Days 2 and 3 Kathmandu

Day 2 - Thamel
I always found the name Kathmandu very exotic. Never imagined I'd actually be here!
Nepal: population ~30 million. Apparently only 700,000 of those people live in the capital city - seems like more. Infrastructure and city planning doesn't really exist much here. Roads have been paved but have never been re-paved. Driving 30 km takes an hour. It's dusty. It's noisy. It's seriously polluted!! This place is wild!

Everyone here greets you with "Namaste!". There are guards at the gates of the hotels and at ours the little cutie is just full of smiles and sings out "Namaste!" whenever we come in. Makes me giggle every time. Jenn and I explored Thamel today, the main tourist area where many hotels and lots of souvenir shopping is had. Also lots of places to book treks or other tours and rent gear if need be (sleeping bags, tents, down parkas and the like). Later this evening we have our trip meeting where we get our information to start our tour tomorrow. FYI, the "h" in most Nepali words is not pronounced after the "t" from what I've been gathering so Thamel is pronounced: tamel.

Day 3 - Kathmandu: Hinduism and Buddhism
Today our group of 15 went out with our tour leader, BK, and explored two of the biggest sites to see in Kathmandu. First we drove in insane traffic and craziness to get to the oldest Hindu temple in the city: Pashupatinath, located on the banks of the Bagmati River (Jenn likes to call it the Basmati River so I always call it that and laugh). The Bagmati River is holy - it actually runs all the way to India - so it is used for water burials. We watched a couple of cremations at the banks of the river at this temple and then the ashes being pushed into the river. The first son is usually the one who lights the fire for the cremation and we even saw two sons shaving their heads at the side of the river after a cremation. I think BK said it meant they lost their mother or something. I hope I'm correct in saying that. I've just got so much information in my head now about so many things. Eep!
After watching the water burials we went on up the hill and saw lots of monkeys hanging around the temple and also got to sit and take photos with some of the holy men: Sadhus. What a neat experience! They were so friendly and wonderful! One of them touched my head and wished me a good life.
Once we passed through the rest of the temple area and crossed a little bridge over the river we hopped back into the bus that was waiting on the other side and off we went to the Boudhanath Stupa, a Buddhist temple. We spun the prayer wheels and did 3 turns of the stupa. The rule is you must do 1, 3, 5 or 108 turns, otherwise it's very inauspicious. Apparently 80% of the population is Hindu thought, being the birthplace of Buddha, there are also many Buddhists. The stupa was really nice and so interesting. This is our first taste of a few weeks of Buddhism. Tomorrow we are off to Lhasa, Tibet and we will see many Buddhist monasteries in that time!

New Year, New Experiences

I've been lax on updating the blog the past couple of weeks so I do apologize. How bad of me - particularly when most of you are back at work and in need of a distraction from life in the cube farm. ;) I've been busy. Life is full. Things are good. So where to start?

Well, the Christmas holidays mark the start of summer down under and I'm feeling the vibe of the season a lot these days. Every time we have a nice day there are heaps of folks out at the beaches. I've been wearing singlets (kiwi word for tank-top) and jandals (kiwi word for flip-flops) a lot more. I even bought a pair of shorts over the holidays. I've been riding my bike a lot. I'm feeling really good on the bike these days. This was one of the goals associated with taking this time off and away from home. I had hoped that I could start to build some real strength and power on the bike on top of the base I have from the past 5 years of cycling. I think it's starting to come. The hills here are just killer. As Andrew experience when he visited, you really cannot imagine the hills (and the wind of Wello) until you are here. I don't think he truly believed what I'd told him about riding here. There are all varieties: short and steep, long with steep parts, long and gradual - you name it, you've got it. It's the best kind of cycling training I could hope for. And then you just throw in some good 40 kph headwinds every other day for good measure, and you find yourself thinking that relatively windless days and 6% grades are easy. Choosing this particular location to live has been fortuitous in many ways, but this one may be one of the more significant for me. I cannot wimp out and do a flat ride. It's just not possible. Even recovery rides include some form of climbing. So - I have become a little more confident in my abilities on the bike and hopefully this will continue to grow. One of the mechanics at the shop is an ex-Euro-pro and I finally got out and rode with him last week. Now he's keen to ride with me at least once, if not twice a week (as he says I need to do 2 really hard rides per week and he intends on pushing me hard). I'll keep you posted on how that turns out. Protege of an ex-pro? haha! Who knows.

Another great thing about Wello is that so many of my friends have been coming through to visit. I even just hosted a friend of a friend of a new friend. Haha! Yes. An American girl (and bike mechanic) on her way through to the south island on a solo bike trip - all of her gear on her bike. I picked her up at the airport on my bike and we rode into town around the bays together. She loved the intro to the city. At the same time I had another friend in town visiting (one of the first people I met when I arrived in NZ three months ago) and the three of us hung out the rest of the day and just had a blast. We even got video-taped sitting out at a cafe downtown for the city council's website advertisement for tourism here. Too funny. I'll let you know if we get our 30 seconds of fame or not. I have at least two more friends coming to town in the next few weeks. And I shouldn't forget to mention that I've been having a blast with my new kiwi friends and my flatmate. They've been introducing me to kiwiana every chance they get and they are simply very kind to me. We have decided to have a kiwiana-themed party at our flat later this month. Should be fun!

I'm happy to report that so much of what I have wanted from this experience is coming together. I'm taking a break from life as I knew it and finding the time to breathe. I'm learning more about the bike - in every sense (I even know the difference between a hard-tail and a full suspension MTB - haha!! Who woulda thunk it?). I'm immersed in a different culture than my own and having a ton of fun with it. I'm connecting with others and making heaps of new friends from many different countries. I'm carving out new opportunities for the future. And I continue to learn about myself and grow. What else can one hope to achieve?

Adjusting

So last Friday I moved all the stuff that I hadn't thrown away, given away, or sold into my new storage locker. I could never have done this on my own:
The movers screwed me I think - charged me way too much. At any rate, I was too tired and too brain-dead to care or to complain. It was done, I'm glad it's done and I was on to more pressing things: get the remainder of the little things out of my place and into my sister's and clean the apartment up for the new tenants - some cool people I know.

The rest of the weekend was nice and I had some time to come down from all of the stress and trauma of moving out of my beloved apartment. I may sound slightly melodramatic, but it truly was stressful and traumatic. It has only been a few short days, and living with my sister and her hubby is still better than being a real guest in someone else's home, but it's also still an adjustment. I don't want to do something that they might not like and I also don't have everything my way. In fact nothing is my way really. That's ok, but imagine having absolutely everything in your environment and your life your way for years at a time. I knew when I moved out on my own that I would come to this kind of crossroads one day. So here I am. It's not all about me. But I'll stop whining. Life really is pretty good. I've got a sister who loves me enough to have me stay with her (and I guess my brother-in-law thinks I'm pretty ok too). I'm heading off for a totally amazing trip of a lifetime pretty soon. But with all changes in life I guess you grieve the things you leave behind.

And hopefully not everything about my place is gone with me leaving it... tonight when I was out for my little ride on my own I ran into Robbie-O and I got to ride with him. He helped me get my first real bike, my second f-ing amazing bike (the Colnago), he changed several tires for me in a pinch when I was running late for group rides and had flats, he taught me how to change an inner tube, and introduced me to lots of great people to ride with, amongst other things. In all the years I lived downstairs from him we never did ride together. Took me moving out for us to run into each other on the bike path and head up to the park together.

Friends who inspire

Well, as you can see I have gotten back in the saddle. I realize that I need to take it slowly though - I'm still recovering. Guess it will take a while. Seems when you crack your helmet you've kind of hit your head pretty damn hard and well - I think I didn't really realize most of last week just how injured I was. I'm good now though. :)

The main reason for the post though, is to celebrate my friend Sandra's first marathon! It was National Capital Race weekend and I went out to cheer her on. They started this new cool thing for the first time where if the registrant gave them cell phone numbers, the system would send an automated text message to those numbers when your chip is read at certain markers: 10K, 20K, 30K, and the finish. So I received my first text at 8 AM-ish when she reached the 10K mark and it told me her start time, her time at the 10K mark, her pace, and the split. That was so totally cool. I live off the route so I got to go out twice: around the 25K mark, and then at the 40.5-41K mark. She looked great at the end and even said my name as I yelled at her. It was fun and I got some good shots of her. I'll just post one where there are many other people in it though. :) Way to go Sandra!!!! I know I could never run 1K, let alone 42! I personally think that riding 100 km is easier than running a marathon, so my hat is off to her!

Wired

Today my calf muscles are quite sore. Sore enough, in fact, that I decided it would be better not to ski. So I did an hour recovery ride on the trainer - even though it was sunny outside. Kinda sucked not being able to exercise outdoors when it was sunny today, but I did go walking around in the market area with my sister later, and that made up for it. The reason why I'm sore is that I've done quite the training the past few days... interval ride Tuesday, skate skiing Wednesday, strength with Jess on Thursday (where I could feel all of the leg work from skiing kicking in as she kicked my butt with a hard leg workout), and a 90 minute trainer ride on Friday. Then the kicker - Saturday morning I got up and did this class at the gym called skip circuit. I was really excited to do it because it's a circuit training class where you do 1.5 mins of skipping, then head to a station for 1.5 mins to do things like: squats, push-ups, crunches, tricep dips, etc. Then back to 1.5 mins of skipping, over and over for an hour. I used to do this workout every week about 2 years ago when I was still just on the cusp of getting seriously into cycling. I wasn't training on the bike the way I do today, and I used to vary my workouts a lot more. While my body wasn't maybe as fit as it is today, it was used to doing a wider range of activities. This time, 2 years later, with a body that is quite well-adapted to its sport of choice, that skip circuit class kicked my butt, and kicked it hard! I LOVED IT! Yes, slightly masochistic I guess - but I'm learning that taking pleasure in such pain is part of sport. This is something that I need to learn when I'm actually on the road in the summer if I want to be faster and stronger. And it's particularly true when climbing hills because that's usually when you really feel pain. I guess that's why the vast majority of road races are won in the mountains - not only do you have to push through the pain physically, but I think mentally pushing through it is the hardest part. I have a long way to go when it comes to developing my 'mental fitness' on the bike, so that I don't give in when I feel that way. I went to see an Imax movie last night called Wired to Win, which addressed just that topic. The crew followed a team during a recent Tour de France and they showed how your brain learns new skills, overcomes pain, and how (or rather where) to find the motivation to keep going. This was doubly cool for me as I love cycling so much, and I just recently finished studying the brain and the nervous system for an exam so it was all fresh in my mind.

Inspire

Came across this on one of the blogs I read - one of the blogs that inspires me. Sharing something like this is one of the reasons why it does so.

Just click on the music playlist there on the right and then pause it so you can turn the music off to watch the video. :)