(Sunday, March 21) Rotto. In the great Australian tradition of nicknames Freemantle becomes Freo and Rottnest becomes Rotto (Yeti made me practice saying it properly - Roddo). For anyone not aware, Rotto is Perth's holiday island and you'd be hard pressed to find a Western Australian who hadn't spent time there as a child. It's a beautiful place. And we bicycled a lot. 20 km around the island, during which my legs made it clear yet again that they do not work properly, do not wish to work properly and have no intention of ever working properly again. *sigh* See, it's hard to explain but the large muscles don't fire so it's the little'uns that do all the work. They tire out super quick and after about 10 pedals the lactic acid buildup or strain or whatever really HURTS so I have to rest them for about 30 seconds before repeating the process. Which is fine, really, unless you're going up a hill. Even a little one. After about 12 km, Yeti started pushing me up the hills so that was lovely... Anyways, apart from feeling like a total invalid it's really horrifying to realize that all the work and the money that's gone into getting me to a place where I don't have 2 weeks of migraines a month, can actually move my arms without wanting to cry and having my heels go numb when I walk hasn't gone one iota towards actually fixing the injury itself. My arms are like this too by the way, but I think it's less a muscle workability thing than the impingment still hanging on. Back injuries are so complicated. The thing I can't really get my head around is that even though I'm working these little muscles they don't gain any strength / stamina / endurance. Not that I want large muscles where large muscles aren't supposed to be but you would think that there'd be some additional stamina there. I dunno. All I know is that the amount of whatever you want to call it my leg muscles had 3 years ago is exactly the same today. I'm on the list to see a specialist about prolotherapy and I seem to be a good candidate for that so we shall just have to wait and see. I was just thinking I haven't said much about how I'm doing physically these days and I could expand upon that more but I really am here trying to get stuff down about the trip so that will all have to wait until I'm home and settled in again. There's not much to say about Rottnest really that you couldn't learn by looking it up - it's beautiful. Full stop. We snorkelled in a couple of places and I can now check off seeing sharks (little ones) in the 'wild' - plus I got stung by lots of little jellyfish. At one point I felt a sting and went under the water a bit and when I came back up I could see a huge group of them floating above me. I'm not ashamed to admit I panicked a bit, those little buggers HURT, and so ended up sucking in a bit of seawater. If I had the time and the access I'd be posting pictures as I go along but unfortunately it's too expensive for me to do that so you'll just have to wait until I can get the photos up on smugmug and post a link. Since everyone I've ever known who goes to a lovely beach posts one of those 'jump in the air' pictures I made Yeti take some and if I can get past the way my extra 20 pounds looks I will put those up as well as the underwater set that Yeti took. We left the first snorkelling spot at Little Armstrong Bay to head back to the Geordie Bay settlement for a fish and chip lunch and were visited by some of the islands Quokkas, which are rodents I suppose, but hop about like kangaroos. About the size of a small cat, they are so soft and damn cute.... then we headed out to snorkel Salmon Bay where the water was much clearer before heading back and having a drink at the pub while we waiting for the ferry to take us back to Freo through an incredible sunset.