unleashed freedom

well...bit of a background.
we cycled on the most broken down cycles u can imagine . i guess the salesman confused me [he looked a wee bit like one of gods modern art works.]i also use the word salesman v v loosely. he was a turkish chap at the flee market. the whole trip was about 1600 kms which i shall write about a bit later. this is only about grossglockner. Austria's tallest mountain. we did not exactly cycled but mostly heaved it past as our cycles did break down and spectacularly at that. 3 different cyclists tried to help us but nodded gravely and said a few words. i understood "catastrophe " "ridiculous",[said with much enthusiasm at that],'mental' HA HA HA. all in vain.cause i was cycling or pushing or clawing no matter what. saw al the things u chaps mentioned. the crazzzzy stilts to hold up what looked like a wall and turned out to be some sort of sadistic Austrian joke which they call " road ". just the night before we went up this mountain, a British couple had told us that we were mental to do it.he said those who they saw has good bikes, no luggage and gave us a list of other short comings out bikes and clothes had[ didnt have the best warm clothing i realized later on :)] esp cause our bikes were in rather bad condition, mine especially,cause the spokes had broken, the tires bust,and i had sort of gotten them to work again,with much difficulty.the back tire moved like beyonse's backside, only a lot less sexy and a lot more effort on my part. after a few hrs of cycling.and the relentlessness of the incline,my girlfriend, Helen was getting v v tired as well and i did what silly and so called chivalrous men do.i took her bag as well[18 kgs plus my bag which was about 25 or so]and put it on top of mine.burn baby burn hehehe we mostly pushed the bikes as it was impossible to cycle on them.my back brakes were also holding the rather bootalicious prone back tire. so i just took them off :)[ the brakes, not the tire] .was it sunny and nice and warm...yes...in the Caribbean's though.here it just RAINEEEEED and a LOOOOOOOOT of wind[ enough at times to literally blow u off,my helmet blew off at one point and helens too, and we had to go down some distance to get her helmet] and later on snow tried to show us how foolish we were. but press on we did. reaching the top past 8 pm ( we had spent over 3 hrs trying to fix the bicycle spokes with the helpful people giving us encouraging comments that i had written of earlier)

too cold to feel any colder, we cycled down in pitch dark[ and that was in a way a good thing, cause if we had seen how steep it was, we would not have done it, as the saying goes, ignorance is bliss][ and me without breaks too :) yey] and i remembered the sign saying -brakes ok- more like " breaks ok" yeah. hit me with it man

...i wanted to add. brains OK? course not. or else who would do something this mental.

we finally reached a museum of sorts at about ten[ still at a height of 2400 metres or so] . and asked the only occupant who was shocked to see us and also asked us if we were mental if we could sleep in the parking lot.he said u ll freeze to death. an idea to which i was not warming up to one bit... thankfully he had sense.which means we slept in the museum itself.which was great.and life saving of sorts.too tired to even eat, we tried to find out warm clothing only to find that they had gotten wet, so we wore whatever we could find, including a newspaper i had saved up from the last three days cause i had once been told on a trek to the Himalayas that if it gets too cold and u dont have any warm clothing, use a newspaper, it will help u keep warm. to which i remember replying, if i can get a newspaper in the bloody mountains, why would i be foolish enough not to get a sweater, but here i knew that the sweater was out of the question, and hence...newspaper, turned out to have some pis of naked ladies too, wonder if that added to the warmth at all onwards we continued our rather comical journey. part of which resembled r2d2 and c3po s relationship and part of which looked straight out of lord of the rings when they go to mordor, our rings being our bikes and Grossglockner being mordor. i have no idea who sauron was though. perhaps the chap who build the road ... ahoy , i see ...



be happy, be simple, walk lightly, sing sweetly... be who u are... wat else can there be!!!