Mid-Life Crisis on Wheels
-a journey around the world
-all rights reserved (This passage may not be used or duplicated
without the author's written permission)
FORETHOUGHTS
When did my journey begin?
Did
it begin when I was twelve and
filled the blank ceiling of my room with dream images of sailing
single-handed
around the world?
Or
perhaps when at the age of
twenty-five I stood, feet braced wide against the pitching of the Lady Amalthea? She was a
lovely, though rather run down,
fifty-foot wooden ketch. The journey certainly didn’t start
when I sold her
three years later, though perhaps it came a little closer.
I’d finally learned
that she’d never been designed for deep sea and perhaps I
hadn’t been either.
The
journey drifted a bit nearer
when a new assistant introduced himself. “I’m
Christopher, sell it all and go
now.” My reply was some lucid comment on the order of,
“Um, hi.” I had no idea
what he meant.
The
first turning point that I can
truly identify was August 23rd,
1992.
I’d just flown into Seattle
for four days. It was the longest I’d been home in six
months. I’d taken a
half-partnership in a hot-shot computer consulting firm. I slept on
planes. I
ate in restaurants, sometimes in three different cities for three
consecutive
meals. At home was a computer network for 3a.m.
testing of software I’d install the next day in Calgary or
Houston. The only
ones using my bed were my cats and an ex-girlfriend and her
fiancé when they
were house-sitting, which was more nights than not.
On
that cool evening of August
23rd, a pounding on my front door dragged me from a hurried bowl of
chili I was
trying not to slop over my latest printout. Silhouetted against the
late summer
sun stood a specter which thankfully resolved itself into my friend
George. I
offered him a glass of wine, in return he assaulted me with a question.
“Why
are you doing this to
yourself?”
I
was wholly unable to answer. For
four nights, rather than sleeping, rather than programming, I flung
myself upon
his question. I didn’t understand it, nor could I find an
answer he’d accept no
matter how I twisted and turned. Yet I kept returning like a
Shakespearian
tragic hero flinging himself upon his sword.
The
fourth night as I left his
house, I looked aloft at the stars shining impossibly bright against
the
midnight sky. The heavy green of late summer filled my lungs. Summer
was near
gone. I’d missed an entire season. I was missing my life. I
had become a
workaholic, the ones I’d always called insane. The ones
I’d always laughed at.
I began to laugh. And couldn’t stop. I collapsed in hysterics
on his front lawn
soaked in a chill dew, filled the night with my roars. The laughter
continued
so long and hard he almost called 911 before I recovered from my
hysterics. I
faxed in my resignation the next day.
I
now had a house that I’d spent
every spare minute of seven years remodeling for a family I’d
never had time to
find, one very expensive suit, my ex-business partner had shredded the
ones I
left in the Houston office, a disconnected cell phone, and about five
months
worth of mortgage in my savings account. Due to a few loopholes, my
departing
share of my company was worth $3,000 rather than the six figures I knew
to be
its value.
I
spent the first three months of
savings, watching TV, eating, and rereading old science fiction. I
couldn’t
even face new books. I certainly couldn’t return to my career.
“You
could sell your house. That
would open up your options.”
“You’re
nuts!” I’d called Mac, my
best friend, late one night around Christmas in a fit of depression.
This was
not the sort of irrelevancy I wanted to hear. “If I sold the
house . . . Not a
chance!”
But
if I did . . .
I
could go back to school. In what?
I
could start a new career once
freed of the overwhelming mortgage. But I couldn’t imagine
working at all.
For
ten days that broken sentence
followed me about like a needle stuck on an old phonograph.
I
could . . .
I
could . . .
January
10th ,
1993, a
bicycle whizzed by me, nearly clipping my elbow as I walked in the
chill
sunlight around a local park.
I
could . . . bicycle around the
world.
It
was insane. It was
ludicrous. It was the first thing that had made sense in several years.
My
journey had begun.
CHAPTER
ONE: 27 March 1993 – 20 May
1993
United
States of America
English:
“I’m going around the
world by bicycle.”
Translation:
“I must be nuts.”
I
kicked my pedal high and tried
not to look too closely at the small cluster of friends circled about
me.
Finally I focused on their faces because I couldn’t bear to
look at the house
behind me now empty of everything. No furniture, no spices in the
gourmet
kitchen from which I’d thrown so many dinner parties, no car
in the garage. The
new owners were an hour away and then even my dreams would need a new
residence. Inadvertently I’d eased up on the brakes and
rolled backward down
the hill just far enough that my foot swung past center and dropped
down.
Again,
I kicked the pedal high and
clicked my bike shoe into the cleat with a sharp snap. Hugs would be
completed
after breakfast at a nearby restaurant, but first I had to start the
journey.
Eleven weeks from concept to action. I finished the house for someone
else to
admire. The lighting had passed inspection only three days
earlier.
The plumbing the day
before that.
But
now I was free.
Now
was the time.
I
lifted my weight, released the
brakes on my heavily-laden touring bike, and stomped down. My
friends’ applause
rattled around that chilly morning like so many lost robins hunting
worms in
the hard ground who had arrived too early for the spring and
didn’t know what
else to do.
The
handlebars twisted left, and
the front wheel twisted right. As I lay upon my back in the middle of
the
street, I noted that the sharp blue sky looked very unusual from this
position.
I’d never lain in the middle of the street to observe it
before.
“Wow,
Matt! That was amazing. Can
you do it again?”
“If
that’s a sign, you’d better buy
back your house.”
“And
you’re going to ride around
the world?”
The
applause returned more
light-heartedly as Mac helped me swing the bike upright. In the final
weeks,
I’d had no time to maintain my poor machine. I’d
dragged it to a bike shop
instead and they’d missed tightening the handlebar bolt.
“I
have the right wrench
somewhere.” I emptied the front-left pannier in the middle of
the street.
Tee-shirts, books, a bag of rice, and one sandal.
“I
saw it just last night.” I
unearthed my right-front pannier and disgorged onto the growing mound:
spare
tubes, a pair of pants, a cookpot, and my rain gear. There had been no
time to
pack while I was finishing the house and selling most of my worldly
possessions. I’d simply thrown things I might need into one
corner until I’d
buried the bike. The previous night these friends and more had come to
drink
champagne in the echoing cavern of a living room that was no longer
mine. I’d
sorted through everything.
“Too
many tee-shirts. Anyone want
one?” Nope. Garbage.
“Extra
flashlight?” Paul allowed as
he could fit a second one in his glove compartment.
“Room
for one novel, who wants the
other two?” A few friends departed at this point leaving
tears on my shoulder.
At least in the morning they’d still have each other. I
fought my own tears
back for their sake. I was the brave adventurer and if I let my fears
show, I’d
never be able to depart.
At
the bottom of the right-rear bag
I unearthed the hex-wrench beneath another layer of clothes, a spare
fuel
canister for my cookstove, the other sandal, and a wide variety of
spare brake
pads, cables, and even a derailleur. A quick twist and repack and I was
ready.
I
kicked the pedal high once more
and, amidst as much laughter as applause, I ground my way slowly up the
hill
while they walked easily alongside.
* *
*
I
remember nothing of that
breakfast except that we all sat very close, rubbing our memories
against each
other to shine them up so they’d last. I had a tentative
route in my head which
would take me through four years, five continents, forty countries, and
at
least thirty languages. When next would we gather together over our
shared joys
and sorrows? When next would we make each other laugh?
As
I rode away from that little
restaurant, a roar of applause rose behind me, impossibly loud for the
six
friends come to see me off. It rose and soared like a wind against my
back,
until it washed over me like a benediction that perhaps I
wasn’t insane after
all.
I
didn’t look back.
I
turned my bike mirror so that all
I could see was my knee going up and down as it moved me away from
everything I
knew. Upon my return a year-and-a-half later, my friends told me that
the
patrons outside the restaurant had burst into spontaneous cheering when
told
that it was the first day of my solo journey around the world. It was a
fair
wind.
