MPC Chapter 3 - Shackles of Shame

On the first day of the trek, we were picked up from our hostel at 7:45am and were loaded into a van with a dozen or so bicycles attached to the roof. We proceeded to drive up Abra de Malaga pass for about 4 hours of winding mountainous roads and just when I thought I could not take another minute and the vomit was crawling up my throat, we made it to the tippy top and then the fun really began. On the top of the mountain it was raining and very very cold, much colder than it had been in the city centre when we disembarked earlier that morning.
The first step was finding a helmet and some bike gloves and then identifying a bicycle that had good...well acceptable breaks, at least that was my one requirement, as I would mostly be using them. Alex was off - rocking and rolling within seconds, as were most of those in the group. Gubby was a bit slower to get started and I thought that we might hang towards to back together, but I was wrong. Despite her bike riding fears, she fell into a confident groove quickly and was good to go. Prior to departing down the mountain, I felt an all too familiar gurgling sensation in my gut...not good! I ran behind a boulder and started what would become a theme for me during this trek...having diarrhea...though I didn't know it at the time.
After a few instructions, the group zoomed off and I wobbled off as well. Lovely Alex stayed with me the whole time and Fraser and Gubby were never too far off either. I was feeling good, minus the frost bite in my fingers...riding free, wind in my hair, the Andes surrounding me and then I turned a hairpin corner and strated feeling a bit dizzy and everything started going black. Now, I had two choices: 1) keep going and hope it would shake off, or 2) get off the bike and take a little break. Basically a choice between being ultra lame or super lame because had I passed out and fallen off my bike that would have taken me into ultra lame territory, while getting off my bike in a smewhat controlled manner and trying to walk a bit and shake it off was just a bit more cool rendering me in the super lame category. Alex was a bit behind me taking snaps when she came across me squatting on the side of the road getting ready to vomit.
Basically, I got a touch of altitude sickness and the symptoms include diarrhea (which explained the earlier incident, so I thought), difficulty breathing, light headedness, nausea it is not a good feeling. Luckily, as part of the bike tour, the van follows behind the group should there be any issues with the bicycles or bikers so Abraham caught up with us and we waited for the van so he could get his first aid kit and I could sit in the van for about 30 minutes to head down the mountain a bit and away from such high altitdes, as that is a sure fire way to cure altitude sickness. Now, I thought that because Abraham has ancient inca blood in him that his first aid kit would contain some jungle roots, berries, maybe blood from a small Incan animal, but he whipped out some rubbing alcohol and poured it into his hands and made my sniff it, then rubbed his hands over my forehead and hair. We repeated this about 5 times and then I sat in the van and rode down the mountain for about 30 minutes...Alex in tow. She never leaves me behind, such a little treasure...like a marine...no man left behind...especially not a Goodman.
Once I starteed feeling better, an all too familiar feeling began to hang over me like a dark cloud...shame. I was the only person in the entire group who fell ill and had to sit in the van and receive first aid. Again, I wore my shackles of shame, my bars of embarrassment, my halo of humiliation...whatever you want to call it I was back to that place. Alex did her best to remind me of how hardcore I am and that I had done many adrenalin activities and that in a few minutes I would get back on that bike and ride it down the mountain to the end...and you know what...I did just that! This bike ride was also quite challenging in my humble opinion; there were many waterfall runoffs covering the ground that we had to plow through that rendered us drenched and freezing, as well as passing traffic on both sides of this tiny two lane mountain road with drop offs of 1000ft or more so it took some level of focus and skill.
In the end, we all made it down in one piece and on our bikes. No one rode in the van (minus my 30 minutes of altitude respite) and then off we zoomed to our hostel for an early night, as we had a 30km hike the next day to Santa Teresa through Amazonian jungle that was to begin at 6:30am. We tucked into our feast of meat, rice and chips (fries) and retired to our summer camp-like digs for the night...basically 1 room with 11 twin beds that we all cozied into for a night ghost stories via flashlights under the chin and off we drifted to sleep.