Speeding through my own Narnia!

Many (like 58) years ago, CS Lewis wrote the Narnia books, describing a fantasy country in an alternate reality. Many (like 17) years ago I also wrote about a fantasy country. Unfortunately I can't remember the name of this country, but it earned me an A- in CALM class. CALM was a class that all grade 11 Albertans had to take in order to graduate and it was intended to help us develop life skills. Terribly boring. Extremely boring. So much so, that I dedicated that class period to seeing just how much mischief I could get away with.

I wasn't shooting spitballs, but I was making stuff up. A lot. In fact, I don't think I completed any assignment based on fact. Everything I wrote, all semester long was just invented. Recently a friend (I found on facebook -see there is at least one redeeming quality) from highschool reminded me about that class and about one assignment in particular. We were asked to research a part of the world where we might want to visit and write a report about that country. I spun the globe and put my finger down. It landed in West Africa. But which country? They are so small, my finger covered 3 different ones. I then decided that surely the teacher couldn't know much about that part of the world, so if I happened to write my report about a country that didn't really exist, she would never know.

So I redrew the map, making my own country by eliminating a tiny country and cutting some land out of a couple of other countries. Fantastic. But what would I say about it? I ended up actually doing quite a bit of research about the countries that were in the region and then proceeded to make up the number of square km, the population, major industry, tourism, the name of the capital city and of the provinces. It was all bunk, and I had a number of friends who contributed to helping create the country, running around the library, throwing out weird and wonderful names that I could publish as the name of the current President, and such.

Anyways... where was I going with all this? Oh yeah. Well, on my to Niamey, I rode through my own fantasy country, whatever it's name was. In reality, it was just Burkina Faso and Niger, but it provided some funny memories as I looked back on that class.

Weird how things work out. I did this as a hoax, knowing that I would never go to that part of the world, and yet only 3 years later I had my first visit to West Africa. I have been back and forth for the last 14 years!!!! As I reflected on the bizare irony, I realized that I was actually riding faster than I had been in previous days.

I started looking at the km markers on the side of the road, and at my watch, and to my suprise, I was actually traveling at Mach 0.020 - a significant increase of 5km/h faster than before. Wow. I don't know if it was the food I was eating, a slight change in direction of the wind, or just fresher legs, but I was definitely moving faster!

You would think that this would mean that I was covering bigger distances, but that has not been the case. I have made a point of taking a siesta break in the middle of the day and not riding between 12noon and 3pm. This has helped a lot as I seem to be able to arrive at my destinations less tired. The riding faster part might have something to do with this too.

So there you have it, on a beautiful Thursday afternoon, speeding (at Mach 0.020) across my own private Narnia. How can it get better than this? Of course, it did get better, when my tire went flat, but that, is another story.