Sometimes You Gotta Walk (Written 12/8/06)

It has been a very jam packed few days here on the tiny island of Samoa for yours truly. I don't know how I continually get asked to do these things, but I took yet another bike trip around the island – just call me crazy. So on Monday, I woke up at around 6:00am in order to bike from my house to Falevao to meet up with John and Bryan (they had biked there on Sunday). It took me about an hour and a half to get there but this was my first time actually biking there – before I had only biked from Falevao. Mentally it was a tough ride because it was only me with no one in front of me or around me for me to set my pace by – which probably led to me being a lot more tired then I should have been when I got to Falevao. When I got to Falevao, I just headed straight over to John's family house because it was closer to the outside edge of town. So at John's house I met up with him and Bryan and I was tired – and this was just the beginning of our bike journey. John's family gave me a coconut to rejuvenate my energy, which helped but didn't make me stop sweating at all! So after about a 15 minute rest break, all three of us headed off towards the eastern side of the island – are ultimate goal was to visit Josh in his new village. The mountain we went up that's right next to Falevao was a hard one to get up simply because I was so tired, but unlike on Savaii I did the first mountain all on my bike – had to do it in 1/1 but I did it and that was a small victory for me. Fortunately, after we got done with the first mountain there is another mountain that we have to go up before we get to the part that's mainly all downhill. It was getting close to the time when the sun would be beating down on us, so I was not looking forward to trekking up a mountain with the sun on me. Fortunately, it was an overcast day so the sun was not at it's full force and it was somewhat cool which made the ride that much more bearable. On the second mountain I did get off my bike and walk it up the mountain but I was suffering from dehydration at that point – biking from Apia to the second mountain had finally taken its toll on me. Once we got to the top of the mountain, we took a nice little break to recharge the batteries somewhat. We then went down the second mountain and by this point it started to rain – now let me tell you, biking down hill in the rain is not fun at all! The rain feels like little javelins hitting your eyes and I had my glasses on. Once we got to the bottom of the hill, we had arrived at Josh's village – Saleaaumua. He is now working at the Alieapata Secondary School there. Once we found his school, we had a nice look around and then we took a nap – we were all TIRED! Now, it has been a while since I had been out to visit a volunteer in the village and visiting Josh just reminded me of how good I have it in Apia. The biggest thing was that, as of right now, Josh doesn't have running water in his house so he has to go to a neighbors tap and fill up buckets to use for the toilet and the sink. When it was time for us to go shower, we had to bike up to Amaile (Group 74's training village) and bath in their pool – it was definitely an experience and reminded me that the volunteers out in the village can really be roughing it sometimes. On the bike ride back to Josh's house, we stopped by to see what Eric (Group 76) was going and invited him over later that night. So we went back to Josh's house, had dinner and just sat around talking for a bit (Eric did join us) before getting a good night's rest.

Fortunately, I convinced John and Bryan to take a day off between bike rides to let my body full recover from the previous days ride (that's one of the major things I learned from the Savaii trip – I need a day off in order to fully recover). This also worked in our favor because we were able to stay and watch as the village built Eric his faleo'o (a small Samoan house) which none of us had ever seen done before. The only part they had finished on the day we were watching them was the roof, but it took a lot of manpower to finish the roof – which basically acted as a template for the rest of the house. The most amazing thing to me was the fact that they were building this thing with no schematics whatsoever – it's like the diagram of the faleo'o was just embedded in their heads and they knew how to build it from memory. Quite amazing really. Eric said it should be done sometime next week and then he'll finally have a place to call his own (he's currently living in the same house as his Samoan family). Unfortunately, we stayed at Eric's house so long that we were served lunch there – now it's not bad that they served us lunch, it's just that we were asked by another person to have lunch with them and felt kind of bad having Eric's family make us lunch as well. But we're all Peace Corps volunteers and we knew what to do – sit down and eat. After we ate, we dismissed ourselves and headed over to Fagalele (Fong-ah-lay-lay) house – he was the former language coordinator for Peace Corps. We previously met him at Silao's going away party, but had no clue who he was at the time. He's now a catacyst for the village of Saleaaumua and knows Josh and Eric well, since he has previously worked with Peace Corps. It was fun talking to him and hearing some of his stories from before we arrived and it must be a great blessing for Josh and Eric to have someone in the village who can really help them improve their Samoan and speaks English extremely well. So after eating our second lunch, we headed back to Josh's house and rested for a bit. One of the big projects that Josh has been working on for his school is getting water tanks for his house, the restroom and the school itself – and it's taken a long time to actually get them to the village. But on Tuesday they finally arrived and we helped unload these huge water tanks that will greatly improve the water situation for the school – maybe Josh can actually take showers at his home now. It was a very jam packed Tuesday but it was a lot of fun.

On Wednesday, John, Bryan and I headed out at around 6am to begin the final leg of our journey – the voyage home. Instead of backtracking though, we continued biking along the southern coast of the island until we got to the middle cross island road. As we were biking along the coast, the sun was at our back and I was very worried that we would be biking up this cross island road with the sun beating down on us. Amazingly, as we hit the cross island road, it became overcast skies again so we didn't have to worry about the sun at all. Now the humidity was another thing all together but you can't have it all. Anyway, when we started out at the bottom of the cross island road we were at 100 feet above sea level. Keep that in mind. Now this was the first time that John and Bryan had biked up this side of the cross island road, so they had no idea what to expect which meant I had no idea what to expect (I've driven across it plenty of times, but I barely pay attention when I'm a passenger). For the most part, I did pretty well on the road until we started getting to the point where a lot of cars were coming and going along the road – people were just speeding by us with no intention of slowing down at all which made it quite nerve wrecking for me. Bryan told me about this biking technique called switchback where you basically are riding back and forth across the road while biking which helps keep you moving without having to power your way up the mountain. This technique really helped me bike along the mountain better and I think it helped my hamstring/knees take the biking better. This technique basically got thrown out the window when a car was coming up the mountain as I was switchbacking and was not interested in slowing down at all. When we were about halfway up the mountain, it started to pour down rain which was quite refreshing and kept my body cool as I was biking up the hill BUT again people in cars were not slowing down for anything and they hit pools of water which just splashed all over our bikes and messed up our biking rhythm. It was at that point that we decided to take a break and let the rain subside for a bit before continuing up the mountain. After a ten minute break, the rain had let up a bit and we continued on our merry slow way up the mountain. As we were biking up, I tried to go back to doing the switchback motion but the road was so wet that I lost control and fell off my bike – which thus proves that any time I do a long bike ride, I invariably fall of my bike. I tried biking for a little bit more but then I just said 'Forget it, I'll walk for a bit' which leads me to the title of this post – Sometimes you gotta walk. The cross island road was just such a butt kicker that I had to get off and take a break for a bit. But this walking was a bit different from the ones I did on Savaii, those were mental lapses this one was more of a 'My body is tired, this road is wet and these drivers are crazy – I'm going to walk', more situational then anything. Bryan was nice enough to walk with me for a bit, so I didn't feel like a complete loser. As we were walking though, I saw in the distance a little red sign – and on the cross island road there's only one little red sign. It was the sign for Papapapaitai Waterfall which meant we were close to the top of the mountain. We took a little break at the waterfall (which was the place we went during our first week in country – this was my first time coming back to this waterfall) and then continued on our way. No less then 30 minutes later we were on the flat top of the mountain and officially done climbing the mountain. Bryan used his GPS tracker to tell us the elevation we were now at – 2566 feet! That's right folks, we bike from 100 feet above sea level to 2566 feet above sea level…it only took 3 hours (but a lot of that had to do with the rain and drivers slowing us down). After a little victory stroll on the top of the mountain – where it was amazingly cool compared to the weather towards the bottom of the mountain it was time to go down. Going down the mountain was probably more dangerous then coming up the mountain because there are a lot of curves and cars on the downside of the mountain – I think this was the first time that I didn't have to pedal at all as I was biking. Gravity took care of its business and all I had to do was ride my brakes down. My body had a fun time adjusting to the change in temperature as I was coming from a cool environment at the top of the mountain to a warm environment at the bottom but when I got to the Peace Corps office, I was just happy to be done!

So I took a nice hot shower as a reward for completing the task, and then went to Bible Study later that night. I was soooooo tired – everything was a daze from that night. But I slept like a rock for a good 8 hours. With this bike ride, I have done 3/4s of Upolu – the only stretch I have to do now is the one from the south side of the cross island road to the wharf and then I will have officially biked all of Upolu (not in one day, but that wasn't part of the requirements!). I'll save that for next year – I've got a vacation I need to be healthy for. L8r.