A day of rest and relaxation and wierdness

Chores

Cycling is freedom. With wind in the hair, the sun on my back and a song in my heart, I can ride anywhere. Except of course, up those damned hills. But really, once the hills are done, they can be forgotten. They just become war stories.

A rest day is for resting, but there are things that need to be done. Sleeping in, for one. Eating, for another. I hit the supermarket for supplies as we are in an Airbnb where we can self-cater. Beans! I am protein deficient and find cans of beans. Yay! Beans on toast. Breakfast of champion cyclists.

Cleaning is another chore. Our bodies, our clothes and our bikes. We are lucky to have a back yard and a hose to deal with the bikes, a washing machine to deal with the clothing and of course a shower for the bodies.

All things are righted except for the aching muscles.

A Weird Massage

I want a massage. No, I need a massage! I convince Neil he needs one too. We set off for town, sure there will be a massage therapist waiting for us.

There is, but he is not easy to find. We wander around town a while before spotting a likely sign and follow our noses upstairs where, despite a lack of common language, we both make appointments for later in the day.

I go first. That’s a good thing, given how my hour-long session unfolds. It all starts off OK. I try to get across that my leg muscles are tired and I need my calves worked on. He goes about his job and I’m trying to relax when … WHAM. It feels like he grabs a chunk of skin from the sole of one foot and clamps a clothes peg on it. I lie there wondering until my other foot gets the same treatment. In my mind I’m working on what could possibly be going on while he goes back to working on my legs. I sneak a look, and see a cup – a massage cup – perched on the sole of the foot I can see. Now I’ve had massages before where the therapist uses cups, but never on my feet. I’ve come home from massages with those great red circles on my back and shoulders and Neil has completely freaked out at the sight of me. Am I going to have a big red circle on the sole of each of my feet?

The cups finally come off, and he goes through some other weird manoeuvres, like having me standing, bent over the table in a highly compromising position while he works away on my back and hips. I feel the fight or flight reflex bubbling up and contemplate flight, my brain calling danger signals. All the while he is trying to carry on a conversation with me – he with his admirable English and me with my hardly-more-than-three-words Slovakian. We get by OK. I always find mime a great tool in no-real-common-language conversations, but this is the first time I have used it while barely clad and positioned with my backside in the air!

When it is done, I feel good. He knows his stuff even if his methods are unorthodox to my Australian standards.

On my way out I pass Neil coming up the stairs. Before he can ask I say, “Just go with it.”

Beer

You are allowed to have beer even if you haven’t been on a bike that day. We both enjoy a beer at a café in town toward the end of the day. I go at it with seemingly great gusto!