Obstacles – I love them

Stressed? Never!

It’s all been happening at Mission Improbable HQ since I last wrote.

First of all, I had an operation to fix a hernia. The operation itself went like a dream, probably because I was asleep at the time, other than attempting to talk to the French nurses in Italian when I woke up, and being somewhat confused by seeing double, the whole thing went without a hitch.

In fact by the time I was discharged after lunch the next day, I knew I was in a French hospital because they served veal for lunch.
I decided to eschew the offer of a two week sick note to get me off work. I figured that as I’m supposed to be fit, healthy and reasonably robust if I’m to walk across the Amazon, then I should stop training for a bit but keep working.

This would have been fine had it not been for one of the people I work with hurting their back and being unable to do anything but the lightest of lifting.

I soon found myself doing 12 hour days of quite physical work. The allergic reaction to the painkillers didn’t help, especially seeing as one of the symptoms was an inability to sleep. I’m not sure why I didn’t just say that I needed some time off, pure belligerence I suppose.

Whatever it was after two weeks I was feeling more tired than I had ever done in my life, even walking was an effort and I was beginning to develop a nervous tick in my right eye. Fortunately these ill effects have now passed and I feel fine now, a little tired and out of shape but I should be able to start training again in a week. I’m mentioning this now, partly to explain why I have not written for the last three weeks and partly because this episode is reasonably significant in terms of my training. The expedition is going to throw physical and mental challenges at me the likes of which I can not begin to imagine and anything that I can go through now, no matter how insignificant, that helps me to increase stamina and perseverance has got to be worthwhile.

Failing disaster or misfortune the largest challenge I think that I will be facing on the expedition will be fighting the urge to quit. Being alone in the jungle for prolonged periods of time with; intermittent contact with the outside world; undertaking arduous physical activity on a daily basis; discomfort, mosquitoes, a diet of piranha and palm hearts and being constantly wet is going to sap my will power. Fortunately I have now made things a little harder for myself by inadvertently falling in love. So now I’m going to be missing Mrs Ditchmonkey as well, fortunately she has been most understanding about my disapearing off into the wilderness for a year.

Now I’m starting training again, this week I have been taking this gently with a couple of bike rides and a bit of snowboarding, getting sunburnt. I’m feeling very positive and now the operation is out of the way I can really focus on the expedition.