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Backtracking
I woke to the earthy smell of rotting leaves. In a small mountain forest, near the rooftop of Sardinia, I deliberated how a mild-mannered, stay-at-home, non-adventurous person had happened to get themselves into such an improbable predicament. Seeing the world by bicycle certainly has brought some unexpected moments. I thought back to how I had become entangled. While still engaged in my flashback, my wife, Sharon, finally stirred (having slept peacefully throughout the entire wild boar incident!), stretched luxuriantly like a golden-maned lioness, then purred: "How did you sleep, Dear?" I wondered if my bloodshot eyes were a dead giveaway, and continued my recollection of a few months prior. How had we hit upon the idea of riding around the world on bicycles? I, a recently qualified elementary teacher, was happily engaged in the fulfilling profession of teaching, trying to make a difference in the lives of young people. Sharon, meanwhile, spent her entire waking hours slaving at a job she detested. A Chartered Accountant, she had become disenchanted with number-crunching and the business world. Her career was not providing her with a great deal of personal satisfaction. She had lots of nifty possessions, but she didn't have time to enjoy them. Little did I know she was pondering whether she would be happier without the electric garage door opener (and the house, and the car, and the garage...). Deep down, Sharon was having second (and third) thoughts about the direction her life was taking. She wondered if others, like her, were spending their entire waking lives working and abhorring it... or was there more to life? Come to think of it, on my morning commute, I never noticed anyone smiling. Sharon began speaking more frequently about the simpler things in life. "Wouldn't it be great to hop on our bikes and ride away from it all?" she would ask jokingly. I would recall past bicycle trips and how she looked so romantic by moonlight and thought it was a fine idea. Then, I would go off and do another brilliant lesson plan. Unfortunately, in this hectic day and age, we are all so busy earning a living that we have no time for dreams; there really is no good time to pack up and leave for an extended journey. However, as fate would have it, shortly thereafter, education funding was placed on the chopping block and new teachers' contracts were slashed. My contract was one of them. Sharon logically decided that rather than whine about budget cuts and temporary setbacks, we should seize the opportunity and travel. The story that my Grade Two's had been reading, The Spider and the Fly, flitted into my mind. I boldly strode into her parlour and was at once ensnared within her web. While I envisioned a world tour as an opportunity to sample exotic cuisine, Sharon was dreaming about meeting people on their own turf. She had a desire to experience a world beyond our city life; to get out of the urban rat race, get off the beaten track, commune with nature, and share in the unharried pace of rural life. We found that other people, entrenched in the working world, didn't share our enthusiasm. When Sharon mentioned the trip to her fellow co-workers, their initial reaction was "You can't do that!" After mulling it over for a full ten seconds, their response was "What will you do with all that free time?" Then, the real deep-thinkers in the crowd would recoil and conclude "I couldn't do that; I'd be bored silly." Just mentioning the trip created a backlash that upset their old apple cart way of thinking. Despite the lack of encouragement, we worked together to bring our dream to reality, and planned our escape from the concrete jungle. Sharon submitted her resignation, and late that summer we slammed the door of our humble Edmonton abode and cycled east across Canada. (But that's another story.) After many glorious days of freedom, enjoying sunrises and sunsets like there was no tomorrow, we stumbled into Montreal, and hopped a cheap charter to Paris. France, at the end of October, was cold and drizzly -- definitely not their best cycling season. An erratic beeline (our map reading skills were still to be honed) took us to the border of Spain. We hurriedly crossed the great plateau into Portugal, and headed south in search of warmer climes. Being neophyte travellers on our first overseas foray, by the time December rolled around we were in desperate need of a break from our holiday. We needed some downtime to recuperate. Travelling wasn't proving to be as restive and relaxing as our ex-fellow workers had first imagined. Fortunately, a couple we had met while cycling in New Brunswick, Roger and Suzanne, invited us to spend Christmas with them on the French Riviera. So, mid-December, after five months on the road, we arrived in Cannes La Bocca, broken down both mentally and physically. I had even begun to think that the naysayers had been right when they had proclaimed, "You can't do that!" I was questioning my fortitude to continue, until Roger (ever the optimist), lifted my flagging spirits one evening with a story from his childhood: "One time, my older brother and I built a gun," Roger began, as he skilfully uncorked a bottle of Chateau Neuf de Pape. "It worked beautifully the first few times we fired it," he said proudly, taking a sip of wine. "Then one day we went into the woods to fire it again. We stuffed it full of gun powder." Roger shook his head, remembering his childhood foolishness. "Somehow the powder got wet," he continued. "When I fired the gun, it clogged. The barrel blew apart!" Roger threw his hands outwards, mimicking an explosion. "I saw blood everywhere!" he said. "Both our faces were bleeding. I was really worried. Then I looked down and saw it was only my finger. I wasn't worried anymore. I figured it was only one; I still had nine left!" I'm not sure if the wine had any bearing on my thought processes, but Roger's story was exactly what my flagging spirit needed to hear. From that point on, as we continued our journey, I recalled his inspirational example when things weren't going quite as planned. As long as I had nine left, why worry? |
| "The title "The
Lead Goat Veers Off" gives no hint of the humour and human
interest between the covers of this delightfully funny book." Dawn Johnson, book review in The Similkameen News Leader |
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