  We must've looked like shit because one of them offered us some breakfast and a shower at his  house.  We wound up setting up camp on the Rios family's 3rd floor terrace because we felt as bad as we looked.  Soon the family was offering to drive us to visit Baños because we wouldn't be passing through there on our route, and "it's beautiful and there are lots of foreigners!"    

An hour later we were packed three wide into the family sedan, sucking on granadilla and zapoto (an orange-fleshed fruit, stringy like a squash with a mildly pleasing sweetness, messy like the juiciest mango, which is best eaten anywhere other than the cramped backseat of a Nissan), and descending out of the central highlands towards the Amazon Basin.  Baños has the hostal/pub/tour operator uniformity of backpacker towns worldwide and after some lovely sightseeing, we were eager to get back to our terrace and rest our tightening bodies.  The Rios family, however, was out to make sure we got the full orient of Ecuador experience. Our jaunt down the road soon turned into a 9 hour expedition, descending farther and farther into the thickening rain forest, visiting family friends, property shopping, sucking the meat off whole Tilapia, us wondering at every stop: maybe, just maybe are we going to turn around yet?

This is probably a good time to expound on Ecuadorian hospitality, which is both wonderful and indescribably maddening.  The Ecuadorians we've met so far have been incredibly friendly and generous, offering us refreshments, places to camp, bags of fruit, bottles of water, and genuine interest in our trip, all as we pedal down the road.  They, however, have been entirely disinclined to take no for an answer.  Politely refusing a large bag of grapefruits, plums, or pears, explaining that: A. We have no more space on our overloaded bikes to strap 5 pounds of fruit. B. 5 pounds is a lot of weight when you're pedaling up the side of a mountain. C. We won't possibly be able to eat all 5 pounds of fruit before it goes bad, or is bruised to shit because, you know, it'll be jiggling down the road on top of a bicycle.  Is usually greeted by a smile and: "No, no, no, you need this fruit, just take the fruit."  Similar scenes occur when chatting with people on the side of the road and trying to explain that we need to get moving.  "Oh you need to keep riding, okay...but I have a brother, and he doesn't ride bicycles, but he has a motorcycle and he once took a trip to Peru, have you been to Peru yet?..."  Or getting ready for bed and explaining that we need to get more than 6 hours of sleep if we're going to make any distance the next day.  "Oh, I bet your very tired, but are you sure you don't want a cup of tea, it's quite tasty.  No? Okay, yes, you must be tired.  Say, this is a very nice looking tent, is it warm?  Are you sure you won't get wet if it rains?  It's very cold out right now, are you sure you don't want a cup of tea?"

All of this is exactly what traveling is all about, cultural differences and the like.  For a large majority of the people in the countries we're traveling through don't really understand the need for privacy, personal space, and peace and quiet, which are primarily northern constructs.  But when you've ridden your bike for 60 kilometers through the spine of the Andes and all you want is a quiet patch of grass to cook dinner and lay your weary body, all these little differences can make you want to tear your hair out and pretend you forgot how to speak Spanish.  All part of the journey though, right?

Which brings us back to our expedition with the Rios family.  Where, after 8 hours of driving around we now found ourselves at the Baños thermal baths, which we'd already explained we didn't have much interest in, but papa Rios had decided that it would be good if we just stopped by and he'd see if we could elbow our way past the waiting throngs so that we could just go in and see the pools, which are really quite famous, don't you know?  As I was about to start banging my head into the window, Mother Nature intervened by way of Mt. Tungurahua, which had started erupting only a few miles away from Baños.  Papa Rios, to our infinite delight, decided it would be prudent if we headed back up to Ambato.  On the way up, we rounded a bend and spied a line of cars pulled off the road with their blinkers flashing and their occupants on the grass marveling at the sky behind us.  We pulled over and less than a minute later the black sky lit with specks of red, lava burst into the sky and then roiled down the upper peak.  "Holy balls!" I exclaimed.  Definitely one of the most surprising, and awe-inspiring moments of my life.  Which is how this trip seems to be going, just when we start to get grumpy and annoyed with everyone, something grand enough happens that makes us step back and marvel.

So eventually we did make it away from the overly hospitable Rios family, but not before mama Rios decided to gift me a half-used bottle of foot-cream.  The next morning we started climbing up towards the highest mountain in Ecuador, Mt. Chimborazo, which crests at a snow-covered 20,500ft.  We knew we'd not make it up to the 12,000ft road summit in one day, so after a few steep hours we saw a sign for a roadside inn and decided to pay $30 for the privacy that a locking door affords.  After a solid night of sleep, both Kelly and I felt revived and we rocked out to Biggie Smalls and Jay Z as we packed our bikes.  The climbing started as we'd left it, steep and unending, but after warming up we both felt good on our bikes.  Grinding up hills, with patchwork fields and cloud laden hills following us the whole way, it felt good to be pushing my body and having it respond like I know it can.  Another 18 kilometers up, and we crested into a misty, wind swept landscape where a lusty bull was attempting to mount his bovine desire and, sadly, striking only air. A few kilometers later, unable to have seen the snowy peak of Chimborazo because of the heavy clouds, we started back down the mountain.  The road was smooth and the curves gentle.  I opened it up and flew past Kelly, the thin air offering little resistance and soon topped out at 49mph, blurring by Fedora-clad locals who laughed at our speed as we passed.  For 10 miles we barely dipped below 40mph.  By the time we reached the pueblo of San Andres, I was giddy with endorphins, trembling with adrenalin.  We only had another 8 miles to the promise of a rest and some quality food in Riobamba.  I said it then and I can confirm now that I've never had a better day on a bike.  

Es posible que no es posible, pero vamos a ver. (you'll have to make it to the bottom for a translation)

It's been a tough couple of weeks for us on this Long Road South. There will be a full new post coming shortly, but for now here's the skinny... We're currently in Tulcan, Ecuador. After escaping the heat of Mexico and spending a fantastic week getting to know Bogotá, we descended out of the mountains right back into the same conditions that we left behind, only worse. Neither Schwan nor I had ever experienced temps in the mid 90's on a cloudy day. We never want to again. It took only two days of riding in Colombia to confirm that my body simply cannot handle that kind of heat and humidity while riding.

We holed up in an air conditioned room in the steamy town of Girardot to try and decide what to do. At this point it had been over a month since I had a good day on my bike, over a month with Kelly having to take the extra burden of nursing me through the heat. The heat had broken our resolve and we decided we needed to reevaluate the whole trip. After some heartfelt consultations with friends and family over Skype, we came to the conclusion that we needed to consider all options - calling it quits, changing our mission to be one of outreach rather than continual riding, changing locations to somewhere more feasible to ride on our own. We were within a hairsbreath of calling the trip all together.

One option was to bus to Ecuador, where we could stay at elevation for nearly the whole country, thereby eliminating most of the heat, while adding mountains and high altitude riding into the equation. Ecuador, we thought, was possible. The rest of South America, we're still not sure. Was it worth it to ride for another month and then find we could go no further? Eventually we decided that yes, it was definitely worth it. When would we ever have a chance to ride through the high Andes again? Missing out on such an amazing opportunity because of the chance of future failures was counter to the whole mission of our trip.

We got on a bus (three actually) and rode for 24 hours through the spectacular landscape of Colombia. We hate bus travel but it got us to where we needed to be. So here we are, in the high mountains of Ecuador. It kind of feels like we're starting all over again. We still have no idea how we're going to cope with the incredible terrain that lies ahead. One pedal stroke at a time, I suppose. It's possible that it's not possible, but we're going to see.

The heat has done us in.  In this quest to push our physical boundaries we’ve found our limits.  I now know I can ride 40+ miles in 90 degree, high humidity heat if it’s relatively flat and there’s a breeze.  I cannot climb hills, day after day, in the same heat, humidity, and direct sun.  As much as I’m loath to admit it, it’s beyond my physiological limits.

It began two weeks ago, in the low, rolling hills outside of Mazatlan.  It was the start of the section of our journey that both Kelly and I had been the most worried about since we began planning over a year ago – a 3 month expanse of high temperatures and high humidity from mainland Mexico until we reached the highlands of Colombia.  In our planning we had hinged the success of The Long Road South on the adaptability of the human body.  For the first 2,500 miles of the trip, our bodies responded to the stress we placed on them better than we could have hoped.  Kelly’s legs got used to moving an additional 120lbs of weight on her bike.  My arms slowly adapted to churning up multi-mile climbs.  Both of us became accustomed to riding for hours upon hours, often 40-50 miles or more (our longest day to date was a 69 miler), day after day.  But entering mainland Mexico, we felt like we were starting all over.  Kelly dreads the heat and I simply don’t function in it.  I’d hoped my body would acclimate.  As we kept pushing south, towards Manzanillo and some rest with my parents, into bigger hills and ever-muggier weather, both Kelly and I started struggling more and more.  My body was trying to shut itself down, which forced Kelly to shoulder an even heavier load of our daily tasks.  The breaking point came as we pushed our last two days into Manzanillo.  I’ll take you there now…

We stop for a bite to eat in the meager shade of a roadside oak.  We’re at the top of a climb, the third 500 footer in the past 10 miles, but there’s no breeze.  Even in the shade the stagnant humidity rests on my skin like a blanket.  35 miles into the day and another 12 to go.  So far we’ve been lucky.  Through a constant flow of rollers, some high some low, but all feeling steep to my arms that’ve been heavier than normal for the past few days, dark clouds have kept the worst of the heat at bay.  But now, at 1pm, they’ve finally blown through and the full force of the sub-tropical sun is beating down.  Over the past 3 months I’ve gotten pretty good at suffering; pain and exhaustion are familiar companions on this journey.  But the past few days have been different.  The signs have been creeping in that my body is trying to shut itself down in this heat - headaches, insatiable thirst, fatigue that doesn’t break after multiple rest days.  Now the strength seems to be leaching out of my arms.  Kelly and I eat some animal crackers and down some coffee.  She goes to refill the pressurized water tank that runs to a spray nozzle pointed at my face.  One of the connections has been leaking so I’m going through a tank in 7-8 miles when it’s this hot out.  More stops mean more time in the heat.  More refills mean one more thing for Kelly to do during our time on the side of the road as we try to nurse my body through the heat.  When she just wants to be sitting in the shade, resting her legs, she’s up filling bottles, refilling my tank, grabbing food for us to eat.  For her, the rest is no rest at all. 

It’s time to move or we’ll never make it to Punta Perula, to the hope of a bed and some air conditioning.  We start down a sizeable descent, the wind whistling some relief, and I find that I can’t concentrate.  Kelly’s back wheel, my brake, steering round a bend, thick vegetation whipping by at 35mph, I can only lock my attention to one thing at a time.  My brain keeps trying to reach for the dozen other things I need to process while descending but it feels like my thoughts are caught in a hamster wheel that’s spinning too fast.  Blood sugar? I think.  Could my blood sugar be dropping too quickly?  I try a mental systems check.  No, nothing else feels like blood sugar.  But what else could this be?  The terrain levels out and I have to start pedaling, but the world still feels like it’s moving in fast forward.  I try to pedal through.  Just keep moving and it’ll get better, I tell myself.  But it doesn’t.  “Can you look for a spot to pull over?” I yell ahead to Kelly. “I need to check my blood sugar.” 

Thinking it’s urgent Kelly pulls off where’s there’s an angled concrete ditch.  “Pull down in there and I’ll come to you,” she says.  I don’t process what she’s saying and pull right next to her bike.  “What are you doing?” she asks, exasperated.  “I’m still out in the road, why the hell didn’t you get off the shoulder?”

I have no idea what she’s talking about.  “I…” I start to respond and find myself grasping for words.  “cannot…process…anything right now.  I don’t…know what the hell’s going on.  But…I…need instructions.” 

“Okay.” She goes into action mode.  “Can you pedal a little farther to find a better spot.

“Yes.”

She pulls back onto the road and finds a shady pullout a quarter mile down the road.  She grabs my meter and I check my blood sugar.  Not low, high.  Higher than normal, higher than it should be, but not high enough to be causing serious issues.  This is worse than being low.  At least being low would explain my spinning mind.  “It’s not my blood sugar.” I say.  I’m worried.  I feel like I’ve ridden myself crazy.  Kelly pulls out the thermometer and I check my temperature: 100.8.  The messed up thing is that this doesn’t even seem that high. 101-102 degree temps have been common since we entered heat and humidity of mainland Mexico. We didn’t know it at the time, but for the past few days I’ve been exhibiting many of the signs of heat exhaustion.  Having quadriplegia, with a compromised thermo-regulatory system and the inability to sweat obviously exacerbates my susceptibility to heat-related illnesses.  Having Diabetes makes me even more susceptible.  Now, I’m creeping closer to heat stroke.  If I wasn’t so confused, I’d realize that our trek through Mexico and Central America is going to be much shorter than we’d hoped.

The confusion and hamster wheel head start to dissipate after about 10 minutes.  They’re replaced by a profound fatigue.  It’s 89 degrees in the shade, but I feel like I could fall asleep sitting in my bike.  “You want to get out and lay down?” Kelly asks. 

“No,” I respond.  I’m afraid if I lay down I won’t be able to move when I get up.  Heat exhaustion or not, we still have an 850ft climb and 10 or so miles to go before we’re somewhere we can sleep for the night.  Riding there is our only option.

We make it to the top, but by the time we get there I can barely move my arms.  Cresting the hill the breeze returns and soon we’re flying at 35mph the last few miles to Punta Perula.  As soon as it flattens out Kelly starts pedaling and quickly puts a 100m gap between us.  I pedal but no power is going into the cranks.  She slows and we limp into town.

The next day is supposed to be easier.  Only 32 miles to Manzanillo, maybe less (nothing is as straightforward as it seems down here), only a few climbs between 250 and 550 feet.  But there are no clouds in the morning.  I do fine climbing until the heat descends at 9am.  Then my power evaporates as quickly as the spray on my skin.  We have a descent shoulder, which means no shade.  By 10am my temperature is 101.  Kelly refills my spray tank and I struggle 3 miles to the next town with cold water.  One day at a time transitions to 100 meters at a time.  I can’t think of anything but cooling off.

A few hours later we make it to the condo my parents have rented for Christmas near Manzanillo.  We cool off.  We drink some beer.  We recount our past few days to my parents.  Hearing the struggles and symptoms out loud makes us realize how dangerous this riding has become. With no relief for three months, until we get to the mountains of Colombia, we decide to look at our options.

The Long Road South is now going to be shorter.  Slightly.  On January 8th we’re getting on a plane and flying to Bogota, Colombia.  We’re exchanging southern Mexico and Central America for the high-altitude Andes.  Most of the distance we’ll lose by flying to Bogota, we’ll make up in southern Patagonia. We’ll spend a week in Bogota, acclimatizing to the 8,500ft altitude.  Since we’ll now be months ahead of our original schedule, we’re going to push to ride the length of South America, covering 6,300 miles to Tierra del Fuego and the end of the road: Ushuaia, Argentina. Instead of dreading the next three months, Kelly and I are excited about the riding.  Another ten days of resting our bodies and minds, of hanging with my parents in Mexico, then it’s time to get back to work.  We still have a long way to go. 

Thank you, again, for your continued support.  It has kept us going as our struggles have threatened to overwhelm the trip.  There’s no way we could’ve been able to make it this far without you.

It feels a bit weird getting off your bike for a while after you've been on it for 6+ hours a day, six days a week for 2 1/2 months.  While Kelly and I vacationed with her parents along the Sea of Cortez, everything felt amazing - plenty of  sleep, and leisurely mornings sipping coffee on our beachside patio, American football on a pirated Canadian satellite feed, a full kitchen and home cooking.  We'd gone from spartan days cycling across the desert to a comfortable facsimile of home.  After three days I forgot all about the irrepressible fatigue I'd felt on the stretch from Guerro Negro to Posada Concepcion.  On that second peninsula crossing, I'd dreaded getting on my bike in the morning for the first time on this trip.  My arms felt leaden and the morning sleepiness that normally burns off after a few miles of riding would haunt me throughout the day.  It was for that fatigue that Kelly and I decided to take an extended rest when her parents came down. For those first few days, the rest felt as wonderful as it always does.  But in the middle of our vacation I'd find myself exhausted for no discernible reason, I felt foggy most days, and my muscles more sore than they'd been since the first days of the trip.  Out of the rhythm of riding, my body was finally letting itself recover and it didn't feel good.  Kelly was in the same boat, but getting to spend so much time with her parents made everything a little easier.  She'd wake at 6am to chat with her mom over a cup of coffee and leave me passed out in bed.  I did not complain.

When our vacation was up, and Kelly's parents had to fly back to Ohio, we packed our bikes on top of their rental Durango and took a ride to La Paz.  We made a conscious decision to sacrifice our final stretch of the Baja (259 miles and third desert crossing) to the internal combustion engine.  The rational was this: we needed the rest. We couldn't take more than a few days without getting far behind schedule.  Behind schedule we'd have to wear ourselves right back down to catch up. This is the problem with trying to cycle 10,500 miles and having a hard deadline to finish: most decisions yield to an unforgiving calendar.  Both Kelly and I knew we'd made the right decision for ourselves and for our journey, but as we started down the road from Loreto I couldn't help but feel a cheater.  Sitting in the air-conditioning, speeding along at 100km an hour, floating up a twisting mountain road like gravity wasn't really that powerful after all, devouring chunks of desert in 45 minutes that would take us a long, hard day to ride, it was luxurious and foreign and made me grumpy as hell.  Gone was reading minor wind shifts, analyzing terrain, monitoring what effort was sustainable, smelling a change in environment before I could see it, or having a continual conversation with my body.  Instead it felt like were in a sealed capsule with the only purpose of getting from A to B.  It reinforced my appreciation for what makes traveling by bike valuable.

Unfortunately, our arrival in La Paz was only the start of a stretch of motorized transport for us.  Our plan had been to ride the 18 miles from La Paz to the ferry terminal and catch a boat to Mazatlan. Problem was that all the ferries to Mazatlan were booked clear through to January.  While this seemed a bit fishy, we weren't about to wait around an extra day for a boat and not be able to get on.  The only other option was to take a boat back north to Topolabampo and then load our huge pile of gear onto a bus to get down to Mazatlan.  Suffice to say, by the time we made it to Mazatlan we were fully ready to get back into the rhythm of riding and see what mainland Mexico had to offer.

Getting out of town was a shit-show as bad as Tijuana.  It felt like a different country compared to our past few weeks on the Baja. Here there were a helluva lot more people, and they were in a hurry.  Schwan compared it to riding through Kansas, then getting dropped in the middle of Manhattan on your bikes and having find your way out.  But find our way out we did, and soon we were out amongst the fields and farms and marveling at the greenery.  Plants that aren't thornbrush and cacti!  Look, this bridge has actual water underneath it!  That side road is actually paved!  It was all very exciting.

The road cut inland, amongst the low foothills of the Sierra Madres and we were confronted by the force of the mainland heat.  We rode 47 miles the first day, then 57, then 52.  We didn't want to ride that far but there was nowhere else to stay.  The roadside was thick brush and standing water, bugs,  furry white jumping spiders, and 2-3inch diameter snake carcasses.  Not exactly anywhere to pitch a tent.  We'd wake at 4:00am to be loaded and riding at sunrise.  A few hours of pedaling before it became too uncomfortable, longer breaks when the sun was out in force.  It was a good thing we'd rested, because the heat exhausted us like the steepest mountains.  After three days we made it to Tuxpan, and the only place we could find to stay was the shittiest motel Kelly and I have seen yet.  Grime smeared walls, toilet with no seat, the sheets and floors were clean but the mattress puffed dust and dirt that could've hid all manner of bugs when Kelly pressed it.  So we laid our sleeping pads and bag on the tile and cooked outside.  I tried to write. "Writing from the shittiest hotel we've had yet.  Last option though.  Rode 52 through some brutal heat," was as far as I made it before my eyes got the dry scratchiness that means I need to close them and focusing long enough to transfer thoughts from head to paper became near impossible.

At 6:45 the next morning we were bumping through the motel's  courtyard, over cast stones that ride worse than cobbles.  The traffic was already heavy: those who have cars speeding to work, those who don't walking in single-file groups along the roadside.  It was already 70 degrees when we left town and headed back into the minor foothills of the Sierras.  It was our first climbing of noticeable length since we hit the mainland.  The heat came early, and by 9:20 we'd stopped at a Pemex, Mexico's national oil company's gas station, for cold water to dump on our heads.  So the day became a series of leaps between shade and water stops.  94 degrees by 10:30, topping out at 96 about noon.  I've never seen Kelly so hot, her face red and dripping with sweat like mine after a spray.  Perversely, seeing Kelly's struggles bouyed my spirits.  Knowing she was that hot made my perceived suffering seem justified.  For her part, Kelly did an amazing job not getting grumpy from the heat, resigned as she was to the inescapability of it (although she can sweat, Kelly has a profound hatred of the heat). On we rode.

Our fortunes have improved immeasurably since then. I'm finishing this post on the tail end of two days of rest that we've earned from our 4 long days of riding.  We've been eating delicious meals in a sleepy little beach town and lounging by the pool and in the courtyard of our wonderful hotel - an old rail building dating to 1883.  Life swings pretty quickly from pleasure to pain when your on a trip like this, gotta enjoy the good stuff while you have it.

When Alejandro Bukovecz speaks of his father, Antulio, his eyes glow and an irrespresable grin spreads over his face.  It's the same grin in the weathered photo he has placed on the table for us to see.   In the photo, the grin is framed by wrinkly cheeks, sun-browned to the color of tanned leather.  The eyes are shaded by a baseball cap but still squint against the bright light of a Baja afternoon.  "He was always smiling," Alejandro says.  "That's just how he was, no matter how he was doing, or how hard things were, he always had the same smile on his face."

Looking beyond the smile, Anutulio sits atop a boxy metal frame painted orange.  The orange steel extends in front of him to a headtube that attaches a bicycle crank assembly, chain, and 20" front wheel with a knobby tire.  A stringy leg straddles one side of the wheel, and on the other, a fleshy stump rests just behind the edge of his shorts.  

Anutulio was a life-long bicyclist and racer before he was in a car accident out in the desert near Cataviña.  Losing one leg and most of the function in the other, Antulio languished in the hospital.  "I'll never forget the first time I saw him after the accident," Alejandro says. "He was sitting in his hospital room looking out the window and he looked like a bird in a cage.  He looked so sad!  Like all of the life had been drained out of him.  I mean his skin looked yellow! He says to me, 'I need you to talk to a welder.  I have an idea for a tricycle.'"

I smile as Alejandro shakes his head in wonder.  It's a mindset that I can identify with.  For an active person, a debilitating accident leaves you feeling like the foundation of your life has been suddenly stripped away.  Your most fundamental connection to the world, the ability to move through it, has been severed.  At that point, there are only two real options - to despair or to figure out new ways of moving.  Antulio decided to get moving again.  

So he began designing, and with Alejandro's help, fabricating his own handcycles.   I suppose no one told him what he could or couldn't do now that he had a disability, or perhaps more likely, he was too stubborn to listen.  But Antulio started riding his new bike like he had before - 100 kilometers a day, often riding 8 days from Mulegé to Ensenada, then back again.  Anutulio toured without calling it touring, he was simply going for rides and they took him across Mexico.  With a modicum of tools and supplies strapped to the back of his bike he would ride, for days, weeks at a time.  Sleeping behind roadside bushes, underneath highway bridges on sandy arroyos, he lay wherever he needed to. 

One time, he had ridden all the way across Mexico, and was passing through Veracruz when a big para-cycling race was about to take place.  Antulio had raced before his accident and decided to try it again.  Riding his homemade trike, with his tools and gear still strapped to the back, he finished second in his classification behind Mexico's reigning national champion.  Antulio figured he could have beat everyone if he hadn't had to change his own tire mid-race.  "That was fun," Antulio told the champion. "I'll come back next year and beat you."

And he did.  Antulio, the wrinkled man in his 60's, won the event for the next few years.  The former champion complained that Antulio had too many gears in his handcycle.  "Next year I'll bring another bike, you can race in that, and I'll still  beat you," Antulio responded.

We show Alejandro my handcycle and he revels in the similarities to the bikes he helped his dad build, marvels at the fancy new materials.  Alejandro ask how far we're going."Argentina," I say.  

He puffs his breath out in a silent whistle.  "That's great," he says.  "The farthest my dad made it was to the border with Guatemala.  He always wanted to go all the way down there, but we'd tell him, 'No, no. It's too far, it's too dangerous. '"  For the first time since he started talking about his dad, a brief look of sadness, or maybe remorse, passes over his face.  "But I think he could have done it."