Scotland on two wheels

Inverness is the northern most Scottish city (so described to me by a Scot, so I’ll take it for truth). And this is where our trip begins. Let me clarify this ambiguous ‘our’. Well, I guess I am clear, relatively. The other main protagonist is Lyonell Boulton is a math professor at Hariet-Watt university. A Venezuelan who has decided to leave his homeland, and his faculty position there, to escape an uncomfortable political climate, and take a postdoc position in the UK. Eventually, he landed this faculty position. Of more importance to this story, he is the route planner. This means well folded pieces of 8 by 11 with hybrid pictures of maps and terrain courtesy of our friends at google maps.




From Inverness, the route goes up hill. Well that’s not accurate. Up many hills is more like it. And they seemed to not end. Of course the wind which was blowing according to reports at 6 mph, but felt much stronger and in my stories will definitely be stronger. Oh wait. I mean, the wind was blowing at least at 15 mph and really impeded our climb. Add to that H being out of shape worsened by three weeks of lots of food which included family time and conference time, and the extra baggage up the hill was tough. Lyonell was riding in very low gear (something he called ‘cadence’) and I thought he was doing this to allow me time to catch up. Eventually I found out that this is a system developed by Lance Arm-o-strong which is supposed to be the most efficient way to ride. I on the other hand usually begin at higher gears, especially up hill, and slowly move down my gear ladder. Lyonell said that this is not so good for the bike. Ok, I need to be educated about this. Internet – I am coming to you!




Meanwhile, after all of the uphills we reached a nice downhill, which was rudely interrupted by another uphill, but then was followed by a beautiful downhill to the southern end of Loch Ness. This is of course the famed monster lake of Scotland. Well, I wasn’t impressed. I mean the lake is beautiful and the setting is stunning, but Nessy, the monster? Our cat has meaner streaks. She was tame and sweet, made no fuss about my hiking-boots-pretending-to-be-biking-shoes or about our lack of powerbars or gels. Simply nodded, and with a thick Scottish accent (roll the r’s and pretend you are speaking with a giant gum ball in your mouth) ‘chop chop chop, drink drink drink.’