Although we did not cycle a single km since our last blog post, it was the most challenging and stressful period of our trip. Even when our situation was precarious, we felt like “Someone was looking out for us!” as many of the choices we made along the way were simply the rigth ones. And we obviously benefited from a lot of luck and the help of many Riga residents.

2025.06.14 – [LV] Koknese ==> Riga (0 kms | Total: 1212 kms)

I did not sleep at all during the night as my stomach pain continued. In the early morning, I reached out to our MEDOC travel insurance to seek some assistance and open a medical emergency case with them. Because we were in our first 40 days of our trip, MEDOC forced me to open a case with PSHCP (MHS International). We were still about 100kms away from Riga, the capital of Latvia. As I could no longer cycle, we were hoping that our travel insurance could arrange some sort of transport from our current location to a hospital in Riga. This was the start of a long and frustrating/eye-opening experience with travel insurance operators. We were ready to call upon the town’s ambulance service but we realized the service was closed on the weekend – namely today being a Saturday. We tried calling the emergency ambulance service in Riga, but only to be provided with a Latvian voice message and a hang-up. Obviously, our transport logistics were more challenging given that we were dragging our fully loaded tandem. As we were exploring with Google Maps our public and private transport options to Riga, we noticed that a few buses were scheduled to come through our town on their way to Riga. Lucky for us, we identified a 7:00am bus stopping some 800m away from our apartment. Before leaving our apartment, we immediately booked a hotel with 24/7 front desk in Riga for our planned arrival. We painstakingly loaded the tandem and walked over to the bus stop. Once there, we loaded our panniers into our travel duffel bags and managed to separate the tandem in two – just like when we fly. Ten minutes later, the bus promptly showed up to pick up some locals and two desperate looking cyclists. The young bus driver was very kind to help us load our tandem and duffel bags into the bus’ storage area.

Since the early morning my broad stomach pain had shifted to a very acute pain on one side. By then, I knew I was not dealing with a simple food poisoning experience but rather with something more serious like an appendicitis, a hernia or something else.

The bus ride to Riga was fairly smooth except for a few episodes where I had to scream out in pain from the acute stomach discomfort. We were very thankfully to confirm, as expected, that the Riga bus terminal was only 8mins walk to the hotel we booked earlier in the morning. Upon arriving at the bus terminal, the friendly driver unloaded our tandem and duffel bags and wished us good luck. We re-assembled the tandem and loaded our panniers back on the tandem. We painstakingly, once again, walked to our hotel. After leaving our luggage and tandem at the hotel reception, we inquired about hospital options in Riga. The hotel reception agent recommended one hospital and he called a taxi for us. At 10am, we arrived at the “Riga 1st hospital”. After walking to several buildings, we noticed the campus looked like a ghost town. We learned that the hospital had no emergency care. An employee directed us to another hospital where we could get to an emergency service. During our Bolt car-hailing drive to our 2nd hospital, the driver drove through a stretch of cobble stone street and I almost went through the roof in acute stomach pain from the car vibrations. Upon our arrival at the 2nd hospital (Paula Stradiņa Klīniskā universitātes slimnīca), we were directed to the emergency care. We took a queuing ticket – number 178 and they were handling 175 already. Once my number came up, I was seen by a nurse who basically took my vitals and opened by case. Before seeing a doctor, the reception needed to complete a simple form and collect 30 euros for the initial exam. For almost 15 mins, we thought we were in a comedy show as the reception agent took five attempts to print my name and email correctly on their form. After completing our payment – just before 12pm, the earlier nurse introduced us to the emergency care doctor who would be taking care of me. After a blood withdrawal, an ECT and intravenus fluid, etc , I was given two types of pain killer before proceeding to a CT scan. Within less than an hour, the doctor had informed Jenny waiting in the corridor about her diagnostic (and me later on). I was suffering from a bowel torsion and I would require a surgery. When I asked when would this take place, I was totally blown away when she said: Right now! I was wheel-chaired to the nearby surgery building. In less than another hour wait time, I was introduced to my surgeon and brought to an operating room. I barely had time to help Jenny install the Bolt car-hailing application in order for her to return to our hotel. The operating room team consisted of a handful of surgeons/anesthetist/interns/nurses. All of this activity was being conducted on a Saturday afternoon. I woke up in a post surgery care unit. The nursing staff were quite efficient. I barely moved in my bed for the rest of the day and night. Thankfully, I had my phone and power pack to remain in contact with Jenny.

While I was being operated upon and recovering, Jenny was going through her own ordeal. She had to navigate the winding streets of the Old Town by herself. To further complicate her situation, her primary HomeTrust Visa credit card started to decline her attempted purchases.

2025.06.15 – [LV] Riga ==> Riga (0 kms | Total: 1212 kms)

Sunday morning before 10am, 4 doctors involved with my surgery had visited me at different times to inquire on how I was doing. I was only allowed a tiny bit of water as I was getting plenty of intravenous fluids and antibiotic. Jenny had to abandon the idea of visiting me today after she discovered her HomeTrust Visa was declining her purchases – including any Bolt car hailing requests she tried. I finally noticed that we had received a Visa fraud alert notification the previous evening at our home phone number. By the end of the afternoon, I managed to walk Jenny through the process of calling the HomeTrust fraud alert using our laptop’s Zoiper application and our home VoIP service to make a call to them. She successfully unlocked her Visa credit card. In the afternoon, I had a brief WhatApps video call for Father’s Day with Jenny and our two daughters: Jessica and Victoria. My attention started to shift to the recovery process ahead of me.

2025.06.16 – [LV] Riga ==> Riga (0 kms | Total: 1212 kms)

By Monday, I started to understand the nursing team’s schedule and tasks which started promptly at 5am. The younger nurses communicated in English without fault while with the others a bit of sign language was sometimes required. Nonetheless, I was totally impressed by the dedication of everyone – from the cleaning staff, nurse aids, nurses and doctors. I got introduced to the hospital meal plan – in my case, mostly liquid stuff. Jenny managed her first hospital visit in the early afternoon. While there, a hospital physical therapist visited me in order to provide some information and techniques for getting out of bed and improving my recovery timeline. She suggested to limit lifting more than 5kgs for the next 6-8 weeks. Later, I was moved out of the post surgery care ICU room to a normal room at the far end of the corridor. In the evening, I practiced as much as possible, getting up from bed and walking down the corridors (and visiting the toilets)

2025.06.17 – [LV] Riga ==> Riga (0 kms | Total: 1212 kms)

As I was eating my breakfast, a nurse or intern came to see me briefly to inquiry about my condition. I was excited when she suggested that I could be discharged tomorrow. When Jenny visited me late morning, we started to make early plans for our return home. The biggest issue was clearly seeking help with our tandem boxing/packaging. In the previous night, Jenny had emailed a person/business offering bicycle packaging service. Jenny took her Bolt ride from hospital to the bike shop. She actually connected with the friendly person: John and she brought him to our hotel to see our tandem. I had a lengthy WhatApps exchange with him regarding our past tandem boxing/packaging process. The challenge for him was also finding a proper size cardboard box.

2025.06.18 – [LV] Riga ==> Riga (0 kms | Total: 1212 kms)

I was glad when the nurse came to remove my drainage tube as this task was meant to be done yesterday. The discharge process quickly evolved. The hospital admin dropped by to inquire about my travel insurance coverage as they had not received any letter of guarantee from them. MSH International – the provider for Emergency Travel Assistance and Comprehensive coverage under the Public Service Health Care Plan (PSHCP) had one primary task regarding my situation: establish a direct billing with the hospital through a letter of guarantee. In my opinion, they failed miserably on all aspects of suporting us during our Medical Emergency. As I indicated to their case agent, the dealing with their secure email was more painfull than my pre surgery stomach pain. The MHS case worker even acknowledged they failed to reach the hospital and had to seek third party translation service – duh! – to no avail.

My surgeon came by with some discharge paperwork and he patiently answered all my questions. I re-emphased to him that the timeliness and quality of care received at his hospital was far beyond what I could have received in Canada. The total cost of my surgery/care at the hospital was $5680 cdn. Jenny showed up around 10am to accompany me back to her aparment. We called for a ride with Bolt as a light rain was coming down. Back at the apartment, Jenny quickly prepared an omelet breakfast before we had to check-out. Later we walked through some of the Old Town streets in search of a pharmacy for bandages. We also stumbled on a large grocery store. After checking into our hotel for the next three nights, I took a well needed shower. Jenny manually washed all my clothes. In the evening, we had a nice dinner at an Italian restaurant.

2025.06.19 – [LV] Riga ==> Riga (0 kms | Total: 1212 kms)

We had a very relaxing and enjoyable hotel breakfast. In the early afternoon, Jenny and I worked on de-assembling the tandem components in order to further facilitate John’s bicycle packing service. Jenny took the lead at removing all the tandem components under my watchful eye. We were very thankful the hotel allowed us to use their small street level garage to store our tandem. It proved to be the perfect space to tear down the tandem. We spent only 1.5 hrs to complete the work. We were now dependent on receiving positive news from John regarding access to a bicycle box. It rained on/off most of the day and the temperature was chilly – hence we did not miss much. In the evening, we opted to eat at a Turkish restaurant across the street from our hotel. We received news from John that he had not yet received his promised bicycle box. He said may be tomorrow. Later, we walked again through the Old Town streets and did some casual sightseeing. Back at our hotel room, we started to look at bicycle shops to visit tomorrow in search of our own bicycle box. While Googling, I stumbled on a packaging supply store which advertised selling a perfect sized bicycle cardboard box.

2025.06.20 – [LV] Riga ==> Riga (0 kms | Total: 1212 kms)

After another nice hotel breakfast, we set out on a Bolt ride to visit the packaging supply store. We were totally overjoyed when we realized they had everything we were looking for: bicycle box, padding, tape and scissors. We had to order an XL Bolt vehicle to return to our hotel but that was not a problem. Once we had secured our boxing/packing supplies, our stress level dropped down considerably. Upon returning to our hotel room, we purchased our airfare tickets via AirCanada for a flight on Sunday. In the early afternoon, we finished diassembling the tandem and securing the padding to the tandem tubes. Surprisingly, it took us over 3 hrs to neatly pack the tandem in the bicycle box. We had our dinner at a nearby popular Lithunian/Latvia local cuisine restaurant: our most expensive one of our trip.

2025.06.21 – [LV] Riga ==> Riga (0 kms | Total: 1212 kms)

After our hotel breakfast, we took another Bolt ride back to my emergency care hospital to have them look at the on-going fluid leaking from the hole where my surgery drainage hose was. I had started to experience the leaks shortly after my hospital discharge. Within an 1.5hrs, a doctor had explained to me that it was totally normal and the bandage should be changed more frequently until the drainage hole closed up completely. The nurse provided me with a stock of bandages to last until our return home. Back in our hotel room, we started to organize and pack our two duffel bags in preparation for tomorrow’s mid-morning airport transportation. We had an early dinner at a nice restaurant where all the tables were reserved for a later time. Later we took a long stroll along a park/river separating the Old Town from the Town Center.

2025.06.22 – [LV] Riga ==> Ottawa (0 kms | Total: 1212 kms)

We both fell asleep early last night. We showed up for our last hotel breakfast at 7:30am. To our surprise, the breakfast room was almost fully occupied. Nonetheless, we had another relaxing breakfast before retrieving our two duffel bags and bicycle box. Our Bolt XL vehicle assigned to our ride to the airport was a Prius Plus. We were concerned that our luggage would not quite fit but the kind Russian driver make it all fit. Jenny kept an eagle eye on me to ensure I did not try to lift anything heavy. We arrived at the airport some 4 hours ahead of our flight. We had to wait 1.5h for the check-in counter to open. The luggage check-in and security clearance processes were very smooth. In fact, the Riga airport, unlike most airport, felt very relaxing and as an added distraction, we saw a few bus load of Canadian military soldiers showing up for their flights for a Nato exercise (or something like that). I replaced my drain hole bandage ahead our airplane boarding. Even after our saga over here, we are already contemplating one day returing to Riga to pursue the rest of our cycling trip. Stay tune!