How hawt would you wish to be?

Don't think that THIS much hot, let me tell you right away.
This past Saturday we went for a small biking tour with my husband. This was a surprise treat, a reward for our hard work in the house-project and for I kept bragging about never being alone, just the two of us, never going AWAY, for something challenging, nice and romantic... His mother slept over for the occassion at our house so that we could start off early. And by early we were to start at 5 or 6 AM, the latest. Fact: Got up at 6 AM. Had breakfast, managed chicken and did some other chores around the house (why, oh why on the morning of a great trip I ask?).

Well, we started at 8 AM, so we decided to have a shorter trip and headed for a nearby lake. It was a 45 minutes' cycling away. On arriving I was repelled by the high entrance fee and by how a small and quiet lake is destroyed by painful attempts at making it look like a 'beach' (Some common sense is clearly lacking here!!)

If you have a quiet lake in a soft-curved valley, why not enjoy it as it is? Beaches are for seashores, aren't they? Mountain rivers should be mountain rivers and should not be converted into underground caves. Likewise with peaceful lakes. Beach? Something they are clearly not. I hope I can get my message through.

I was pissed off by the lame decorations and just about everything about this beach project.

So, we decided to go back home, but instead of cycling on the dangerous side of a motorway we wanted to cut through fields and forests.

Which is quite a romantic idea and is a feasible one, too. My husband has done this tour. The area is quite familiar for both of us, too.

The way from the lake (I refuse to call it a beach) was quite uphill but nice. See the horses? At one point, we were looking at another valley below. The town we live in is to the left, hidden behind another set of smaller hills. The tower at about 9 o'clock is on the far side of the town.
Here's the shortest way - we decided to get home as quick as possible because of the heat. As some of you might have heard we have a horrible weather these days. Theoretically, Hungary's average temperature is 11 degrees celsius, meaning that in the summer it is an average of 25 degrees. Now these numbers must surely be fixed for when I was a kid and a teen, 30 was considered abnormally hot. Now, these days we're experiencing 40. The grass in our garden is crunchy under our feet. Most of the plants just simply wilt. The chicken keep their mouth open all the time to get some ventillation and a false promise of fresh air.

So, this is the way we should have done:

But instead, we went:

It involved going up and down again, places with quicksand so hot that a beaten-up egg would probably have been boiled within, and so quick that we had to get off and push our way. Most of the time the path was out of the forest (meaning no shadows) and quiet of wind (no refreshing breeze).

Actually, we got lost and ended up in another village near to our hometown. When making our way between the two settlements, we ran into two dead ends - and although in the latter we found a short-cut to a good road, the junction road proved to be just a small path among trees and bushes and I tripped over my bike and fell into the dirt. During the day we met two menacing dogs, none of them made real harm to us, fortunately.

By the time I got home I felt my brain throbbing out of my ears. The back of my palms were glowing with sweat. And I am not that type of person who has fat on her hands.

I spent some considerable time under the shower... It did take me minutes to take away my hotness from me.

Now, laugh at my romantic excursion. My reward trip. My escape - switched into survival mode.