There may be no crying in baseball, but some days there are tears in dirtbike riding.

Yesterday was epic. I have never been pushed so close to my limits, neither by the two half-marathons I've completed nor by any of the strings of all-nighters I pulled in university and since in completing architectural projects.

Lately we've been finding restaurants and convenience stores so frequently en route that we started off the day with four oranges, 1.5 litres of water and a square of Ritter Sport chocolate in reserve between us. Neither of us suspected the rigours that the road was going to put us through yesterday.

We woke to rain in Quang Ngai so indulged in a rare lie-in followed by foraging for breakfast noodles and coffee before hitting the road around ten. Shortly after eleven, I complained to Adam that I felt my drive chain loosening - it was flopping a bit and slipping on the cogs when taking off from a stop. Adam pulled over immediately to effect a roadside repair when the farmer and his family poured forth from the house opposite and insisted that we use their yard for our work. We displaced a young calf, then the box of rusty wrenches appeared and everyone in the yard set about my bike.

Adam tried to keep a lid on the chaos while four pairs of inebriated hands got busy tugging on this thing and that. With Adam finally satisfied that the chain had been tightened closely enough to spec, he was invited into the house to pay his respects to the photos of the farmer's dead wife and his parents. And this he did, waving incense and bowing formally. Then it was on to the toasts where some very fine moonshine was being poured liberally from a plastic shake cup. By now, the neighbours had begun appearing and warned us not to imbibe too much lest we become a menace on the roads. For the sake of politeness (and frankly because he rather enjoyed it) Adam finished off a shot while I happily munched on the proffered bananas. Our helpers would not accept payment for their kindness so Adam gave them his Leatherman multi-tool in thanks. And then it was back on the road.

We turned up a mountain road that promised a few twists and turns and some lovely scenery on our way to Quy Ngon. Soon, we entered a construction zone, with alternating sections of concrete and gravel but we continued onward, not overly worried that this unevenness was slowing our progress for the day. We look back on our photos from this section and marvel at our naivety admiring the views and continuing blithely onward.

When next we encountered a stretch of muddy ruts, three feet deep, we briefly faltered and paused. But after all, we were on the sort of motorcycles made for this stuff. We watched in bemusment as locals pushed their scooters through the mud in bare feet, then regrouped and re-boarded three-up to continue on their way. In this, the lightweight scooters had the advantage over us.

The scooter tracks continued right alongside the cliff edge, avoiding the deep morass of the main road that had been chewed up by heavy trucks and diggers. Adam had to ride my bike over a couple of washouts, where visions of my recent tumble down the hill psyched me out. Seeing what we were getting ourselves into, and not knowing when we might re-find good road, we began to ration our water and oranges. Adam didn't yet know about my chocolate stash.

After several hours, we reached an isolated hamlet and gained an audience for the greatest exertions of the day. The entire width of our passage was choked with deep ruts and oozing clay. I rolled off my bike at one point and began to blend with the landscape as I became coated in filth. We had to manhandle our bikes through the ooze, pushing and hauling one bike at a time, all the while knee deep in sucking clay that threatened to pull off our boots no matter how tightly laced, and holding onto the tires as if gravity had multiplied a hundred fold.

At some point mid-afternoon, we reached a brief section of concrete and thought we were saved but it too evaporated we were thrown back into the muck and the horror. We knew what lay behind and felt we had no choice but to continue onward, hoping that the downward slope of the ground meant we were being carried off this hill and toward deliverance.

I have never felt more fear for our well-being. The shortage of water frightened me most because we were working so hard at dragging the bikes through the slop. Late in the afternoon, we stopped for our last few mouthfuls of water and chocolate to give us strength for a final push. It became apparent that we were not going to be able to outrun darkness and another terror set in. Would we ever get off this bloody road?

My legs were exhausted, I could no longer hold the bike upright when the wheel jerked and twisted in a muddy, rocky rut. Adam had to help me countless times pick up the bike and carry forward another hundred metres. I heard the fright in his voice when he saw me topple into a deep concrete drainage ditch that marked one edge of the track. I bounced back unharmed, not thinking it anywhere near one of most spectacular wipeouts of the day, but I didn't have his perspective and I gather it looked pretty bad. It was a struggle to pick out the path by our headlights on the uneven terrain. And the exhaustion was unrelenting.

Eventually, the mud just ended. And we entered the edge of a small town. Stopping at the nearest convenience store, we were obviously in such horrendous shape that the shopkeeper tried to charge us six times the going rate for drinking water. Even in his desperate state, Adam bargained him down to a little more than twice the usual cost. And only then did we feel saved. Later, we confessed to each other that while we had pondered stopping at one of the isolated farms we passed and asking for water, we didn't expect them to have fancy reverse osmosis systems and feared accepting something other than bottled water, so we preferred to go without.

Reaching the highway fifteen minutes later, we considered our options. We could retreat to Quang Ngai, tails between our legs, and start out again southward tomorrow by a more direct route. But that would mean an hour up the highway in darkness. Instead, we blew the bank and booked ourselves into a private bungalow at a swank beachside resort twenty-four kilometres down the coast. The ride along a darkened highway was as harrowing as we had anticipated - all of the usual hazards (dogs, kittens, pedestrians, and bicyclists travelling opposite traffic in our shoulder lane with no lights) were ever-present only now they were shrouded in darkness.

I presented quite the sight as I strode mud-clad and rank into reception to collect our key. Then I climbed fully-clothed into the shower to wash all of the encrusted filth from my gear. The bungalow was quiet and perfect for our needs, and worth every penny.

Later, Adam confessed to me that at the outset of our trials, he was anxious to see some dirt action on this trip. And as neither of us could have predicted the exertions that were going to be demanded of us, we gamely continued onward. But we are both resolved that we will turn back at any such future obstacle on this trip. We got away with our gamble yesterday, and we recognize our fortune.

A couple of things became clear on the road yesterday. The number of roadside shoe stalls has been explained by the numbers of random single shoes found floating in the muck. Shoes are lost with such prevalence that they must be restored with equal frequency. And I can only imagine that our day more accurately reflected the experience of the wartime Ho Chi Minh trail than anything we've experienced to date, minus of course the threat of overhead bombing. Not an inconsequential difference.

Today we finally reached Quy Nhon by the direct highway route. After getting our bikes washed at the roadside stand fortuitously located immediately opposite the resort, locating food and more bottled water, we opted for the highway once we got moving today.

Upon arrival in Quy Nhon, we took a wander around the city. It is lovely, located next to the sea in a wide sweeping bay. The city is tidy and clean, unlike so many other urban centres in Vietnam. So we have decided to stay on an extra day, and get some laundry done. The gore-tex outer gear will have to wait until our return home, so unfortunately the funk of adrenaline and sweat will follow me around for another couple of weeks. But clean socks and base layers will go along way to improving the mood.

Adam replaced his phone this evening so is currently engaged in configuring a new Samsung. I am delighted that we will no longer have to swap a single phone and the e-book back and forth.

And finally, our goals have shifted. We're in recovery mode now. We have the bikes for another week so we'll take it easy and work slowly and steadily toward Saigon. The Mekong Delta now seems out of reach. And while we probably have more highway miles ahead of us than either of us would prefer, we have been chastened.

[Back to normal: a clean bike and a cow grazing at a bus stop on the highway.]