Skip to main content

Beware of high altitude!

Holy crap. I know they say to be careful to adjust to the altitude (13k feet here in Huancayo if I recall right) before doing anything strenuous but I didn't realize how bad it was. This morning I felt fine and decided to see what's up, so I started my morning wakeup routine of pushups/situps/handstands.

Um, yeah, no. About 15 pushups in I started to feel a weird spike of pain in my head and I decided to keep going. At around ~25 pushups I almost blacked out. Seriously. My vision almost completely disappeared accompanied by migraine level waves of pain. Even 30 minutes and two excedrin later I'm still wracked by these spikes of pain in my head and a low level of background pain.

All this from ~25 pushups... I wasn't even breathing hard and my muscles weren't even noticing it yet. Insane. Methinks I will be taking it a bit easy for a couple more days.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Patagonia Beckons

Today I begin what may become one of the most difficult tests of long term mental and physical endurance and strength I have ever undertaken: for most of its remaining 2500km through Patagonia, Ruta 40 is considered one of the most desolate highways in the world. Over half of the remaining road is gravel, sand, and dirt. The number of towns listed on a map once I pass Perito Moreno can be counted on one hand, and there are many stretches of hundreds of miles without provisions, fuel, or places to stay.

Gear Review: Sea to Summit Big River Dry Sacks

In the past couple months on the road I think I’ve spent more time riding my scooter through rain than I have in the dry – this is clearly reflected in the fact that as time has gone by I’ve invested more and more money in things to keep my stuff dry, since wet gear sucks. One of my favorite purchases for this trip is the pair of Sea to Summit Big River Dry Sacks I picked up just before leaving, in 13L and 20L sizes. They cost me around $20 each and are one of the best pieces of gear I’ve purchased in years – extremely durable, effective, and simple to use.

5 Things that Suck about Traveling Solo

I find it telling that it seems a majority of the interesting travel blogs I run across are written by solo travelers, most often women. I think there’s a reason why we write more than people who travel with friends or in groups and that it’s pretty self evident: it’s an outlet for our loneliness. In the last year and a half, the vast majority of my time has been spent away from home, alone. As I write this, it’s been over a month since I’ve conversed with anyone in my native language, and I can remember every single conversation in English for the month before that. The truth is, I don’t think I could have done this without the internet – without a blog to share my thoughts, without Facebook to see what my friends are up to, without the occasional e-mail to provide a façade of normalcy… without these things I’d likely have driven myself insane with my internal dialogue. Now, I grant, there’s a reason I travel alone and I do love it, but lately it seems all I run across in the blogosp