As the 9am alarm sounded, we
grudgingly dragged ourselves out of bed to wave Alf off at the airport before
his “brb” flight back to England. Rich and Caleb, or Team Raleb, then turned to
each other and discussed how action packed the next few days would be. The
usual clichés were banded around like “Astana is our oyster” and “our sky
hostel is the limit” as we returned back through the city. First stop was the
gym, or Fitness Palace as the large sign suggested.
Dressed in beaters, shorts
and flip-flops we were treated to a tour of their Celebrity Spa, yoga rooms and
gigantic gym. Pretending we were wealthy gym sharks who could afford the $140 a
month membership, the usual gym jargon was exchanged. Our burning questions of
“how far do your treadmills incline”, “do you sell green tea flavoured
protein?” and “what drag factor do your concept 2 rowing machines go up to?”
were swiftly answered by one of the gym’s helpful employees. With no intention
of paying the extortionate subscription, we politely smiled, nodded and headed
for the door.
Content with merely inhaling the gym’s
sweat soaked air and counting that as basically doing a session, we retired our
exhausted bodies back to the hostel for some more lounging around. 5 hours
later neither of us had moved. The sun lounger’s fabric had actually tanned
around us, leaving an alarming outline of a rather excited man. When I looked
harder, I realised it had just been an unfortunately placed beer bottle. After
a brief intermission whilst we grabbed pizza for lunch, the same reclined
position looking down over the entire city was adopted for the next 5 hours.
As
Team Raleb relaxed in the sun with an ice-cold beer, thoughts of our third
musketeer quickly vanished like a fart in the wind. 3 hours into his 7-hour
flight, Alf had just begun tucking into his economy gourmet meal of
straightjacket range chicken, cardboard buckwheat shavings and sparkling water
out of a yoghurt pot. As the sun dipped over the skyscraper-crammed horizon, it
brought an end to probably the least productive day on the rally so far. It was
more a homage to our third year at university where we just about mastered the
art of doing zip but we embraced it with open arms, a rest was needed.
Posted by: Rich