Whatever You Do- Right the Ship
Attachment is when things unexpectedly end and validation to support the meaning in life goes with it.
An impromptu acceptance to speak in front of colleagues about attachment lead to a recollection of many solo adventures that aggressively caused the growth of the bravest, most precocious heart.
The story I told helped find patterns and positivity and replace one of those old untruths I had: I was a loner. I had a boring, solitary life.
I bought a bike less than five years ago- maybe the first nice thing I had given myself permission to buy. I was 31. A Specialized crossroads bike meant for hauling ass on trails but with the right tires it was a robust road bike. The clip-in pedals were the biggest learning curve. Crashing at stoplights while hugging concrete poles and going over the handle bars after coming in hot on corners was a regular event. I started carrying a first-aid kit. I didn’t mind the scabs. The more cut-throat I rode the better I felt. I cycled in the dark, in the morning, in the winter. It wasn’t enough. On an optimistic 4-day weekend in May I opened a map, (a real one), and drew a line from my house to a camp ground approximately four days away. It would be easy.
With the map, a dry bag of nuts and seeds and tools and spare parts- I was ready. I practiced changing my tires in my small apartment kitchen. I had a hammock tent and one change of clothes and a bunch of underwear. Two things necessary for a trip like this would have been planning and navigation- both of which gave me hives. Hindsight is like wishing you made a list but didn’t and never would. It’s just nice to know I can.
I quickly realized that after a day of cycling (in the wrong direction), navigation was something I vowed to spend 10 000 hours mastering. After telling the story of what I was doing to a landscaper on a golf course-which was more like a sales pitch- I got into the truck with my bike and we drove off the backroads that I just spent hours on. Skinny road tires and rocks make for bad everything. He said goodbye- I wished him well- he was hoping to make the fire department full time.
Many wrong turns got me to a genetically modified soy field after being righted by the landscaper. I squinted into the distance. Nothing to see for days except blood thirsty mosquitos and the shorts that were chaffing so bad I mistook them for a diaper made out of cat litter.
It was dark.
I did a desperate thing: I called the bike store that sold me my bike. Matt was so nice and I didn’t have any friends. We had bonded platonically in the store and he was living vicariously through my most recent stroke of adventure. Worried more about me having a stroke than an adventure Matt picked me up and offered to take me back home. I said no. He couldn’t believe I had ridden as far as I did. He drove me to the nearest motel and I gave him $20 bucks. I had a shower and sat in front of the TV and sipped a bit of whiskey and ate some nuts and dried fruit. This wasn’t so bad. I felt free.
The night was over and the day was beginning. No one says this to themselves at 6 AM: I will ride for sixteen hours and 212 KM today. But I did. I was sunburned by mid-morning I had to go off course to get a white t-shirt in the nearest town because anything a little tight on my skin felt like Chernobyl was happening all over again and I wasn’t even there for the first disaster — but I knew it was bad.
I cycled methodically: chanting one-two, one-two, one-two for hours through rolling hills, 40 KM head winds and a constant ticker tape of transport trucks misting me with diesel-tire sweat. I stopped at a farm house for water. The lady took one look at me and asked if I knew how burned I was? I did I said. Would I like a shower? Tempting- but I declined- water would feel like raining bullets after losing the top layer of skin. She drove me up the hill- about 10 KM and let me out at a gas station where I could get a coffee. I told her not to drive me any further as it would be considered ‘cheating.’ What that meant then I have no idea- my personal standards are so uniquely high and self-imposed. I didn’t have parents that demanded this type of performance from me. I was the Queen of this sun-burned ship and come hell or high water I was going to die pedalling. Back on the ship-cycle I pedalled until I could turn the pedals over no more and my bike seat had come to feel like the prong of a very sharp fork.
I laid in the long grass that dogs usually love to eat to throw up; I fantasized about calling everyone I knew who might rescue me. My preschool teacher. Dolly Parton. Anyone, really. Asking for imaginary help gave me energy. I got on that bike and I peddled up those hills in the rain and into the next day: a cloudless 40 degrees Celcius was before me. Just the desert + exertion + mental & emotional ruin. No problem.
I stopped at another house. It was an elderly couple; the woman scolded me. She said no woman should travel alone: it’s dangerous. It was dangerous and I wondered out loud if she knew someone dangerous who would be willing to chase me so I could pedal faster? She didn’t. Her husband laughed. The campground was 15 KM away. I pedalled. I imagined myself as a chisled athlete cycling my tenth triathlon but like, slower than bread rising and needing to lose a couple pounds. My knees were a mess; volcanoes were erupting in my knees, my left arm was completely numb. Luckily my body was so dry on the inside I couldn’t cry. Just pedal. I was low and tapped out of the skills and resources that normally propel people towards at least quitting. There were too many wrong turns and not enough intermittent hugs.
When I got to the campground I dumped my bike on the ground. It felt like taking off ice skates after a long hike through sand. It was sun down. I could hardly believe I was there. I felt longing- to realize what it would be like to have someone I loved meet me there. Isn’t that everyone’s dream after a tough day?
Families were having campfires and planned vacations. I smelled charcoal, meat and the illusion of a cold beer. These are all things nuts and seeds don’t provoke.
I stepped up to the small front office and the kindest, oldest man asked if I had a reservation- because they didn’t have any campsites left, he said. Crest fallen. Chernobyl. Cat-litter-sun-burn. Soy field mosquitoes. Tire sweat. My legs were one emulsified piece of old Jello. I leaned on the counter as gracefully as a six year old in a too-big tutu handed down from her older sister. I just want to grow into this tutu and not be an imposter- that six year old would say. I couldn’t look away but couldn’t beg. I wanted planning and navigation from someone other than me.
After a few moments he came around the end of the counter to the near side of where I was. He took a look at me: shaved head, mohawk, shoes that sounded like tap shoes, dirty-disgusting white t-shirt, fuschia skin; he offered his arm for support and led me down to the only campsite available.
It was fenced in with caution tape and under a foot of water, next to the source: a raging river from winter’s thaw. It was beautiful, loud and menacing- something I would have loved to kayak. I set up my hammock tent between two trees above the cold water. I had no blankets, no warm clothes and promptly froze in the fetal position. I stared at my eyelids for the entire night. A type of shock settled in- shivering turned to aching. I begged for day- light so I could warm up.
I ate some nuts and seeds and started the long unplanned road home. My bike- she didn’t sound good; she didn’t pedal straight. What the hell. Dolly, Jesus, Mom. Help.
My bike broke down and I wheeled it to a gas station where I bought Backwoods cigars. I smoked two on a curb with my bike upside down and tools precariously placed like my feelings and unmanaged anxiety. I felt a high that only comes from inhaling tobacco on an empty stomach- a bad, unhealthy residue of the last three days washed over me. I called my Mom from that curb.
A truck drove slowly past looking at me like a stray cat with behavioural issues. What happened? They wanted to know. I couldn’t string together a sentence and they got out of the truck. After a friendly exchange Tracey and Harold promptly loaded my bike into the back of their pick-up and took me with them to their campground of luxury. They were kind and bewildered by my strange or crazy bravery. We went quadding, they fed me, took care of me and wanted nothing from me. We laughed and bonded over life’s missteps, adventures and our happenstance to meet. We stayed there for four days. They drove me home; we lived 20 minutes from each other. Turns out four days of cycling takes a couple hours to drive.
As I pulled the ship out of the back of the truck I was amazed at what I had dragged myself through in such a short period of time. Had I really done that? Never once was I riding in a mediocre or relaxing state- often squinting into emergent danger, extreme weather, asking for help and dodging limiting beliefs until I could tolerate weaknesses at least knee deep with casual flair.
Tracy and I would see each other on the road- me biking to work- and yell wildly to each other recalling our summer-time memory- a story we both tell in different ways.
The now extraordinary oddness of doing the trip in the first place struck me after recalling it in front of colleagues with hand gestures, phantom pedalling and dry humour. I realized it was the first time I ever retold the story- five years later. Not just, “I went for a bike ride.”
What I know is that pursuing direct experience invites rapid exposure to failure and success and sometimes just failure- but what I have after biking the distance is the ability to challenge unhealthy attachments and nurture the healthy ones that offer unlimited amounts of validation from an unlimited inner source.
All of that takes a lot of pedalling; I would just get an indoor trainer next time.
Whatever You Do- Right the Ship
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