I want to ride my bicycle

It’s raining pretty heavily right now. We only came home for 5 minutes to get something, and then we were going straight back to work. But that was well over an hour ago. At least there is internet at home so I can get a little work done here. 

I don’t really have much to say this week; life is just plodding along here. Last week passed me by at a very fast pace, and I don’t even know what I did. Went to work, ate a lot of food, read two books – one on the Khmer Rouge, called Stay Alive, My Son, and one called A Spot of Bother, by the same guy that wrote The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time. Both were really good and I read them in about 6 hours each. Jeeze, life is getting boring if I’m telling you about the books I’m reading. My apologies, if you are reading this. I’m also planning my trip to visit my lovely chum Marnie in Cambodia in August (and before you get all ‘laa dee daa isn’t it nice for some’, I have to leave the country for visa reasons!), she works for the Cambodian Children’s Trust in Battambang and I just can’t wait to see her.

Oh, I know something I did that was interesting, yesterday I got up bright and early (for actual, like 6.30am) and went for a 26km bike ride. Half way through said bike ride, we stopped and climbed up 800 steps to a pagoda, and then back down; and were back in Mae Sot well before lunch. Needless to say, I nearly died of exhaustion, I’m still embarrassingly unfit. I’ve noticed that the topic of me on a bike appears more often than not in this blog (still hate that word, blog. But I hate ‘journal’ almost as much – what am I? Some kind of emotional teenager or tortured artist, writing in my journal? I don’t think so). 

But it really is amazing. I love my bike, not only because it has a basket and a bell and sparkly purple tape decorating it (we are desperately trying to find flowers for the basket and handle bar tassels as well), but because it gets me from A to B about 99% faster than my lazy legs could walk me. Why did none of you ever teach me to ride a bike before? Sure, it was a bit of a joke, but you should have insisted that I learn. Why did I spend all those years walking half an hour to and from uni and home, in the freezing cold, when I could have biked there in about 10 minutes. I had to walk somewhere the other day, to and from two places I go all the time, and I actually could not believe how rubbish it was. Sure, there is a crusade against cyclists in NZ and they are constantly being hit and injured, but here, bikes are the law. Everyone gets out of the way of people on bikes. And I’m such a badass on my bike that I don’t even wear a helmet. I’m invincible on my bike. You all just wait till I fall off, there’s no doubt it’s definitely going to happen, it’s just a matter of when.

Walking is for suckers. I’ve seen the light and I’m never going back.

I'm pretty sure this is the best photo ever taken