Four Sentence Bonk

The rare grassy verge along a rural highway was a welcome respite as I lay along a rural highway, forty miles into my first sub-24 hour camping expedition. My lightly loaded bike lay abandoned next to me, ignored and reviled but to find food and water among its stores, having been too drained to use the kickstand properly. Over half an hour of gluttony from consuming all of the immediately edible food and over a liter of water restored some mental balance and strength. Returning to the saddle, covering ten miles more to find a convenience store near a secluded camping site.

Much as I dislike how little I write while simultaneously not being able to force myself to sit down and write daily, I love taking on small writing challenges.  Last year I attempted my first 6-word story to describe a weeklong outdoor leadership class as part of a talent night.  Wrestling that number of words to evoke emotion and communicate a story is quite a challenge, even with my tendency to mostly objective brevity.

While I'm not terribly interested in winning the prize, some retweets were going around today for a contest to write a 4 or 5 sentence story of bonking.  For the non-bicycling readers - a bonk or bonking is used to describe what happens when a rider loses motivation and strength, frequently stepping off the bike because they can't go on due to poor food intake while riding.  (and now you see what we need a term to cover this)