02 into 03 February 2011
It’s the night before our departure on the Queen Charlotte Track and I can’t sleep. Not from over-eager anticipation of the trek, which I am eagerly anticipating, but instead because there is a high-pitched whine in my ear. No, not Gina but rather a pesky mosquito. Now who let that pesky mosquito into our tent? Well, no one, actually, as I’m listening to it from here inside our flash green van. This is not because I got up from the tent to hang out in the van while not being able to sleep. This is because I am attempting to sleep in the van in a last, desperate attempt to get some shut-eye, the past few nights having included none of that, my shoulders and back having now completely rejected my Thermarest.
Seeing how we have a van, one would think there would be plenty of room inside to create a welcoming nest. However, we do not have that sort of van. Our van has room for bikes and camping chairs and panniers and camping tote and chilly bin and dirty laundry, but no room for a human, no matter how short, to stretch out. So I am attempting to sleep in the fully-reclined front passenger seat. This is not working out so well for several reasons. First, if I lay on my back, my lower legs and feet hang down into the footwell. I am concerned that this is the same as flying overseas in economy class, where blood pools and pools and forms life-threatening blood clots until one disturbs their seat buddy in order to walk the aisles and the scan the galley for any free mid-flight treats. To fall asleep in this position would be to risk certain death. Second, if I instead try to lay on my right side, there is a 1995 fixed-in-place seatbelt buckle holder digging into my hip. I have scrunched a bath towel over this annoying fixture but I can still feel it. Plus, my legs are now competing for the best position from which to be draped over the driver’s seat, and the right one keeps losing, going numb beyond the point of pins and needles and into the realm of I-can-no-longer-lift-it-as-I-can’t-feel-a-thing. Third, if I then roll back over, dragging my now completely useless right leg with me, and try to position myself on my left side, my knees are cramming into the passenger door and my bum directly into that dang seatbelt buckle holder. Finally, going for the belly sleep is useless, my face slipping into the gap between the headrest and the seat, not so different from going to the chiropractor’s office, only there’s no one here to now remove the additional crick I just created.
Needless to say, my van-as-a-sealy-posturpedic experiment was not exactly a gleaming success. I did manage a few hours rest and though slightly puffy this morning, my right leg seems to have suffered no permanent damage, but I think I’ll be heading back into the tent come nightfall. Well, nightfall in a few days … Queen Charlotte Lodges, here we come!
