Out in the woods

This morning I was crouched in the woods out on Lantau, with three other topless men, rubbing the thighs of one of them.

No, it's not like that. He was barely capable of standing, from the cramp produced by riding in today's ridiculous temperatures, and we had to do something to get him mobile.
Today started far too early, with me waiting for a taxi in Tin Hau while talking to an old Chinese gent about the price of bicycles and whether it was genuine Italian steel or not. (I didn't want to tell him it was from Halifax, so I scampered off to the ferry.)

The 7am Sunday ferry from Central to Mui Wo is a wonder in itself, as its passengers comprise lycra-louts like myself, and people still drunk from the night before, trying to get home. Two sorts of scantily clad people who should both know better.

The ride started murderously, and stayed like that for the next four hours. Because an impending typhoon is blowing hot moist air into Hong Kong, the heat was much worse than it's been all week, and although sometimes a cooling breeze would blow once you were moving at speed, that wasn't guaranteed. Sometimes you'd just roll into a patch of dead, hot air that had been baking on the rocks and waiting to suffocate you.
Plus, the route is incredibly rocky (like every trail in Hong Kong), and with me as feeble as I've been this weekend, I struggled to keep the bike upright, struggled to heft it up steps, struggled to ... Basically, just struggled for four hours and a woefully unimpressive sounding 16 km.

Next time, when I'm not weighed down with four litres of water in my pack, I might make a better hash of it. And perhaps not eat and drink so much at the China Bear afterwards that all the benefits of all that exercise were wiped out.

Oh well. Anyway, this evening I got my girlfriend on the living room floor and made her scream at the top of her voice.

No, not like that. I was making her follow a pilates DVD.