How Do You Feel?

That’s the question I’ve been getting the most from the friends and family I’ve been in touch with the last two days. I’m having trouble answering it.

The immediate answer is tired. This may sound like a stupid thing to say, but I really had no inkling of how hard I’ve been pushing myself. I’ve had some restful days over the last two months. but no true day of rest—like, no to-do list, no prep for tomorrow, nothing but relaxation. Today I had that, and I became a zombie. Naps every few hours, fogginess the rest of the time. Somehow I managed to bake myself a congratulatory chocolate cake, but to be honest I only barely remember where I got the groceries.

(A quick aside about AUS/NZ food: these people do not understand salt and sugar. The Oreos here are only okay. Crisps are not potato chips and chips are not french fries, because potato chips and french fries are supposed to be salty enough to hospitalize you. When I bought my box mix of chocolate cake, I thought it was neat that it comes with a packet of frosting. No need to buy a second item, less plastic packaging, good idea all around, right? Wrong. I had to go back to the store to get ingredients for a proper buttercream because the included packet was enough for a paper-thin crumb coat scraped over 3/4 of the surface of the cake. (See before and after pics below.) I know, I know: the average American diet ranks among the worst ever devised in human history. But when it comes to dessert, USA! USA! USA!)

So to review, answer number one to the question was tired. Answer number two is sore. Old. Spaghetti legs. Waking from a nap feels less like getting up and more like breaking loose, as if someone encased me in mud while I was asleep and allowed the mud to dry.

Which means answer number three is nostalgic. When I was still actively training as a martial artist, that mud-entombed feeling is how I felt every morning. I’d say it’s a miracle I never felt this arthritic during the ride, but the fact is it’s because I was riding that I didn’t feel this bad. Until now my legs always had at least a warm-up activity.

But none of these answers really gets at what people are asking. How do I feel emotionally?

That’s the one it’s so hard to answer. I don’t know that I have a name for it, and when you don’t have a name for a feeling it’s awfully hard to talk about it. (How did the English language persist so long without the word hangry? And now that we have it, isn’t it so much easier to diagnose and treat?) After the summit of the Crown Range, my guidebooks made it look like the last three days of the ride were going to be easy. Here’s what I said about them at the time:

There’s no such thing as “all downhill from here” in New Zealand—they just don’t do flat land around here—but of all the hills between me and Bluff, there’s only one you could really call a giant. From here to Bluff, the general trend is I’ll go to sleep at a lower elevation than where I woke up that morning.

Ha! If you believe in jinxes, maybe it’s because I wrote that that the wind shifted south. It howled right in my face for the next three days. On day two, the wind was so strong that I was pedaling downhill just to make eight miles an hour. Merciless wind can grind you down as surely as any mountain, and when you add cold and rain to the mix… well, Yours Truly gets Tasmanian flashbacks again.

So here’s the feeling that’s hard to name. For the last week or two I was feeling bummed that the ride would soon be over. I found myself planning what to ride next. Maybe catch a bus to Milford Sound and ride back. Maybe take a run at that Top of the South Track I read about. I didn’t want to be done. But now? I am happy to be done. The TA’s last three days were murder, and I’m glad they were, because they left no room for any sense of anticlimax. It’s all catharsis. It’s all I can’t believe I did it.

What’s the word for that? Not relief. Not pride. Not even catharsis. The Greeks had this lovely word, agonia, which meant the struggle of fighting a worthy opponent. Not pain, not pleasure, a painfully pleasurable category of its own. That comes pretty close to how I’m feeling.

There’s no doubt the TA was a worthy opponent. It began as it started: three days of strong wind out of the southeast.  Nothing erodes morale more than an unrelenting wind, and this one seemed to have a personal grudge against me. Those first two days on Ninety Mile Beach, I rode 80 kilometers into that wind. Yesterday, I rode 75 kilometers into the same wind. So after two months of struggle with my worthy opponent, I’m twice as strong as I was. I did in one day what used to take two. It feels pretty damn good to be able to say that, but you have to survive a pretty damn agonizing day to say it.

Here’s the last thing I’m feeling, and it may be the most important: I feel like a door has opened. I’ve definitely got the bikepacking bug. This needs to be a part of my life long term. I’ve got a couple of my travel buddies dreaming and scheming, and I’m dreaming and scheming too. (Sam, I know you hate bicycling, but you probably run faster than I ride. You can just run a marathon every day and the rest of us will carry your gear.) This wasn’t a vacation, it was an adventure, and you don’t come back from an adventure unchanged. I look forward to discovering what exactly has changed.

Maybe that sounds like closure, but I’m still not done with this blog. Stay tuned and I will fill you in on all the as-yet unposted stories from the ride.