A Year ago this Month

December.  A year ago, I was getting ready for the trip of a lifetime.  I had all of those feelings of excitement and anxiety, and all I knew was that for the next 6 months I would have nothing to worry about except getting on my bike each day and riding.

It turned out to be one of the most difficult experiences of my life.  Riding through deserts, mountains, rocky roads, extreme heat, cold, rain and dealing with fatigue and monotony of ridng the lonely long roads of Africa, illness, isolation, coping with living with 60 other people.  It was not fun for me.  However, I am proud of my accomplishment and happy to have seen some amazing places on that misunderstood continent.

I didn’t love riding my bike through the almost 12,000 km in 95 whirlwind days. I loved seeing the places and people, but cycling an average of 120km per day is not the best way to experience a culture in my opinion.  It was a race through each country and we whizzed along the roads not really seeing much more than the odd town and hut selling cokes, or tall grass and trees aligning the highways. But I wouldn’t change it for the world and I am glad that I did it.

Fast forward to 6 months later and now I am home, back into routine and it is like I never left.  I haven’t written in months, haven’t been riding my bike, haven’t worked out or planned for my next adventure.  Instead I have worked long days on a TV series, not seen Dave for weeks because he is busy working, I have watched movies, tv, and surfed the net, paid bills and caught up on banking and have settled into our new place.  Life is back to being exactly how it was before we planned to leave for Africa.  We have become a perfectly normal North American couple who works, pays the bills, buys new furniture and big screen TV’s and rarely sees each other because we have so little time to do much of anything.

To top everything off I have been suffering from 3 different parasites.  It has explained a lot of my feelings over the last few months.  Feeling lathargic, tired, weak and unmotivated.  It has been a great excuse as to why I let myself go after coming back from Africa in the best shape of my life.

Once my doctor found the Entemeobas and Giardias, (that is the name of my parasites)  I felt confident that I would feel great after my round of antibiotics.  Well, here it is 3 weeks later and I feel terrible.  Weak, tired, achy.  I feel worse than when I started.  I tried to do some yoga yesterday and I couldn’t even hold myself up in downward dog.  There is just no strength left in me.  I want to come home from work and head to the gym, but it takes all of my strength everyday just to wake up and make it through the day that by the time I get home, I am beat.

So here we go again, it is getting to be that time, New Years resolutions and I think that we have to re-evaluate life again.  It is so easy to get back into old routines.  It is hard work trying to live life outside of the box.  Really hard.  But that is what makes life exciting right?  We have to check ourselves every few months before we get caught up and have to work to keep things challenging and interesting.

So, next week we are both off for winter holidays and first of all I am hoping that with a clean diet and lots of herbs and teas, that I will feel better soon.  I have finished my medication and am hopeful that within the week I will be back to normal, so that I will have the strength to get out of the house, snowboard, cross country ski, go dogsledding or whatever I would like.

The challenge for Dave and I this year is to see how we do staying at home with family and friends and finding excitement in our own back yard.

We have our travel show in the works still and cannot leave the country for an extended period of time, so it is a very good thing to have to stay put.  For a couple of gypsies like us, it is our new challenge.  Stay home for a change and explore activities here in Canada.  Reconnect with our bestest friends and see if we can stay in shape without the extreme methods of climbing nations highest peaks or cycling through entire continents.

I have let this blog go because I thought that life was just too mundane to write about, but that is not true. Things are still quite exciting, we just don’t realise it.  Dave hangs out with Woody Harrelson every day working on his new movie the Defender, I have made people frozen and dead and bloddy for my series Urban Legend.  We have been wakeboarding at Jim and Jans boat, gone to concerts, plays and hockey games, hung out with great friends, hiked and biked all over Ontario, and hung out with great people.  Life can still be interesting and exciting right here and now.

So officially, I am starting this blog again.  Don’t know how many people will be reading it, but hopefully some will.  Don’t worry, we will be somewhere exotic again soon, but for now, you will just have to hear about our Blue Mountain getaway next week and our family Christmases in the following weeks.  I am sure we will have something crazy happen during that time.

Cheers and Happy Holidays.