Tuesday, April 12, 2005
The Defining Moment
The title says it all.
We were hike-a-biking up a wide gravel road on Bukit Tankoyan, a 276 metre foothill somewhere before CP9, the afternoon heat beating down on us from a clear blue sky. Husband and wife duo Cornwall Extreme had just overtaken us, and Qi Xiang had been reduced to trudging up the rocky slope with the aid of two wooden branches as makeshift trekking poles. I was pushing the two bikes about fifteen metres up ahead when Qi Xiang yelled out: “You go ahead first, push the bikes to the top of the hill!”
Why not, I thought, and checked the altimeter. OK, less than ten minutes more of this confounded pushing, and carried on. Yet, barely five minutes later, I was glancing left and right at the trailside vegetation, desperate for some shade. If I was suffering like a sick dog, and needed to take a swig of our fast-dwindling water supply every minute, then my team mate must have really been feeling it. Bad idea to have left him behind - bad, bad, bad….
The bikes I left on the trailside, and retreated into the shade of a shallow embankment. I pulled out my half-consumed Snickers bar and finished it of, glancing back down the trail as I did. No Qi Xiang climbing up the hill. He must be hiding in the trailside bush somewhere below. I descend the slope to look for him and find him lying in a ditch by the road side, breathing shallowly, complaining of numbness in his extremities and feeling very dizzy. Delirium, a racing pulse, glazed eyeballs. This meant big trouble. Summarily, I had a case of heat exhaustion on my hands.
Eventually, Qi Xiang recovered, aided by Nature’s breeze, and with the help of the support crew from the Johor Parks team, who happened to be nearby. They gave us some water and the lid of one of their plastic gear boxes. This I used to fan Qi Xiang till he had cooled down sufficiently. Upon finally clearing the uphill, my immediate worry was whether he would be able to adequately control his bike on the big downhill that was coming up. He took the lead on it purposefully and with confidence, a clear sign that he had recovered. Nonetheless, the incident shook us, even when I think of it now.
We were hike-a-biking up a wide gravel road on Bukit Tankoyan, a 276 metre foothill somewhere before CP9, the afternoon heat beating down on us from a clear blue sky. Husband and wife duo Cornwall Extreme had just overtaken us, and Qi Xiang had been reduced to trudging up the rocky slope with the aid of two wooden branches as makeshift trekking poles. I was pushing the two bikes about fifteen metres up ahead when Qi Xiang yelled out: “You go ahead first, push the bikes to the top of the hill!”
Why not, I thought, and checked the altimeter. OK, less than ten minutes more of this confounded pushing, and carried on. Yet, barely five minutes later, I was glancing left and right at the trailside vegetation, desperate for some shade. If I was suffering like a sick dog, and needed to take a swig of our fast-dwindling water supply every minute, then my team mate must have really been feeling it. Bad idea to have left him behind - bad, bad, bad….
The bikes I left on the trailside, and retreated into the shade of a shallow embankment. I pulled out my half-consumed Snickers bar and finished it of, glancing back down the trail as I did. No Qi Xiang climbing up the hill. He must be hiding in the trailside bush somewhere below. I descend the slope to look for him and find him lying in a ditch by the road side, breathing shallowly, complaining of numbness in his extremities and feeling very dizzy. Delirium, a racing pulse, glazed eyeballs. This meant big trouble. Summarily, I had a case of heat exhaustion on my hands.
Eventually, Qi Xiang recovered, aided by Nature’s breeze, and with the help of the support crew from the Johor Parks team, who happened to be nearby. They gave us some water and the lid of one of their plastic gear boxes. This I used to fan Qi Xiang till he had cooled down sufficiently. Upon finally clearing the uphill, my immediate worry was whether he would be able to adequately control his bike on the big downhill that was coming up. He took the lead on it purposefully and with confidence, a clear sign that he had recovered. Nonetheless, the incident shook us, even when I think of it now.
