It has been quite a long hiatus since I have written a blog post.  As many of you know, the past year and a half presented me with new weird health challenges so I have spent much of my time recovering and figuratively licking my wounds.  I had to have a surgery removing my left inner ear to stop unpredictable but disabling bouts of vertigo.  The surgery left me deaf on my left side (a bother but not too bad) and chronically “woozy” (a major drag!).  But lucky for me, I am the least woozy when on my bicycle!  I can’t explain that phenomenon but I am certainly grateful as bicycling is a favorite pastime for both Jim and myself.

Consequently, I decided to “pull on my big girl panties” and agree to go on another bike journey with Jim.  I worry a bit about the impact of jet lag.  Last fall, we traveled to Southeast Asia, my first big trip after the surgery.  The jet lag left me very dizzy for days, particularly in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) with millions of motorcycles and scooters buzzing by, even on the sidewalks.

We met many friendly Vietnamese people, however, and I was able to teach a course on glaucoma surgery at the local medical school with Jim as my very capable lab assistant.

We were also supposed to teach the same seminar in Hue, further north in Vietnam.  Regrettably, a typhoon struck Hue as we sat on the runway in HCMC and we ended up traveling to Hanoi instead.  We were very sorry to miss meeting the doctors in Hue but were very happy to miss the flooding, power outages and mayhem caused by the typhoon!

From Hanoi we moved on to Laos and Cambodia for a holiday.  We traveled with Backroads and were pampered while we saw the sights, rode bikes, and took a river cruise down the Mekong River.  Traveling with Backroads is quite luxurious and gave me an opportunity to see if I could handle the biking.

It was remarkably hot and humid but we truly cherished meeting the local people who were incredibly warm and friendly.   The Cambodian children loved calling out to us “Hello, Hello”.  At Angor Wat, we took part in a Buddhist water ceremony.

The locals come here for a water blessing for lots of reasons:  the fellow just after us sat with his new motorcycle to have it blessed.  I am afraid that most of us just prayed that the next ladle full of icy cold water would hit the riders next to us!

So, back to the future…now we are preparing to travel once again with TDA global cycling on their new Pub Ride.  We start in Dublin and end up in Copenhagen with the assistance once in awhile of a ferry to take us across expanses of water.This ride is shorter than our previous rides & does not include camping (totally ok by me!).  The route is 2645 km (1643 miles) over 25 riding days and 9 rest days.  We will have the pleasure of riding with friends from prior journeys and seeing various other friends along the way.  We leave for Dublin next weekend and start riding on June 1.

So wish me luck at staying upright and please join us for the journey.  As always, we love having you traveling virtually along side us.

“the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single pedal”

adapted from Lao Tzu