I liked the feeling afterwards. Don't get me wrong, I don't like to be hurt or being in pain and luckily I didn't get any serious injuries. There is just a thought that stroke me after a fall: I'm finally safe and healthy. A very long-awaited and desired thought, and it's not even related to the cycling. You probably have a WTF moment reading this, but let me explain.

Struggles, Ilness, Anexiety

It was two extremely tough months for me. Everything started with the wrong appartment pick: we rented one that looked new, pretty and comfy. At first everything was ok, we moved in, bought some houshold bits and pieces, and everything seemed nice and settled.

Somewhere around this time I started to work on my first scientific paper. I didn't have supervisor, I didn't have much time before submission deadline and much previous experience either, so I was not expecting it to be easy for sure. Also, I was very motivated to write and submit the paper as it were a few coincidences that made this conf a very good match for me:

  1. I had a couple of projects, which are very much ontopic for this conf.
  2. I got an email from one of conference organaizers inviting me to send a paper to it. This is a funny one, I thought I didn't know him, but later I realized that a couple of weeks before I downloaded one of his talks to watch later.
  3. The conference was in accessible location (Singapore): it's nearby and most importantly getting a visa to it for me is easy. You probably can't imagine what bureaucracy acrobatics I had to pull off to be able to recieve payments for my FOSS work after I left my country 3 years ago. Getting a shengen visa is even more challenging. Toxic passport is not a joke.
  4. Recently, I started to learn about Japan, there culture and language and with every day I enjoy and willing to visit this country more and more. There were at least two professors from Japan, so I could easily make connections and potentially get an invite to teach Computer Science in Japan.

Obviously, I started to work hard to get it done. It was like a 10-16 hours a day, and in addition to that I cut almost all social and physical activities (they took too much time and attention). I was going out to see people maybe once in a week, had about 2-5 hours of yoga and a bit of walking from cafe to cafe, the rest was the paper. I kept my sleeping schedule as usual, from ~22 to sunrise, and added day naps to reset and be more productive in the second part of the day.

It's not a surprise that by sitting so much in front of a laptop, I developed a wrist and back pain quite quickly. But what surprised me that I got ill. I haven't been any seriously ill for 2 years and here I got the whole set: fever, cough, phlegm, foggy mind, extreme tiredness. I thought it could be the result of overwork and I stepped back a bit: relaxed my working schedule, got a lot of additional sleep, drank a lot of water and did more walks and ... It didn't help.

My condition was varying from manageable to bad. A week and a half later I went to the hospital, got X-ray, blood test, bronchitis diagnosis and antibiotics prescription. Started to take pills and an hour later got an extreme abdominal pain, so bad that I couldn't sit or stand. I had so sever pain in the stomach area only once in my life, in the childhood, from allergy to wild strawberry. A few days later I noticed a rash on legs and arms. Turned out I'm allergic to this antibiotic.

I still finished the prescribed course and it seems I got better. Meantime, my friend Shilin (athletic and healthy guy, who I rent apartment with) got exactly the same respiratory sympthoms (maybe just a little bit less intense). Ok, maybe it's a local vietnamese virus or bacteria we don't have immune response against? The hypothesis is sound.

A few days later, I had an early morning date, but around 4am I had to write that I won't come cause... I'm ill. Again. The same way as before. It's already became very annoying and stressful. It's hard to work, it's hard to see people, it's hard to exist. At this point of time, I assumed that it can be environment/air quality problem.

It turned out that apartment has a horrible (non-existing) ventilation and also I started to suspect that it can have mold, but I didn't have any way to quantify the problem. I tried to find an agency, who can do air quality tests and measure, but found only one organization, which unfortunatelly operates only in the other city. The research brough air quality monitors to my attention and I order one of them from Japan (it still on the way). In the meantime I also ordered hygrometer, air purifier, pulseoximeter and N95 masks.

A few weeks fast forward. I tried to temporary move to hotel and it made me feel a bit better, but the sleep quality was far from perfect and it was hard to tell if it really helps or I just got better overall at the moment. I came back to the apartment. Sleeping in the mask and using air purifier subjectively eased the sympthoms a bit, but hard to tell how much.

I finally finished my work on the paper, submitted it, and was very keen to troubleshoot this extremely annoying and dangerous problem. I went to the hospital for the third time (this time the other hospital, the fanciest in Da Nang). The X-ray didn't show nor positive dynamics, neither negative. Still bronchitis. I got corticosteroids and a third type of antibiotics prescribed in the span of less than two month! Shillin was also ill for almost the whole time of the story and also took prescribed to him antibiotic without much improvement.

A day later, I noticed that we have a round patch of the mold appeared in the shower. I asked an apartment manager to help us with mold issues and... they just painted the mold with white paint 🤦. We didn't get any other collaboration on this problem. My good and caring friend noticed my post on fediverse about air quality, and dropped an email advising to move out ASAP.

I also noticed a few dark spots appeared on the wall in my room. And it stroke me: they probably painted the black mold in my room and it just grows trough the paint! I wanted to deconstruct the wall to check my guess, but at first I started to explore every possible corner of the room and found white and green mold in the toppest and almost inaccessible shelves of the wardrobe. There were signs that it was swept into the corner (probably by cleaner), but it continued to grow of course.

This was the last bit. It was not only a hypothesis, it was a fact that there are huge mold problems in addition to ventilation and humidity issues. At this moment, I was already very anxious and stressed. I couldn't properly sleep, I couldn't work. In addition to that I got a reject for my conference paper. I tried to comfort myself with food and cozy kind movies. I tried to distract myself with intense workouts: boxing, kettlebells, yoga, swimming, cycling. As you can guess, it didn't help much: I still was anxious, but also extremely tired at the same time 😄

I realized that I'm to anxious, I can't fall asleep, I can't do a thing for my current projects. I spent two days going through all possible apartments for rent nearby, found a manageable one, gave up on deposit and moved out the same day. The next day I found an apartment for my friend and helped him to move out as well.

Even after the move I felt extreme anexiety, every small inconvinience triggered me, I was worried about any tiny failure or interaction I had. I was afraid that I could be wrong about the cause of my health problems and it won't get better, I was afraid that my bus for visarun will be cancelled, I was worried that I annoyed and gave troubles to a bartender by asking to redo matcha without sugar.

Before visarun I got only 2 hours of sleep and woke up at 2:20am to get to the car at 3. The visarun itself went smoothly, I came back around afternoon. Had a walk and dinner with my vietnamese friend and fall asleep around 20:00, and got 10+ hours of uninterrupted sleep! The next day I was feeling good and rested, confirmed the next morning ride with local cycling shop owner, and had a relatively calm and good day and manageable amount of good sleep. This is where the story about the crash starts! :)

The Crash

I woke at 5:15, brushed my teeth and at 5:50 was at the bike shop. It was my 3rd ride in the last years, and it was intermediate-advanced level ride with average tempo about 20km/h and quite steep climbing. I was invited to it as I showed enough level of fitness on the previous casual ride. I got a very basic rental road bike and we went for a run.

The run was not easy, on the flat surface it was hard to keep up with the group, on climbes I was getting around 190 pulse, but still could clearly talk and even oversustain some of the fellows. The athmosphere was very friendly and nice. Everyone was smiling, chill and having fun and good gigs. Somewhere around 20km mark we turned back, and on the way back we started to decend the steepest climb. We were notified by the lead of the group to be careful.

The first few guys with fancy carbon bikes went 80km/h or maybe more and quickly dissapeared from the sight. As for myself I went fast (for me), but controlled, around 50km/h. Another advanced guy in tight shorts and on the the fancy bike bypassed me with ease, but I didn't try to keep up, I instead started to check my breaks and preparing for the turn.

A couple of seconds later, I was watching this guy losing control and going head first into the stream near the road. My first thought was: if he got unconsiousness, he can drawn! I need to stop quickly and help him out. I pressed breaks. Probably pressed them too hard. At the same time I've reached the wet asphalt section. I'm not used to ride narrow tires and didn't expect how they will interact with the surface. You can guess what happened next.

Instead of gradually slowing down, my bike started to wiggle like a crazy. For a few second instead of riding I was sweeping with the tail of my bike like a newbie snowboarder in their first days learning edging. It could last forever and at some point I lost the control and flew away.

It's funny, but I didn't feel any worried before the crash. I was certain that everything is under control and I can easily stop at any moment. Even when the bike started to wiggle I was more surprised than stressed. I don't even get any noticeable adrenaline kick.

The crash itself was quite comfortable: I hit the ground and slided a bit on my back, I was in a helmet, but I didn't touch the ground with my head. Probably the wet asphalt helped to slide and avoid serious skin damage. I started to feel the parts of the body I hit straight after the crash and it wasn't any bad. The next day I could feel brusies and soar neck muscles. It was hard to do mobility workout cause of soar bun, but the next day it was good.

I already had 2 yoga and kettlebell workouts and it's fine. The only worrying part is that a part of the elbow bruise has a sharp pain on press. I guess I need to do an X-ray to check there is no bone fracture. BTW, the guy went head first into the stream had even less bruises and scratches, but much more mud on him :)

I hope you enjoyed the details of my fun morning on the monkey mountain, but the best part came later. We ensured that everyone is ok, and hot fixed our bikes and I realized that I'm finally healthy and safe, I'm in a good and supporting community, I don't have cough, I don't have anexiety. I feel so much better now.

Stay away from fungies, ride more, find great people, have a piece 🤟