Biking, Shmiking (Viking). The Universe Loves Me Anyway.

In travel, it helps to be reminded: change really is the only constant.

If you'll indulge me for a moment, consider a circle. A circle is made up of infinite points, each one by definition totally different and distinct from the others. Take any given diameter, and the two points at either end are as far away as possible in relation to the given shape, as opposite as they can be. And yet, at the same time, a circle is continuous. The infinite points are all connected, drawn together into a single form by the endless path between them. A contradiction, then, the circle: both complete unity and complete division.  Infinite possibilities on the same path.


So I see the world. The world, with you at the center, holds endless possibilities for action at any one moment in time -- a continuous circle of choices, infinite points on a circumference with you free to choose any of infinite radii to get from one point on the circle to another, always coming into the middle, into yourself, first. Choices that at times seem contradictory -- you go left OR right, up OR down -- but that are actually all connected by the same path. It really isn't the destination, then, since there is no end point on a circle -- but the journey you choose to get there -- that dictates your experience in the world. And once you see that any journey you could possibly choose is connected to any other journey you could possibly choose -- that you are not eliminating any choices by taking one path over another -- the act of changing your direction doesn't seem nearly so daunting.

Where's that leave me? Well, as many of you may know, I'm no longer on a cross-country bike trip. I still have my bike with me, and I'm still traveling cross country, but the path has changed. For the sake of eliminating confusion, and keeping those of you who have been so supportive of my tour of self-discovery informed, I'm going to seek to provide a summary of the things that went into making this decision.

So, backtrack: last time I wrote, Jon and I were heading to the San Francisco Bay area, where he'd spend the weekend with friends in SF and I'd meet up with WT Kirschner to head off to our martial arts Gathering in Sacramento.  We had biked somewhere around 700 miles, and were looking forward to this weekend off-bike and, putting it delicately, away from each other (what, I don't do delicate well, go figure). Spending every waking moment with another person no more than 2 meters away from you gets tiring, as you spend a lot of energy figuring out the unique combination of interpersonal relations you need to make your time together productive and enjoyable, while establishing new forms of communication designed to build your relationship to a point where you can co-exist happily inside of the other person's bubble. The first month is tough -- you always have to do it, no matter how good friends you were before you left (ask Em, we did this -- quite successfully in the end, I might say) -- and its good to be able to get some space and come back together refreshed.


And so we headed off in different directions for a weekend. My weekend was at the Gathering, the martial arts seminar I attend every year with my friends and family from all over the US and world. I've often commented on this event to my friends back home, but it's hard for them to imagine what I mean when I say: this weekend expresses a whole different level of existence for me. I find that we all put so much energy into everything we do at the Gathering -- martially (training and learning and trying to grasp concepts from across the arts), emotionally (reestablishing and nurturing and trying to grow relationships that you only have once a year to reestablish), physically (working out 8 hours a day and drinking and dancing 8 hours a night and sleeping... sometime). You function at this higher level for 3 straight days, and then immediately return to your normal life, and it all... stops. Immediately. And as you fall back to your functioning equilibrium, that middle point, you feel like you've dropped just a little too far -- you're homesick, listless, exhausted, drained and energized and motivated all at the same time -- because "middle" takes a few days to seem normal again. Its like you were an electron on the outer ring of an atom, functioning at a measurably higher energy level, living in this whole new higher energy world -- and then you got pulled back, immediately, without crossing the space in between, to a lower orbital, a lower energy potential, and are existing somewhere with completely different rules and possibilities. Lucky for an electron, it doesn't have to think about this, it just becomes this new level of existence. It takes people a little longer to get used to it.   


So I came back from the Gathering in a bit of a funk, but as this was something I had experienced before I knew I'd move past it in a day or two. Much more importantly, I came back from the Gathering with new priorities, a new path that I was excited to follow, though it would mean some changes. But, being comfortable with change, seeing it as all part of the same general act of existing, I was excited to share these new ideas with Jon, to open up new fields of possibility for both of us. I wanted to become a full-time martial arts student.


Not forever, mind you. But I had been thinking a little bit on the bike over the past month about the lack of thinking one does when one travels. I call it "empty mind" time, this feeling where you and the universe are moving at exactly the same pace, neither of you having to stop for the other, your mind not racing ahead nor falling behind, just existing exactly in the "now". You view the world as it passes around you with an open mind, not prejudicing it with any expectations, just taking in new stimuli, addressing each one, and filing them away for later consideration. In my opinion, this is the time that those seeking something about themselves/ the world (whether they be travelers, writers, religious types) will start to ask and answer the "important questions" that come into the empty mind (thanks, Universe). Maybe this seems a little heady for some of you more exoteric folk -- but imagine it as just a slowing down of life, taking the time to just live/exist/be.


There's a lot of empty mind time on the bike. And in travel in general -- I had tons of it over my 13 months abroad, as I tried to digest everything going on around me without a priori knowledge of it. In fact, as it turned out, I had had enough of it on my 13 months travel and was getting a little ancy each evening after coming off the bike (its impossible to be ancy during "empty mind" time, once you're practiced at it) -- and felt like I needed to be doing something mentally "productive". Not productive in any sense but to myself, of course (which is why I travel), but something different. Until the Gathering, I didn't know what that something was, but I knew what it would include: writing. I've been encouraged (and have been encouraging myself) to take a chunk of time to devote to writing about my experiences traveling (for myself, for others, whatever), to just get some words down on paper, and I was working time into my "busy schedule" to do this. As it turns out, though, I've also been wanting to get back into training in the martial arts seriously. It's hard to get back into something by attending to it one day a week, off and on when you're near a martial arts school, for years. Well, the Gathering was exactly what I needed to bring these facts together -- this excess of empty mind time, the need to be productive, to write, to train. I decided I wanted to bike for another month, perhaps down to LA and then across to Phoenix, and then take the final month that we would have been biking and head back to the east coast to be a live-in student at a martial arts school in MA. My priorities had changed -- the principles of the journey the same, but the path different.  Lots to talk to Jon about -- but I thought it would be good for him as well, to consider what his priorities were for this trip.

Priorities had come up over the past month of biking together, of course. Not to mention over the past 5 years that I've known Jon. And I knew that he needed some time on the road by himself to start to "answer the important questions", to do something by himself for himself, to have that sort of "ah-ha" experience that none of us can predict for another person but that we each recognize when it happens for ourselves. Things we had talked about reinforced this knowledge, and I thought that certain types of thinking would be best done on his own -- especially as I had come to realize that I was at a totally different point in my personal development than Jon, if only because I had had the opportunity to do this sort of "heavy thinking" in my past 13 months of travel. So, when I broached this idea of going on our separate ways, it was not totally unexpected, and Jon was definitely open to it. The only thing that I didn't expect -- he was open to it that exact second. As in, no biking together for another month -- he was going to go bike by himself right away, get on the road solo-style.

Cool, I thought, and was about to rush to reassess my own plans, when it turned out that what we first needed to do was reassess Jon's motivations, his priorities for this trip, what he hoped to get out of it. Happy to serve as a sounding board, we spent a few long days in deep discussion about the validity of certain ideas/ideals that I hold as truth based on my experience, and that Jon was trying out for size in his own life. We reached the point, eventually, where Jon was ready to set off to bike east -- heading for Zion Nat'l Park, in UT -- and I was ready to do...

Well, to do what? See, back to that circle, it was quite suddenly, again, a world of infinite possibilities. No stranger to standing in the center of my circle and assessing my happiest path, I wasn't thrown off by this sudden abundance of opportunity -- but this was at exactly the same time as I was coming down off my post-Gathering high, taking time to get myself back together -- so it took a few days to gel together to a point where I had a coherent strategy for my next steps. Which leads to my post title: Biking, Shmiking (the Viking was just for funsies, it has nothing to do with this). 

I decided I didn't want to continue biking on my own. Quite frankly, besides the excess of open mind time, I wasn't really feeling it. I didn't mind biking -- there were lots of days when I really liked it, and the pace of travel suited me extraordinarily -- but I also didn't love biking. I figured I could spend more time loving my life (which is what my travels are all about, of course) doing day trips on the bike but the long-haul travel by public transport. And so I spent a day in San Francisco, hanging out with a very sweet guy I met on the ferry and getting kicked off of a block in Chinatown for playing acoustic guitar too loudly at midnight, and then caught a ride down to LA to see a friend from Bucknell. Which is when I came to the realization, once again, that the Universe loves me.

See, this friend I was going to stay with, Mikaela, was, incidentally, planning to drive back to Lewisburg, PA from LA, hoping to arrive in PA for Homecoming. Which, incidentally, was the last weekend in October... precisely the weekend I was hoping to be back east. Was she traveling with anyone else, I asked curiously? Oh, not yet, but she'd love to. Would I possibly be able to tag along, bike and all, assuming I could catch up with her at the right point on the W Coast? Oh, yes, definitely. Definitely? Wait, where exactly were her drives going to take her? Yellowstone, The Badlands, Chicago... two places I'd never been and had always wanted to see, and one place the home of my closest extended martial arts family. Not to mention Minneapolis to see a good mutual friend from college.

Um, can the Universe tell me it loves me any clearer? Really, this just reinforced my opinion that, if you're a good person and put a lot of good energy out there into the world, the Universe will reciprocate by working your stuff out for you and presenting a solution that you never expected. There's no point in worrying about endless possibilities, about any number of combinations of Choice A and Choice B and which combination is right, because the Universe will always let you know, quite clearly, when you've made the correct decision. You know when you worry and worry about some particular decision in your life, and make pro/con lists, and still can't decide whether A or B is the right decision? Maybe you break down, cry over your frustration, make love to a bottle of wine for the evening...and, somehow, just by backing away from the problem for a moment in time, you wake up the next day knowing (a visceral, physical knowledge) the choice that is correct for you? That's the Universe -- I just eliminate the whole "worrying" aspect and head off in either direction A or B (remembering the circle) and patiently await that physical knowledge that I've made the right choice. Hasn't failed me yet. 



So, that brings me to now. I'm in Phoenix, AZ, spending time with a good friend whom I went to Tanzania with in college. We just spent the long weekend hiking around the Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, and Zion Nat'l park, and now I'm just whittling time away until I get up north (by the end of the week, means and path as yet undetermined) to meet Mikaela and head east. I wanted to write about other things, stories of an old man in a coffee shop with a unique explanation of the world, post pictures from this past weekend... but I've written a book, it seems, and I hope that if you've gotten to the end of it you can find value from something within. Otherwise, thanks for sticking with it out of friendship alone (or whatever motivates you, boredom at work being a fine excuse in my opinion). More to come in future days, but until then -- love all around.


Yours,
Jess