Superior State Of Being

My absolute favorite documentary film ever is Surfwise. I am constantly mentioning it in passing and force my loved ones to watch it, because it's fabulous on so many levels.
In short:

Surfwise follows the odyssey of 85-year-old, legendary surfer Dr. Dorian "Doc" Paskowitz, his wife Juliette, and their nine children—all of whom were home-schooled on the beaches of Southern California, Hawaii, Mexico and Israel; they surfed every day of their lives, and were forced to adhere to a strict diet and lifestyle by their passionate and demanding, health-conscious father.

But really, just watch the preview.

So yeah, he's super strict, especially about their diet. He makes a point of health as not simply "the absence of disease", but of a "superior state of being". The Paskowitz's surfed all day long and ate essentially nuts and berries, leaving them crazy fit.

I acknowledge that this might be the most in shape I may ever be in my life. I simply can't imagine when I will ever have another time in which I can devote to 10 hours of cycling a day for 4 weeks. I wanted to try the Surfwise diet and see what happened, beginning from the time we crossed the Holland-German border to the finish of our trip in Frankfurt, 9 days. Kat and I went to the market and got carrots, nuts, beans, rice cakes, and lots of fruit. I made it through the first day and felt awesome, I even weathered the mid-afternoon ice cream craving.

Then we hit Duisburg the next day. It was so stressful that when Michael offered to treat us to pizza, it sounded like the best, most comforting thing ever. I caved. I then caved the following day too, as we passed one ice cream cafe after another with flavors like Pistache, Schwarzwald (chocolate cherry), Malaga (rum raisen), Prosecco Melon, and Honig. It was like tasting all the flavors of the dairy rainbow.

Speaking of comfort. When biking for a while, past our exhaustion point, for one reason or another, and we have something lovely at the end-beautiful campsite, delicious meal, squishy bed-then it all seems worth it. It's easy for us to get up early again the next morning with a positive outlook and do it all over again. We're exhausted, our asses hurt, and we have dirt rings around our necks but it's cool because at least we have this amazing castle in the distance with two! rainbows, and it all seems worth the hassle. However, if a respite from the pain never materializes then it's really hard to not want to give up. And in fact, while I'm on the subject, I think we can handle about 11 days of straight-up biking before we need a couple days off to chill in cafes and lounge in saunas to get our mojo back in working order. Cycling and sleeping on dirt for 11 days, that's our limit.