Bad prawn day

Day twenty-one

I wake at 3:53 am, my arms numb from the lumpy mattress in the budget family hotel next to the water park. The whole room stinks of the air-freshener balls in the bathroom – an overpowering smell of camphor attempting to drown out the stench of open drains.

My guts churn in a way they shouldn’t.

I try to go back to sleep, but my insides won’t sit still. At 4:20 am, I make a dash for the bathroom, grabbing the box of tissues from my bedside table on the way, and only just make it in time for my guts to empty themselves of everything I’ve eaten in the last 36 hours.

I sit on the white plastic toilet in the tiny grey-tiled bathroom that stinks of drains and air-freshener, my head in my hands. This can’t be happening. Not now. Not today. In my head,I run through the food I’ve eaten in the last two days – the rice and vegetable dinner last night, the iced tea at the roadside warung, the eggs and rice for breakfast yesterday morning, the prawn that tasted a bit off at dinner the night before? That would be it.  I only took one bite then spat it out, but perhaps that’s enough.

Miserable, and sore inside, I pack my bike. I’m awake. I’ve got a 120 kilometre day ahead of me to my next digs, and despite my guts, there’s no way I’m staying here.

By 5:07 am my bike and I are on the road. My rear light isn’t working because I forgot to charge it last night, and I feel vulnerable as well as sick as I ride off towards the first climb of the day.

Good moments of today:
The downhill after the first climb with beautiful sweeping bends through the forest.
Taking a shortcut to avoid the centre of Ponorogo and going through backstreets and rice paddies.
Stopping at a gorgeous warung, even though it was closed, and still enjoying the views across the rice fields.
Having an iced tea 12 kilometres out from my digs, with an owner who took my photo for publicity, with a hand-written sign saying something in Indonesian, something probably like Look at this crazy white woman cycling through the midday sun, stopping to drink my iced tea – so refreshing!
Chatting to friends back home on txt – reading messages of encouragement and support.

Not so good moments:
Really sore guts, as in I’m not sure I should be riding today.
Too many bad public toilets – I’m talking about squat toilets with no running water and nowhere to wash your hands afterwards. Thank goodness for hand sanitiser.
Saddle sores getting worse all day, exasperated by my dodgy guts.
Changing out of my bike shorts by the side of the road – I hid behind a tree, waited for a pause in the traffic, whipped my bike shorts off and my hiking shorts on.  
That moment on the hundredth uphill pinch, which must have been at an angle of about 18 degrees, in the heat of the midday sun, when I actually felt as though I was about to die – dehydration, aching legs, over-heating, just leave me here by the side of the road and let the vultures pick my carcass clean.
Nothing to eat all day because my body doesn’t want me to put food inside.
Cheap dodgy accommodation tonight which also stinks of those moth-balls, covering up the smell of dodgy drains, the hard bed, the grey prison-like walls, the air-conditioning unit that rattles as though its on it’s last legs, the thin stained duvet with no top sheet.

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