to sleep, perchance to dream. . .

Posted by derrick on August 30, 2007

 Asleep in perfect blue buildings
Beside the green apple sea
Gonna get me a little oblivion, baby
Try to keep myself away from me
- counting crows

I think I slept well last night. That’s actually quite an amazing statement. If there was one major deprivation I dealt with during the CTA trip is was sleep. When I arrived in Puerto Rico I was lucky enough to spend a couple days in a nice little hotel in San Juan. I slept like a baby. But, as you would expect soon the nice, comfortable bed and quiet rooms were soon a thing of the past. Especially after I did my Harold Loydd routine down some stairs and did some serious damage to my ribs & pulled a couple muscles under my right arm. It was impossible to lay any other way but flat on my back. I could not lay on the right side because the pressure was just too much and pain would run in all directions. If I would lay on my left side, gravity would pull downward on my ribs and muscles and a dull pain would grow into a deep throb.On a trip like this you do not get beds. You sleep wherever you land. Mostly in your tent on the sand or pulled back into the forest. Sometimes on floors. Many times we slept in or near a town where security was always in mind. We often slept with one eye open. Every sound would cause you to come to sharp attention. Then in a few minutes you would drift off a bit until the next disturbance. Paddling each day would keep the pain of my fall quite alive and it would nag at me each night.

When we got around the corner of the south coast we came to a touristy town where I decided to buy a hammock, a device native to Puerto Rico. That night though I slept on the bow of an old green boat while music played and people milled around. Oddly I did sleep a bit that night. The night I finally did get to try the hammock I slept a bit, in fits. But of course when a police officer is shining a flashlight at you in the middle of the night it does not help you sleep. LOL! The picture above gives an idyllic impression of sleeping outside in my hammock. It was a beautiful morning. However, sleeping in such a bent position made paddling the next day painful again as my ribs complained with each stroke.

Of course when not worried about security or being tortured by a plague of mosquitoes & sand flys, and when the pain was not so much in the forefront, my crazy head would take it’s turn running through thoughts of home, dealing with some of the crazy issues that came up in the trip or I brought with me from the past, plans for the next day or reliving a rough day on the water. Sleep again would not come easily. I can’t count how many nights I was just waiting for 4:30am which was the arbitrary time I set to get up and start packing up for the next day. Those people who can sleep through an atomic bomb blast are the lucky ones.

On a trip like this don’t expect that the paddling will make you sleep like a rock each night. Exhaustion is not always enough.