Friday was the Trailwalker. If you remember from a few posts ago, the Trailwalker is a 100 km (60-65 mile) hike through Hong Kong’s New Territories area. My team and I have been training for this for about 2 months. Our goal was to finish in under 24 hours. We started off well, but slowed down as the hike went along. At checkpoint 8 (about 18 km to go), we realized we needed to really pick up the pace in order to reach our goal. Luckily, all of the hard parts were done, and we were able to run much of section nine and get back on the 24 hour pace. Unfortunately, one of our team members got injured during section 9. He had to hobble (with help) to the checkpoint, where he ended up dropping out of the hike. Between waiting for him to get to the checkpoint and waiting at the checkpoint for him to actually decide to drop out (I offered to carry him on my back for the last 12 km, but he decided not to do that), we lost an hour and a half. When added to the loss of motivation from the realization that we would have to finish behind our goal, the fact that we were losing 25% of our team, and the fact that our bodies had used the break to get themselves out of hiking mode and into resting mode, section 10 went very slowly. Our finishing time was 25 hours and 55 minutes. The 3 of us who ended up finishing crossed the finish line together, and I almost cried when it was done—out of a combination of excitement that we had finished and pain in my legs from restarting after such a long rest.
Tomorrow (today if you're in Hong Kong), of course, is my birthday, which shouldn’t add to much busy-ness to my week, and certainly hasn’t taken any time from the past few weeks in preparation, but which does add another exciting element to my week.
Thursday is American Thanksgiving. With Hong Kong not being American, it is not really celebrated that much here. Fortunately, I am not the only American in Hong Kong, and another American family has invited me to their house for Thanksgiving dinner. Again, not something that has taken much preparation time over the past few weeks, but it adds to the excitement of the upcoming week.
Friday is the day of the week that I have most been dreading for a few months. Friday is the day that Nathan, Collette, Jaya, and Jonah Loudin move back from Hong Kong to the USA. It is hard to express in words how much this family has meant to me during my time here in Hong Kong. Nathan has been my boss, friend, mentor, and more. He is the one who picked me up from the airport when I got here, taught me how to do my job, was the one I went to when I had questions, and introduced me to many of the things I love most about Hong Kong (like Nomads—the Mongolian Barbecue buffet).The entire family is awesome. Their departure has consumed much of my time over the past few weeks, both in terms of spending as much time with them as I can before they leave and in terms of hours with Nathan doing Q & A time (me asking the questions) to prepare me for doing the job by myself once he’s gone. Needless to say, Friday is not a day I’m looking forward to.
I know this is just a brief survey of what’s happening here, but these things (especially Trailwalker and the Loudin’s departure) have been largely responsible for my lack of posts over the past few weeks. I’m sure after this week I will find a new excuse to be busy rather than to write on my blog, but we can cross that bridge when we come to it…
