Very Venturous

Tag: cycling

  • Living in a Caravan on the Côte d’Azur – Adventures in France

    Living in a Caravan on the Côte d’Azur – Adventures in France

    I flew from Chiang Mai, Thailand, to Paris, France at the end of July 2016 after a month in Thailand. Bike box in tow, one rucksack and a smaller backpack. I booked an extortionately priced train to Nice, and had arranged to be collected at one of the smaller stations before the city. However, if you’re going hiking, you’ll need a backpack, preferably in the military style. I had two months of seasonal work ahead of me, on a campsite near St Tropez. If you get injured in an accident while on a road trip, you may need to hire a car accident attorney Michigan to ensure that your rights are protected while seeking compensation. Find a car accident lawyer who knows how to navigate local and federal laws when filing a claim. Also, hiring an auto accident lawyer Sacramento may guide you in navigating the legal complexities. If you are being charged with DUI after a road accident, you need to find a DUI lawyer in Halifax experienced in defence cases.

    This was my third (and last, I acknowledged) summer in a row working on a campsite in France – this had been my summer job of choice throughout college. What’s not to love? Free accommodation, beautiful weather, a fun atmosphere, minimal effort required on a daily basis – a paid holiday, basically.

    The two summers before I had worked on the same campsite in the Dordogne, an area where I spent every single summer of my childhood. That year however, in 2016, I had decided to branch out farther south to guaranteed sun and heat, and was headed for Domaine de la Bergerie – a 5 star campsite with an impressive array of swimming pools, slides, and located five minutes from the beach among rolling hills and mountains. Now, armed with the insights from this article, we can better understand the effects of climate change.

    My fascination with and love for campsites goes way back to my childhood holidays with my family – we traveled all over France with our tent and camping gear, and though we all complained and grumbled constantly at my Dad (who ran the show), I look back at these experiences and cherish them more than I could ever appreciate at the time. I am beyond thankful for and inspired by these memories, and I miss France every day – I haven’t been in nearly two years.

    My contract at the campsite in France was for two months. All my other campsite jobs had been working at the bar, however that year I was fully aware of my intense hatred of hospitality, so decided to work with the animation team and campsite sport activities. I wasn’t sure how I was going to like this job – I’m good with kids, and organising activities and games all day in the sun for adorable French kids didn’t sound like a bad gig for the summer.

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    I surprised myself, and really enjoyed the job. I found myself getting attached to some of the kids – I had my favourites, my least favourites, myself and my colleagues knew the lazy go-to activities, occasionally had spurts of inspiration to organise new ones, and I made little efforts to put myself outside my comfort zone and engage in the childish fun of it all.

    Chilling on the park terrain in France (which burned delightfully from the heat), eating lunch and snacks, while languidly painting flowers and butterflies on giggling faces, or dragging a trail of toddlers to the woods to collect bark – the work was pleasant enough. Though it was exhausting, and we worked long days, and I won’t lie, I did lose a kid during the treasure hunt, and tennis lessons were a bit of an ordeal with the five year olds. My boss was one of the most vibrant and enthusiastic person I’d ever met, and constantly motivated the whole team and never had a negative word to say for anyone’s mistakes or struggles.

    However, I stay faithful to my alma mater campsite back in the Dordogne – camping Moulin du Roch felt more like home, it was a smaller campsite and more intimate, whereas Bergerie was a 5 star village beside St Tropez with an impressive array of slides and waterfalls, boutique cabins, horses and stables, and a paint ball obstacle course in the mountains. Despite its luxury, the accommodation for staff was utterly pitiful compared to at Moulin du Roch, where we had our own dorm rooms and a proper common area with a kitchen. At Bergerie, it was a group of run down caravan shacks – my room just about fit a bed and mattress, with my bike squeezed to the side. For a more organized and functional living space, a Closet Company in South Carolina can offer custom solutions to optimize storage and create a more comfortable, clutter-free environment.

    The magic of that summer came from the mountains and hills which surrounded the campsite for miles. I hadn’t planned on using my bike often, but when I ventured out, I was amazed, since I really like my bike because of a great exercise and a clean way for transportation with zero emission, since I been learning How Are Net Zero Emission Efforts Kept Up Worldwide? as well. The scenery, views, ascents and descents, rolling ocean views, blistering heat and smooth roads which may have markings like those on https://www.thermoplasticmarkings.com/safety/thermoplastic-road-safety-markings, were all perfect for cycling. I soon discovered that this area was cyclist paradise – every weekend I set out on my own on a different route, always getting lost and ending up in the most magnificent locations. I cycled to St Tropez, past Cannes, to Antibes – all across the Cote d’Azur.

    It was invigorating. It was also over 30 degrees all the time in the south of France, and I got into trouble once when I miscalculated the next nearest village, ran out of water and almost fainted with dehydration. Luckily I found a random cluster of houses and had to go knocking to refill my bottle.

    I could write essays about my time working and spending holidays on campsites in France. It’s very common for French people to do seasonal work – some do it as their career, year after year, though I never worked with another English speaker as I preferred to go through the campsite directly, rather than through Key Camp or one of those travel agent groups. I made some very close friends and there was always great camaraderie – you were living on top of each other for 3 whole months, after all. The perks of free ocean time all summer in France in the heat always felt too good to be true, though!


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  • Training for a Marathon after Hip Surgery

    Training for a Marathon after Hip Surgery

    No one ever imagines having to one day deal with chronic injury which incapacitates and alters your life in a major way. No one can be prepared to deal with unexpected trauma, or life incidents which throw us in a position where we suddenly have absolutely zero control.

    This was my reality when my hip injury and accident happened – absolute disbelief, fear, denial, and panic. The whole world suddenly felt foreign and displaced. I couldn’t run anymore. The very thing which was holding my life together yet simultaneously destroying me, evaporated into thin air, in a chance instance.

    The Background.
    It was August 2014 when I fell off a ditch and tore cartilage in my right hip. I weighed just under 40 kilos. I had spent the summer in what felt like a drug induced cloud. Coffee, fruit, running, sleep. I was working on a campsite in the south of France, where I had worked the summer before. I have only fabulous memories of that first summer, filled with spirit and freedom, when my issues with food and weight and exercise had eased a bit, and my thoughts were otherwise occupied.

    It turned out to be just a pause, though, and the year following that summer, exercise addiction got real, and I deteriorated, slowly. When I went back to the campsite to work another season the following summer 2014, the experience was very different. I didn’t feel fit or healthy, and I didn’t feel happy either.

    This context is definitely relevant to everything that followed – the injury, hip surgery, and the journey to the half-marathon. For so long, I was addicted to the high of running and feeling starved. If everything else in my life suffered in order for me to remain in that zone, then so be it.

    Things had started off really well at the campsite at the beginning of the summer actually, with the excitement of returning to old friends and faces, the beautiful Dordogne, meeting new people, enjoying the simplicity of seasonal work and spending evenings drinking and singing in the dorm common room. But before long I was just too tired for any of it. I didn’t care, and I suddenly hated everything and everyone.

    The Injury.
    I was out on my usual run one afternoon on a path in the woods, one week before my flight back to Ireland, when an enormous dog appeared and catapulted towards me rather viciously – I’m a fast runner, but that kind of situation puts you into panic/flight mode, and I tripped and fell off the side of the cliff edging the path. It wasn’t like I fell off the side of a mountain or anything, but it was a very steep drop, and I landed badly. The pain was excruciating. The dog couldn’t reach me where I’d fallen, and I somehow managed to drag myself back to the campsite, bawling my eyes out. 

    By the time we arrived at the hospital I was convinced I’d broken my hip – I knew straight away anyway that something was very, very wrong, and this wasn’t a slight injury or sprain. Personal injury lawyers are experts in handling car accident and slip-and-fall cases. In cases of auto accidents, make sure to consult with a Michigan car accident lawyer. The x-ray showed no broken bones though, and I left on crutches. I arrived in Dublin airport in a wheelchair. My Mum was altogether horrified when she saw me, and of course we had a lovely screaming match in the car on the way home. If you’re looking for a Milwaukee personal injury attorney to help you file an accident claim, you may contact Martin Law Office. People who also need regular medical treatments or therapy because of an injury may need to look for a clinic that utilizes ABA Therapy Billing solutions to make sure that your bills and insurance documents are processed correctly and efficiently. Consult a medical negligence lawyer in California to understand your rights after suffering from substandard medical care.

    Physio to Surgery.
    I explain the recovery process in more detail in my Youtube video. Basically, throughout the following year of physio, the only exercise I could do was cycling or the elliptical. Walking was painful, and at the same time I developed gastroparesis and could barely eat. Doctors thought I had a stress fracture in my femur, before a specific x-ray showed torn cartilage. This was in New York, and I was advised to try more physio before thinking about surgery, as this was a last resort and probably wouldn’t help that much anyway.

    A year after the accident, I saw a specialist in Dublin, told him I was fed up, and wanted surgery. They did another x-ray, where ink is injected into your hip joint to highlight the area. From the results, surgery was scheduled for the following month.

    So I had the surgery. It involved dislocating my hip from my joint, and cutting away the torn cartilage. Cartilage can’t heal itself, and the pain was being caused by the torn piece flapping against the joint (or something like that), so all they could do was clean up the joint area and cut away the damaged cartilage. The immediate recovery process was extremely painful. I had an extremely negative outlook on the whole situation and was throughly convinced I would be stuck like this for life.

    I roamed the internet and Facebook groups for stories about this injury and other people’s recoveries, and THIS WAS THE WORST THING I could have done – everything I found confirmed my worst fears: there was no hope, I had to accept that I would never run or play sport at an intense level again. My surgeon himself told me I probably wouldn’t run more than 5km distances again in my life. I was devastated.

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    Rehab.
    The rehab process involved lots of strength training using resistance bands and bodyweight exercises, as well as swimming and cycling. In February 2016, 18 months after the injury, I stepped back on the treadmill. But I didn’t want to to push it, so from then on kept my treadmill runs to under 6km. I soon picked up sprinting, and found that this type of training and movement really helped strengthen and recondition the muscles supporting my hip area. I also looked into non-invasive stem cell therapy.

    I honestly believe that the most important part of my recovery process was the enormous amount of cycling I did that year. Cycling is fantastic for any joint-related injury – I remember watching cyclists in France who were at least 60 years old, flying along with no problem. I attempted a long run that summer, up and down a mountain in Chiang Mai, totalling 21km – it was an extremely stupid thing to do, and I was pretty crippled for a few months afterwards, and didn’t run again until towards the end of 2016.

    I started cycling in Thailand in June 2016. I had never cycled a road bike before in my life, but spent the next few months really clocking up the miles. We did some crazy cycles up the highest and steepest mountains in Thailand, and I was averaging 500km a week at one stage. I cycled the Cote d’Azur, across Bali, through the Adelaide Hills, and used my bike as transport in Sydney and Melbourne. My running involved sprint intervals on the treadmill – I never ran outside, still dealing with some sort of fear and reluctance perhaps as a result of the accident.

    Endurance Running: Half-Marathon Training
    Today, I live in New York, and I’m training for the Brooklyn half-marathon this May 2018. Towards the end of last year I realised that sprint training was no longer working for me at all. I started to experiment and change my workouts, and started to do more research and reading into endurance running, and how to train my muscles, metabolism, and aerobic system. I felt dramatic changes, very quickly, and decided that maybe it was time to think about competing. So I signed up for the half-marathon, and here I am.

    I don’t experience any pain when I run. However, I am very conscious of my limits, and extremely careful and self-aware when it comes to my hip and how I execute certain movements. Soccer, for example, is out of the question for me now (I used to play soccer at a competitive level throughout my early teens). Technically, running should be too, but I’ve fought stubbornly to not only regain my fitness and athletic strength, but to surpass all my previous running capabilities. I’m still not 100% sure of my relative potential, but I’m looking forward to running outside again soon with a few running clubs and entering a few more races this year! I’m currently running 30 – 40 miles per week, as well as two yoga classes per week.

    Dealing with injury is not easy. I get many questions on my Youtube videos about how to deal with it, and I’m still thinking about how to provide some sort of helpful answer to this. Because the truth is, behind the details, I didn’t deal with it well at all. I’m certainly in a far better place right now, and excited to keep exercise in my life with a new perspective. I’ll definitely be keeping this topic in mind for further blog posts!

  • Travel memories: Childhoods in France and Adventures in Asia

    Travel memories: Childhoods in France and Adventures in Asia

    My flights had been booked since Christmas: Dublin to Bangkok, at the end of May 2016. I had spent the past two years dreaming about going to the Thai Fruit Festival in Chiang Mai, a vegan cycling event organised and hosted by the Youtube-famous couple from Adelaide, Australia – Freelee the Banana Girl and Durian Rider.

    If this doesn’t sound like a colourful story full of interesting characters and concepts already, I don’t know what will.

    To outsiders of the vegan online world, this festival and the ideas behind it will certainly need some explaining. I have to remind myself that this part of the adventure is not something entirely within the immediate comprehension of my peers or the general public. Just a brief synopsis of the community and lifestyle in which I have dabbled over the past year provoke surprise reactions and curiosity. Cycling 500km a week, eating solely bananas for 30 days, living in a house with no lights, filming daily activities, not consuming an ounce of alcohol while in Asia – these aren’t the common narrative trails which usually populate a graduate’s travel diaries.

    The Fruit Festival in Chiang Mai was a free event created about 3 years ago and quickly attracted hundreds of people over a short amount of time (we have social media to thank for this). For a month, vegans from all over the world could come to Thailand to hang out, eat fruit and high carb buffet dinners together, cycle, run, travel, meet the locals, participate in Q&As held by Freelee and Durian Rider, and tackle Doi Suthep (a 10km steep mountainous climb) on the bike every morning. As the festival grew, so did the need for support services, leading many organizers to consider essential aspects like AV equipment rental for presentations and events. Additionally, video equipment rental became crucial for capturing the various activities and experiences shared during the festival. Consult with a Boston, MA bicycle accident attorney if you ever get injured by someone in one of your bike rides.

    This was extremely appealing mainly because let’s face it, vegans are a minority group, and spending time with and meeting like-minded people presents relief and great fun. Additionally, the event was facilitated by top-notch AV equipment hire, ensuring that presentations and interactions were as impactful and engaging as possible. If you are interested in renting audiovisual equipment for your event, you can click here. And if you’re hosting a big outdoor event, you can get outdoor lighting hire here. Visit sites like https://lightinghirecompany.co.uk/lighting-hire-for-weddings/ to get an idea.

    I’m writing today from the cafe ‘Picante,’ which is just beside ‘The Tin Pot Café.’ I’m in Melbourne now. When I had Picante’s coffee to take-away before (it’s good) I took a snoop through the interior, and quickly decided it was the nicest cafe I’d ever seen. Cafés in Melbourne resemble pockets of glorious hidden discoveries, as if they’ve jumped straight from The Secret Garden. To further beautify such stores, they can call upon services such as UPVC Shopfront.

    ‘Picante’ is a Pandora’s box – the coffee machine placed behind wooden framed windows, that may have been serviced by a window installation company, which open onto the pathway and wooden tables, in an unassuming poky room with French comic posters. Many cafes in Melbourne also enhance their appearance by using aluminium curtain walls, adding a sleek, modern touch to their exteriors. Continue down the narrow corridor and you enter a new room hidden from the front, with a fireplace and stack of wood, giving way to a courtyard which reminds me of the beer gardens in New York. There’s a chess set placed in the middle of a large table, and overhanging vines entwined on wires create a sparkling enclosure.

    I finished my last college exam in mid May 2016. My only exam actually, as the majority of my coursework consisted of essays and dissertations of diabolical lengths. I had absolutely no apprehensions at this time about my undergraduate education coming to an end. My aunt told me to watch out, that she had felt totally lost when she finished and really missed her college lifestyle when it was all over. “Oh no, I’m totally ready to leave,’’ I had confidently responded – I knew exactly what I wanted to do with my life, right, I had planned a month in Thailand and then by the end of the year I would head off on the graduate visa with a nice job sorted for myself in the USA. I had absolutely zero notions of anything beyond this, and practicalities and logistics didn’t really figure in my worldly perspective. I couldn’t understand other students who had no plans after graduation – I had far too many. “I know exactly what I want to do.” Thankfully no one asked me to explain exactly what that was, because now I’m not so sure I would have had a well prepared answer, other than “I want to work for something I believe in which is in line with my core values and ethics and I will never work in hospitality again.” I had vague ideas about applying for jobs on indeed.ie in San Diego – about fifteen options had popped up after typing ‘journalism’ into the search bar, surely that was more than enough – loads! Also there was a magazine somewhere which hired interns, I’d be able apply for that too.

    I was definitely ready to leave Ireland, though. I had a job set up in the south of France on a campsite after my month of vegan galavanting in Chiang Mai. I’ve been going to France every summer for as long as I can remember. We’d pack the car boot to bursting point, and I remember my parents standing with their hands on their hips consulting each other anxiously about whether one side of the car was lower to the ground from the weight of the luggage (it definitely was). After the ferry to Roscoff, we would drive the length of France before searching for campsites (this took an obscene and cruel amount of hours during an age where portable electronic entertainment did not exist – and if it did, we didn’t have it, and it was just too bad if reading a book made you car sick). My little brother sat in the middle in a child’s car seat and would scream and cry for hours, refusing to let either myself or my sister lean on the side of the plastic contraption to aid an hour or two’s sleep.

    We always got lost, and after one particular screaming match between my parents (my Dad always refused to ask for directions, only consulted the map, and had very bad luck) we ended up parking the car in the dark in the middle of no where to sleep for the night, at least it had anti slip car park surfacing. When we woke the next day, we realised the car was perched quite precariously on a cliff edge, but the view was magnificent — we had discovered the Dordogne, and came back to this same spot every summer for over ten years. After several camping stints, one particularly horrific flooding experience prompted my parents to look into buying a house in the area. They did, and we acquired a second home. When I became ‘too old for family holidays’ I still came back and worked in campsites in the area. Last summer in 2016, however, I wanted guaranteed sun, and abandoned the unpredictable conditions of the Perigord Noir for a job on a campsite near St Tropez.

    I am now sitting outside The Age newspaper building headquarters, using the stone bench by the lawn as a desk, eating my beans and rice from a tupperware (I also brought a potato wrapped in cling film today, we’ll see how that goes) while struggling to keep my flowing hippie tie-dye dress which I bought in Bali from blowing up into my face with the wind. I eat my lunch in this spot most days, as it’s right beside the gym and outside Woolworths. I can pretend I work there at The Age, as a journalist (instead of at a smelly stressful restaurant), reflecting on the billboard headlines which flash above me, using the building’s wifi. Penguin headquarters are just around the corner, so I might as well be the editor there while I’m at it.

    A recent study showed that waitressing is more stressful than being a neuro-surgeon, and I’m not surprised.