The Resolution of the Doing. The Evolution of the Not.

“We saw you earlier on the road. We noticed you’re traveling by bike. You must need a lot of energy,” she giggled.

 “Here, this is for you.”

 She came to my campsite and handed me a bar of Swiss chocolate. Milk chocolate with hazelnuts.

I was hungry and there wasn’t any food in my bag. Evening was setting. The sun was falling into the arms of the horizon as it does every evening.  I’d been riding through the west coast of the south island that afternoon.

Highway six which starts north and goes all the way down south along the west. Traffic is minimal. There are hardly any people in this area. So I only have to keep an eye on the milk tankers and on the few tourists that every so often continue to drive on the other side of the road.

The population of New Zealand is 4.6 million. 1.38 million of those souls are tagged to the south island.  Although a developed country, internet in the south island is not as common as espresso, cheap beer on tap, ginger and stunning landscapes. Internet or supermarkets that is. 

Having no food in my bag and having no supermarkets that I could pedal to, the chocolate bar was indeed a gift.

A gift of love from a stranger. Serena from Switzerland.

Days before I was offered another gift from another stranger which seemed like no stranger at all and more like an old friend who I haven’t seen in years: Eva.

A kind soul in the body of a thirty six year old woman who left her corporate post in Germany.  

I met Eva the day after I arrived in Punakaiki – (say it fast: Poon-nah-kah-key).

Eva had been traveling for almost a year.  After leaving home, and before coming to New Zealand, she spent time in Switzerland and India. She should be in Hawaii now and then she will prepare for a return home in March.

“We’re so obsessed with doing and doing.”

“The other day I stopped to see this beautiful view,” she said.

“There was a man, getting out of the car, click, click, click with the camera. Then he gets back in his car.”

“So right before he left, I went to him.”

“I had to say something” she told me.

I asked her what she said. 

““What are you doing!?! You’re not seeing what’s in front of you.” Then he said that he was going to look at the view by looking at this pictures later, “

“I couldn’t believe that. I just couldn’t,” she waved her arms in the air.

“We just want to do and do and do and do. And we don’t appreciate what’s in front of us because we are too busy doing,”

“When I went to India I was overwhelmed because people were telling me “you have to see this and that and this and that. You have to go here and there,” and I was anxious. So I decided I didn’t have to do any of that,”

The afternoon I met Eva, I was struggling with exactly that. The not doing enough.

I had come to a very far away place and I wasn’t doing enough. I wasn’t hiking. I wasn’t taking pictures. I wasn’t seeing the places that I had heard of. I was traveling by bike and I wasn’t doing all the things that people who come to New Zealand on holiday do.

I wasn’t doing.   And because I wasn’t doing, this idea of coming to New Zealand on a bicycle was simply stupid.

Traveling by bicycle offers that experience which is different to what I’ve done in my prior travels: get on the bus, off the bus, drop your bag at the hostel, go do ‘fill in the blank’, eat and sleep. Repeat the next day.

Before I left the United States and unbeknownst to me, I was far too busy to even notice the anxiety contained within body.

It wasn’t until I started pedaling that I realized the stress my mind had been under.

It wasn’t until I started pedaling when that I realized the need for doing things I had.

Barely four months ago, I’d start my days at five o’clock in the morning. I’d check email and the meetings I had scheduled that day. 

“Yay. I have only six meetings today and not twenty.”

Nine o’clock would make its way onto the clock and I’d look at my phone every five minutes, at my calendar every twenty to keep track of the fifteen meetings I had to attend in an eight hour work day. That didn’t account for the desk bound work that piled up. Work that many evenings, I ended up taking home. To then work some more on Saturdays at eleven at night, to work some more on Sunday afternoons from the coffee shop.

Repeat five times a week. Repeat fifty times a year.

Repeat forty times in a lifetime.

IN THE ONE AND ONLY LIFETIME.

‘How we spend our days is how we spend our lives.’

“What are we doing to ourselves?” I asked Eva.

She sighed.

“How many hours have you worked today?” I would ask the manager from this hostel I stayed in.

“I’m not counting them. I rather not,”

The next evening, I would ask her the same thing. And the next one too.

“Don’t do that to yourself,” I would advise every evening.

Stop with that bullshit Frances, you’re the one who quit your job.

Yes. That’s me.

It was a lot easier to organize an escape, to mine blast away the path of comfort and knowingness, to eradicate anything that could pull me back so I had nothing to return to when things got hard on the road, when I wanted to go back and the excuses for returning rained on me as much as it rained on highway six.  

It was easier to do all of this than to figure out how to make this busy-job-thing and this living-with-depth thing work like a tandem parachute. Week after week trying to only discover that the expert in this tandem arrangement, the one who pulled on the parachute was Job and everything else, meaning Life, was strapped to Job.  So when the weight on the tandem became burdensome, Job detached from Life, pulled out the parachute and watched Life fall from the skies slap landing on the ground from 15, 000 feet.

My job kept me safe, it kept me sheltered. And I got comfortable.

And because I was too comfortable I got scared.

My job kept me busy. Very busy. A busyness that became louder and louder the more time passed by. Not because I did more but because its echo shouted back at me every Sunday evening as I prepare my mind for another week.

Then Friday evenings ticked themselves onto the calendar and I was drained. Physically, mentally and emotionally wasted.  

And because I was so drained, I didn’t notice how consumed I was. I didn’t have the mental and emotional output to invest into doing what I wanted. Or perhaps, what I was in need of: depth.

It was not the job I had, it wasn’t the corporation I worked for. It was my mind. It was how my brain was wired. It was me.

Life was good however. As of the last few years, I’ve worked hard in putting mechanisms and controls in place that allow me to live a life in which physical, mental, emotional and spiritual hazards are minimized. That is an eloquent way to say: I never take shit from anyone.

And because life was good, it made it even more difficult to pull the plug.

'How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.'

Those were the lines of Annie Dillard and the words that popped in my head every Saturday morning as I contemplated this life I was given and how I was living it.

Yet, the times I posed Annie Dillard’s words as a question, I wasn’t so sure I was comfortable hearing the answer.

Days were good but busy. Too busy.

I didn’t want to be shallowly busy. I needed to be deeply busy. I needed depth, not width.

I didn’t want the noise of a vain, comfortable and busy life.

So when I told my manager I was leaving, she said:

“Life isn’t a dress rehearsal. Go do what you need to.”

Life slows down when you travel by bicycle.

There are three things I have to do each day I’m on the road: 1) pedal 2) eat 3) find a place to sleep.

The other days when I’m not on the road, slowly, very slowly, I give myself permission to do what I’m not used to: nothing.

And when I do do something, I do things I wasn’t able to do three months ago.

I wake up to the songs of the birds.

I wake up and watch the sunrise from a hill or from a lake.

I slowly drink my café con leche. I can actually taste it now.

I spend countless of hours at coffee shops. I traded spreadsheets for coffee, for writing, for reading.  

I hike on a Monday morning.

I run on a Tuesday late afternoon.

I take my bike on a day trip without having to wait for the weekend.

When I’m sick, I offer my body the nourishment it needs so it can heal.

Sometimes the best treatment is time and gentleness.

The days when I pedal, I have time to notice how the scent of the land changes. How the ferns seem different; how the greens are of different shades. How the moisture of the air changes.   

Every day, I have time to notice other landscapes.  

I have time to explore my anxieties.

I have time to sit with my fears.

I have time to learn and unlearn.

I have time to think.

I have time to feel.

I have time to create.

I have time to watch me grow.

I have time to become.

I have time to figure out who this better human is and how she is showing up in life. For herself and for others. 

I have time to just be.

And I know this thing that I’m doing won’t last forever and at some point, I have to return to the world of comforts, politics, elusive securities, and do’s and do’s and do’s.

But for now, I have committed a year of my life to travel by bicycle.

Just one year of this 70 + year if I’m lucky lifetime.  That’s 1.43% of my life.

I have committed a year of my life to learn how to sit still.

I have committed a year of my life to listen. 

I have committed a year of my life to being away so that I can come back.

A man by the name of Terry Pratchett said:

“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”

Two thousand fifteen is now written as one of those four letter years: epic.

As epic as two thousand twelve and two thousand thirteen were. Those were years of unrest, exploration, discovery. Pivotal years in which expansion and growth came disguised as suffering, confusion; all of it all taking me to the place I needed – not wanted to - to be.

My two thousand fifteen was more of a year of paying attention, of mere observation. Times of allowing these fears to be and of learning how to be at ease and find joy in what's uncomfortable. It was a year when the questions were asked.

The year in which amongst all this doing, something snapped. What seems now to have fallen out of place at first, however, is now falling back into its place. This time into its proper place.

A year of ‘it is now or never’.

And over 'never', I chose 'now'.

It was the year in which this vow, this fast I committed to more than three years was broken with a special being.

A handsome man who was placed on my path and who appears to have the wisdom of understanding this complex soul and treating this heart with much love and compassion.

As the clock approached midnight, I thought about all the doers and the dreamers and the souls who take a stand for something.

As I stood in the middle of the crowd in Queenstown, New Zealand, 8,000 miles west from the place I call home, I silently toasted to this:  to having the courage of asking yourself the very tough questions and when the answers seem to create pain and unrest, to find the resolve to change them.

Two thousand sixteen will be the year of the planned return. That year in which I will ask the question again:

Frances, are you spending your days in the same way you are wanting to spend your life?

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Frances + Eva, Punakaiki, November 2015 

Drifted

"Good day! What would you like today?" 

"Hmm. I can't remember what is what I...?"

"You want a flat white. A flat white, very flat. Very hot. In a take away cup. With a spoon on the side so you can pour your own sugar," she interrupted as I tried to recall what was the name of the drink I simply call 'cafe con leche'. 

I smiled. 

Shit. I need to stop coming here. They already know how I like my coffee which means that I've had too many, which means that I already spent too much.

At times, I wish the questions I'm asked were as simple as "what would you like today?"

A few months ago the questions were different. 

“Are you looking to punish yourself?” 

“Are you looking to get your ass kicked?”

Those were some of the questions he asked as I made the final preparations.

He has been asking questions since I met him yet never expecting answers.

And that’s not the point. I do answer them. Not to him. The answers are for myself.

“I’m done with the self-punishment…” I said.

“I'm over that. I punished myself for the first thirty five years of my life and for about two solid years after that. That shit is over…”

Is it? Is it?  She seems to be asking. Is it? Is it really over?

“That ‘finding myself’ shit is over too. I found her three years ago. And I dealt with her head on…”

“This is different. I'm not sure what is to be found out there, but something's calling from afar. And I'm too curious to look the other way.”

“You see, this thing I’m doing, looks a lot like I'm traveling by bicycle on foreign lands. And that's true. Yet this trip is less about traveling and more about something else.”

“You’re soul crafting Frances. That’s what you’re doing. You’re going on a pilgrimage,” he said.

“You get to live the question. Not many people do that. Not many people go there. Not many people know what that is,”

“But you do. You’re going into this trip. Into the unknown. You’re going into it to see if you are special, to proof yourself. Because you want to live a larger life,”

“And you’re going because you are being called to. Because you have faith that there is something more out there,”

“And you’re going to punish yourself,”

“And you know you’re going to get your ass kicked. You know that.”

“But you also know that there just so much more. You will meet so many people. You’re about to receive so much love,”

“Because you’re going in with an open heart.”

---

By now, I have cycled over three hundred miles of New Zealand lands. I've cycled over hills, by the coast, in the mountains, by the rivers, by the vineyards, by the lakes.

It has been a bit over a month since I left. I’ve been living with and out of my bicycle for more than three quarters of those days. 

It was during my second day of cycling. Heading towards the closest campground to find shelter for the night. The sun was not shining. It was cold. It was windy. It was almost night. Massive logging trucks passed me by at over one hundred kilometers per hour. There was barely any shoulder on the road. One truck after the other.

It was somewhere along highway number six where I stopped. It was, during that particular rain storm when I closed my eyes.

I closed my eyes and I sobbed.

“I want to go home.” I cried out loud.

Home? Where is home anyways? she asked.

I had come to the very end of the world. There are eight thousand miles between the place I yearn to return to and this place.

And it wasn’t the first time I was going to burst in tears. The road was about to get a little steeper, a little windier. The road was about to get a little lonelier.

---

The other day I caught myself tending the wet laundry. Wet because my gear was drenched from the evening before.

As I hung the gear to dry, and as I removed the dead bugs and twigs I thought:

This is hard. Hard hard work…

When the gear dried up, I folded and stuffed all of it, again, for the eleven hundredth time, into my panniers.

And then it hit me. 

What is joy? Where is joy? When is joy?

And I thought much about the story of the monk he shared with me one evening: the monk sweeping the stairs.

What if we remove ourselves from everything we know?

From the job, from the loft, from the car, from the espresso machine. From the four post bed. From the corner shrine. From the family. From the friends. From the new found love. From the ginger chews. From the morning runs.

From the grocery trips to Whole Foods. From the Saturday morning hikes in Boulder followed by a morning at the farmers market for some people watching. From Sunday espresso drinking mornings at Wash Park.  From walking to the coffee shop on Sixth on Sunday afternoons.

From the comforts of a safe place to be in - day in and day out.

From knowing where I was going to sleep each night.

From predictability.

I have intentionally chosen to remove myself from everything and from everyone I know.

I have left again. 

She is on the move. Again.  

---

‘My Bike Takes Me Places That School Never Could’

And my bicycle has taken me to New Zealand. And New Zealand is learning me a lot.

But the real lessons are coming from the hills. From the rain.

They seem to be coming from doing and dealing with shitty things. The shitty non glamorous part of this life I’m choosing every day to lead these days.

When the lungs can’t puff any harder, when my legs can't pedal any faster.

When I have to get off the bike and push it uphill. And the ego suffers.

When my body tries to figure out what's happening. So it pushes back and it cramps and it bleeds.

When I have to hang my knife from the chest, next to my heart, and let it defend me against a pervert in the middle of an isolated dirt road.

It’s either that motherfucker or me.

From the nights I’ve worried about not having a safe place to sleep.

From the times that yet again and again I've asked myself why do I chose to do these things - why? why? why?

But the answer is not clear to me just yet.

The first two weeks on the road were very hard on me.

The roads, the cycling, the weight on the bicycle, my level of fitness to carry and sustain the weight of the load that I seem to be carrying on my bicycle.

And in my soul still. This shit never ends.  

The rain, the winds, the fog. 

The nutrition. The budget.

The surprise of being homesick and the admission of such state.

My safety.

The isolation of the places I cycled through during these initial days.

The eight thousand miles between New Zealand and Colorado.

The trace of the desert sage that I struggle not to forget.  

And the other scents I look forward to return to…

The self judgement. The never ceasing battle between the ego and the self which seems to never cease to ask:

Are you capable of doing this?

Did you bite off more than you can chew? 

Perhaps I did. Perhaps I didn’t.

Perhaps I've been getting served my very own version of shit sandwich. But the espresso is bountiful and delicious in New Zealand and it happens to go well with my lunch. 

Godzilla Rides a Bicycle

"There are two hills, big hills, and then after is all downhill from the last one. When I see Nelson from the last hill, I'm glad to be there. And that's me, driving..."

"But you will be fine..." she reassured me trying to convince herself.

And off I went to the coastal town of Nelson. And yes, there were two big hills and some scary descents.

I thank the skies - sometimes that is - for my not so sane brain. If the sanity wires would had gotten plug in, up there, coming down, I’d still be up there.

The last hill coming down was a reminder of my gorgeous Colorado and its million dollar highway, the 550. The scenery, the tight turns and no guardrails. Add trucks coming down with their highest gears on carrying petrol, wooden logs, cattle, and a Latina on her loaded bicycle.

It was a ride that got me to rethink all of it.

Yet again. So let me back up. Lets go back to my very first ride which was ...

A week ago. A week ago was when I first got on my loaded bicycle. I rode it in the hostel I was staying in Wellington. On the hostel's hallway. I didn't make it far. I wasn’t able to keep the balance. Then, the bicycle fell on the floor and I couldn't lift the thing.

Truth is about to hurt…

A box was already enroute to Grand Junction, Colorado. From New Zealand.

Another box was then enroute to a man I've have somewhat grown used to calling ‘my boyfriend’.

 “I'm sending you one of my journals," I texted him.

 "I won't open the box until you come back home.” he texted back.

 If there is solid proof of a trusting relationship, try sending your three-year-soul-deconstruction-journal to your boyfriend of sixty plus days. If he reads it and if he still sticks around, he is a brave one.

But what I meant to tell him was that he could open it and read it. And that I hope his medical insurance provides trauma therapy.

I brought too much, fuck me. I fucking did it again. I brought too much. I still have too much.

Stupidity turned to anger. My bicycle landed on my left leg as I put the bicycle back into my room hoping it would disappear. I headed out to town with a bruised knee. I came back to the hostel with a belly filled of Persian pie and the brain filled with the million dollar question: how the fuck am I going to ride this thing?

And she was still there, perched against the bed. Beautiful Nicoleta Boii, the bicycle of my dreams, looking like a dinosaur with two wheels. I hoped for someone to take it but then I forgot not even Godzilla could have pedaled away on the thing.

Sunday morning came quickly and it was time for me to start pedaling down to the ferry that will take me to the south island.

Instead, I went out for a run and then for some espresso.

And Kiwis do know how to make a nice espresso. 

"May I have a fifty ounce flat white, please? I'm having a mental breakdown..."

But it was a bit too late. The brain wires had already shifted. The dragons were causing havoc in the dungeon upstairs.

I was in for some scary shit. Some shit I have not deal with in a long time.

I soon was slashing the dragons that come to visit every so seldom. The dragons I have learned to tame over the past few years. As tame as they have been, they don't lose their chance to poke their bloody fiery eyes through the creases of the cages they keep to.

And I'm not a bit surprised they want to make their appearance this early in my travels.

It's their land and a much known territory: she is alone, she is far away from home, she is terrified and she is yet again crafting the self in the lands of the unknowns.

Self-doubt is stealth. She is a lofty motherfucker. But I like to think I’m older and wiser.

 “OK, what’s up?” he asked over the phone.  

 And in between tears and sobs, the meltdown I haven’t had in months as I prepared to leave behind my corporate life in Denver came rushing in.

 “I have no idea what I’m doing. I’m in fucking New Zealand. I’m scared shitless.”

 Wow. You finally let it out.  

Ah. Nothing like telling the truth to yourself and to the man that somehow has figured out how to lift the spirits of this wild woman up.

My chat with him was followed by an email from a person that seems to know my brain better than I do.

“Frances,

You can ride that bike, even though it's heavy. Start in a lower gear, not too low, 3rd or 4th, is best.

It's time for you to put your big panties on, you are no longer dealing with the pussy, corrupt, corporate, collegiate environment of good impression.

This is the Universe you are crafting with now. Be brave and ask for help. And stop letting your inflated pussy ego infecting you with doubt.

Get on that fucking bike and ride, you wuss of a woman!

Love…”

This man knows how to pull me out when I can’t do it on my own.

Three hours later, I made an appearance into the garden of my first hosts in the country: Val and Don. A wife and husband pair in their late 60’s, now retired and both into cycling. And big into setting clueless wannabes straight.

Val, a wild spirited artist who likes green and other vibrant colors. Don, a wood artist who can make miracles with his hands.

Not long after my grand and heavy entrance, they noticed the obvious.

“You have too much!” she said.

I shrugged my shoulders and said:

“I already mailed stuff back home,”

“Well, it seems like you still have your hair dryer in there.”

I smiled.

She then said:

“How about you leave Tuesday? Tomorrow, we empty your bags and we’ll figure out what to bring and not. The things you don't take, you leave them here, you do your travels and when you come back in three months, you pick them up. By then, you can figure what you need or don't.”

So we did.

With Val and Don I left another journal, one too many pens, one too many shoes, one too many too many, one too many just in case I get eaten by a bear in New Zealand, just in case a meteor crashes in New Zealand, just in case I encounter the chupacabras. In New Zealand. You just never know…

And one too many twenty pounds later, she said to me:

“You know what the difference between us is?” Then she added “You brought a bikini to swim in…”

 “I don't bring bikinis. I swim in my underwear or I just swim naked.”

 New Zealand: Beware! The bikini stayed behind.

 Later in the afternoon, I repacked all my panniers.

 The morning after, after having enjoyed an evening with Val, Don and their family’s company over dinner, bubbles, tea and dunking biscuits, I was ready to set off.

I did my first real test run. Something I should have done back home.

I ran back to Val’s.

“I can pedal. I can ride my bike!” I said to Val who was sketching while sitting in the sun room.

She looked up and said: “Well, that's a bloody miracle!”

 After good byes, off I went. 

 And the hills didn't take long to appear.

As Val put it: “You don't come to New Zealand if you don't want to do hills.”

And as I understand it today:

I don’t come to New Zealand, on a bicycle, unless I want to learn one thing.

Or thirty eight…