Damazan, France.
Wednesday 23rd August 2023.
I watch the 9s roll over into 0s on a French D road close to Damazan. Coming to a stop, the hot air fanning through my vented motorcycle jacket ends too. 10,000 miles has arrived on a straight and empty road bordered by fields that stretch into a baking hot horizon. In the distance, the occasional tree or outhouse accents the road many miles away. But there’s no shade here.
Sweat releases from my pores in salty beads and the sun bakes my black jacket and leather gloves. I take a photo of my dash; 10,000 miles, 2:20 pm, 41 degrees. Happy 10k Maloocifer, you’ve done well today. I start Maloo up and ride into the hot air, it flows over me and I feel cooled.
“It’s got cooler I think”, I say to Wiggy over comms.
“If you’re sweating, it’s probably nature’s air conditioning.”
Fair point, when my sweat has dried I feel the heat again. I ride with my visor up and sun shield down to help cool me and reduce eye strain from looking at the blanched landscape for too long. There’s a heatwave this week, and we’ve found ourselves traveling through the hottest part of Europe.
Earlier on, we rode past a small white house with a green lawn and hundreds of white, yellow and red roses blooming on its road-facing hedge. How can you grow roses in your garden in such a parched landscape? I lift my sun visor and the flat fields look like fawn and yellow parchments. Covered with crumbly pale soil and bordered by a white hot sky that filters to blue the higher you look up. Occasionally, we pass these sunflower and corn fields, but the plants are frazzled, the sunflowers stand with their burn faces pointing downwards.
We’ve discussed ways to combat the heat, getting up early and leaving as the sun rises was one suggestion. Yet, today we left camp at midday and yesterday was not much better. However, extreme heat or cold is a game-breaker for me and I’ve had to do more research about denatured insulin:
The tricky thing about insulin that has been quickly destroyed by hot or cold temperatures is that you can’t tell it’s “spoiled” until you suddenly see your blood sugar levels spiking. https://beyondtype1.org
Yesterday morning my blood sugar was spiking horrendously after breakfast. I questioned if I’d taken my background insulin. I can normally check this using a display on my injection pen that tells me my last dose, but bizarrely, it had suddenly stopped working. In the end, I swapped to my backup pen and took another 16 units. Yet, my blood sugar continued to rise despite also increasing my fast-acting insulin ratio, and then eventually, in the evening my levels crashed.
This made me think that my NovoRapid fast-acting insulin was okay but my Levemir long-acting insulin had denatured. I threw away the Levemir in my pen and tried a new vile. The only problem is that, through the heat wave, all my files have been stored in similar ways; in evaporative cooling pouches called Frio Bags. We will see.
One response
Hi Kelly, it is great that you’re taking this challenge.
It would be good to see how certain problem you encounter especially for those in similar health problems as they take these unfamiliar trips.
It’s experience not to miss and it will help others considering such adventures 😊