Bike Touring Lessons
Taking a journey on a bike can teach you some important fundamentals about life.
I wrote a short post previously about my setting out on a bike trip. From Matagalpa, Nicaragua to Antigua, Guatemala. I made it only about half-way, 3 days out there. However, I learned a few simple lessons that I’d like to share with you.
Forget big-time planning. Just get out there and do it. Start. Today. 37 signals, a web design company had a great philosophy - start your business, your idea right away. Then, as you go along, tweak, change, evolve. But start it, right from day 1. Get it out there and make the miracle of your mind, be present. Same with my bike trip. For months I’d imagined it but never did it because I thought I needed this kind of saddlebag, a stronger pannier etc … But finally I just said, “Make it happen.” And I did, with little planning. And it worked out.
Leave room for and embrace the unexpected. Our lives are too regulated, planned. We need to intentionally invite the unexpected, which is key to life. The second day, I took a shortcut and was totally lost for most of the morning. No matter, it made that morning richer. Sights I never would have seen appeared.
You don’t need a lot of things, a lot of money, to experience life to the fullest. Like point #1, don’t fall into the trap that you need X amount of $ before you make things happen. You’ll manage with little and can go from there. I think in my 3 days on the bike, I only spent $10 a day.
Be there. There is something beatific about the repetitive nature of an activity. On the bike for hours, I reached a state of calm inside. Invaluable. Your activity doesn’t have to be long-distance cycle-touring. Can be knitting, doing jumping jacks, just sitting still with your coffee … but being in THE moment is something we all benefit from.
There are some things, you just can’t do alone. Spokes. I broke a back spoke 3 days in and was basically stranded, baking along the road somewhere in Honduras. Unable to fix it myself. But people helped me out. There is a myth out there that you can do everything yourself, you don’t need others. Not true. Think a broken spoke, a broken arm - we need help, you can’t fix it alone.
Change.
Re — tire.
Re — invent yourself.
Do one thing in 6 different ways.
Change.
Become something “other”.
Start again and again.
It’s your life after all.
Nobody else’s.
Live it. Fuck them.
Fuck them all.
Fill it with experiences
Nobody will believe.
Screw what others think.
It’s your life.
Change it.
Even if, especially if
your comfortable and
constantly dream about butterflies.
Change.
It’s the only damn thing
those sun tossed Greeks
got right.
Change is sweet.
The only certainty is uncertainty.
So change.
Not tomorrow, next year
or even right this moment
but yesterday.
Change.
Put on a mask. Then another mask.
Pull up your roots
and soak them in tequila.
Start gardening, grow a beard.
Sing songs to the homeless
late every night.
Sit in bed all day long
with only your socks on.
Steal or give it all away — you decide.
Build a house nobody will ever live in.
Or burn your house down.
It’s your life for Christ’s sakes.
Walk away.
Change.
Life is not judged by
how good or not good you are or weren’t
or happiness or a full belly.
Hell, life has no measurement
just what is and what the tape measure
can’t catch up too.
Hey, you’ll be forgotten
much sooner than you think.
Dust for better beetles to
frolic in.
So change.
It’s all that matters.
And if you don’t have
the balls to change
and hit the brakes
then, do a 180
then fail, just start failing.
You’ll live a glorious, ever-changing life
your only one,
the only one you got.
So change.
You’ll be aligned with
the universe ….
this failing, entropy
stuffed full
universe
that doesn’t wait for anything
but that which changes.