The second day is always the hardest. We can’t explain it, but our experience confirms it over and over again. The second day is bad.
This time it was worse.
At around half way through Christoffer crashed. Not crashed, like Crash! Boom! Bang! But crashed like no energy left in his entire body. Jet lag, the heat, and a hilly road had taken their toll.
And there he sat, slumped over a table, half asleep, when I brought him a lemonade and a brownie as a sort of first aid. This, some more food, and a half an hour nap on a bench finally gave him the energy to continue.
But our troubles were far from over. Due to a navigational error (courtesy of Google maps) took us onto a small path where we ended up carrying our bikes up until a point where we admitted defeat. But only after having wasted over an hour on a task as appealing as beating a dead horse.
The day grew older and we wearier. But we continued. At the steepest hills we pushed our bikes. And cursed. Was this what our summer was going to be like? The sun began to set.
There comes a point where you WANT TO give up. But ironically enough that point doesn’t always coincide with the point where you CAN give up. So onward we pushed.
Then at one point, just before it got all dark, I told me Christoffer we only had five more kilometres to go. He was almost in tears. Or would have been, if he had had any excess fluids left in his body.
And then, like a miracle, there it was. Our friends’ house. With the whole family out on the street greeting us! If there ever was a place to be called paradise, then this was it. We had made it! At least this far.