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Date: November 02, 2004
I jinxed myself. The prevailing winds do not prevail
as I push myself past millions of stalks of wheat and thousands
of ostriches, and I roll down the rolling coast. My panniers function
more like parachutes than parasails. It rains for days at a time
and once a flooding river nearly washes away my tent. I am very
strong, but the weather has weakened my knees so that I can’t
even step up to the urinal, and when I awake, I moan and claw my
way out of my tent, my muscles doing impression of rigormortis,
like a zombie from the grave. Breakfast includes doping two thick
cups of coffee that make my teeth tingle, a couple candy-coated
ibuprofen to loosen my joints, and a handful of sugar to turbo boost
my blood stream.
In Hermanus, the weather calms long enough for me
to watch the southern right whales. They have swum from Antarctica
to mate or calve in Walker Bay. I spy dozens of whales spyhopping,
sailing, breaching, spouting, splashing and, generally, lollygagging
and sunning their flippers. Also it is the season for great white
sharks. I pay a stranger to ship me out to sea, chum the waters
with shark livers and fish guts, then wrap several kilos of lead
around my neck and submerge me in a cage. Several passengers are
too frightened or too cold to go in the water and one man spends
the trip chumming the water with his breakfast; so I am the first
one in the cage and the last one out. While sitting atop the cage
to keep warm I see the dorsal and tail fin of a four meter shark
slice the sea towards the bait and towards me. “Dive! Dive!”
the dive master instructs: it is safer to be inside the cage. I
go down struggling to keep by my rubber suit from bobbing me to
the surface. I position my head in the porthole of the cage, occasionally
hanging a bit outside because of the rocking sea and the tendency
of my bubble butt to float to the surface. The dive master is pulling
the bait towards me to lure the shark closer. A torpedo-shaped shadow
emerges. The school of mullet, called shark toothpicks by the local
fisherman, scatter. The shadow gathers particles of the murky sea
together like a sci-fi beam and a great white shark materializes
before me. The lips pull back from the gaping mouth exposing rows
of serrated teeth. A nose-length from my face -- Chomp! -- the shark
attacks the bait. The great white shark turns, exposing the scars
on his flank and his great white belly. Bang! His tail thumps the
cage. Ah! Glug! Glug! I swallow one of the seven seas and I surface
with a case of the hiccups frightened into me, choking and gasping,
“That was awesome!”
It hurts to swing my leg over the saddle the next
day. The sky is brilliantly blue and dappled in puffs of white;
the sun appears to illuminates the spring flowers from the inside
out; and, the ocean is dyed red during the day and glows phosphorescent
blue at night from the annual red tide caused by red algae. The
infamous Garden Route was nothing special, but the scenery on the
Cape Peninsula is world class; soon, however, the weather turns
against me. I trundle into the famous south easterly wind, known
as the Cape Doctor, past tortoises, penguins, whales, seals, shipwrecks
(those cursed winds, again), 1200 species of the fynbos flora kingdom
endemic only to the tip of South Africa, past the Cape of Good Hope
to Cape Point, the intersection of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans
and, according to my brochure, the most south westerly point of
Africa (there is one more item to cross of my list of things to
see, but I am disappointed to realize I missed the most southerly,
south by south westerly, et cetera, points).
The winds push me effortlessly 40 KPH up the other
side of the peninsula. I pause at a curio stand and top off my panniers
with rocks. I haven’t seen my family in three years, and I
figure they will disinherit me if I don’t bring presents for
their efforts to manage my mundane affairs back home and bail me
out of trouble abroad. The wind and my legs stall in Kommetjie.
I pitch camp and walk down to the beach for a sundowner, minus the
beer and cigarettes. The clouds glow like the coals of a braai (a
South African wood-fire barbecue) and I watch the sun set on my
last full day. I was born in Milwaukee on the edge of the Great
Lake Michigan; most people don’t realize that Milwaukee, even
though it is in the middle of the North American continent, is a
seaport connected to the Atlantic by a series of lakes, rivers and
locks. I dip my toes in the ocean. If I had enough energy I could
swim all the way home. It is not far now.
As I watch the sea gently swell, its color shifting
between lavender and magenta, a frightening monster materializes
from the murky deep blue haze of my mind. I never believed that
my knees were strong enough or my self-esteem great enough to succeed.
And I thought I had better than average chances of being killed
by a truck or bandits, or disease. I had made a will, giving my
mother, who brought me into this world, the legal right to take
me out. Yet, I had risked travelling because my previous life was
hardly worth living. Chuckles and snorts rattle out of my lungs,
and my sea water gushes from eyes. “Damn, I’m still
alive!” Angst, my loyal enemy, resurfaces from where I sank
it in my subconscious years ago. “Now, what to do with my
life?”
I realize that I am suffering a melodramatic relapse:
One is sure to catch sea monsters, if one chums the water for sea
monsters; so I weigh anchor and meander through the beached kelp
to my tent. If I glue the hair growing out of my ears to the top
of my head and forget that I have an arse like a baboon from all
the cycling, I have weathered the trip well. I thank God that I
am healthier, stronger, more peaceful and wiser than ever. I am
grateful for my opportunity and my family and my friends and the
kindness of strangers. I am proud of all the experiences I have
collected. Experiences are like diamonds, each one is born from
the earth special; no matter how a diamond is cut it could be better
or worse; what makes a diamond special is the light cast upon it
and the light the diamond reflects. Now that I have survived, and
can laugh at my frustration, I am most grateful for my bad experiences.
The grand paradox of life is that one must suffer to enjoy it. As
my eyelids close the curtain on my last day, I vow to break my limbo
and go to Cape Town the next day rain or shine.
Of course, it is raining and windy. During a peaceful
drizzle on a quiet road snaking along the cliffs, I spy a lonely
whale, smooth as an inner tube except for some barnacles, bobbing
in the waves in time with my heartbeat. A few minutes pass and the
whale bobs closer. “I should go before the weather worsens,”
I think, “Stop procrastinating. Let’s finish this and
start a new life.” The whale spyhops and pirouettes, stopping
when his black eye, big as a bowling ball, focuses on me. We look
at each other for a moment and then he submerges, his tail waives
goodbye, symbolizing the end of my trip. The tempest blows again
and grey-washes the skies. I have learned that even sharks prefer
calm waters and whales prefer sunshine, yet, if worse comes to worse,
even cows, the dumbest of all animals, still stick their arse in
the face of the storm, the whole herd will align themselves like
iron fillings in a magnetic field, and go about their business of
enjoying sweet grass and the warmth of leaning against a friend.
It rains so much that the sewers flood and the manhole
lids pop off and float away. I hardly notice the storm or the small
mountains as I go about my business of enjoying life. I descend
a hump of Table Mountain and the water causes my breaks to fail.
My life -- or is it my death -- flashes before my eyes one last
time. I barely control my crash by jamming my cleats into the pavement.
Physically this is the end of the road: I have cycled the circumference
of the planet through 45 countries.
I find it interesting that people spontaneously ask
me the same questions. I think these questions provide clues to
human nature. The most common question people used to ask me was:
where are you going? which is a simple way of phrasing: what is
the meaning of your life? And I believe they are asking themselves
the same question. Now that I have arrived everyone wants to know:
How does it feel? Are you a different person?
There is a popular misconception among travellers:
that travelling will make you a different person, meaning a better
person, that the longer and harder your travels the more different
you will become. I think it is the opposite: The more difficult
your travels, the more you separate the chaff of your mind and body
from the wheat of your soul -- you become who you are. As for how
it feels:
I arrive at a hostel stuffed -- as usual -- with Germans
and English. There is no yellow tape at the finish line, no journalists,
no friends or family, no woman of my dreams waiting to wrap her
arms around me. I tell the receptionist, “I just rode my bicycle
around the world,” uttering the words that I envisioned would
be a magic spell transforming the Wisconsin Frog into a prince of
the universe.
Nothing happens. I don’t feel anything. I don’t
feel like the Vasco da Gama of cyclists. I wonder: Did I do something
wrong? Have I worn out my emotions?
Nonplussed the receptionist responds, “We get
a lot of cyclists here.”
Monsters ripple the pool of my mind, and the postpartum
bicycle blues begin to seep in immediately. For two weeks, I am
in shock: I weep at silly things and laugh at serious things. I
feel wise and naïve. I feel proud and humble. And, my ego desperately
tries to interpret my life as a prince.
Jesus and I are taking a cappuccino in the hostel
cafe with a view of Table Mountian through the windows. A rose-colored
pigeon that is used to taking his breakfast from the crumbs on the
floor is caught inside when the doors and windows are shut due to
a storm. The pigeon flutters into the window and cracks his head.
The fat, short, lumpy bartender says in a gravelly voice, "Wait
a minute. Oh, no. Don't hurt yourself. I will open the door for
you. Come this way. Oh, poor thing." She herds the pigeon towards
the door.
"I used to think she was an old hag," Jesus
says while I sip my cappuccino, "by the way, she is dying of
cancer -- but did you see her talk to that pigeon? To talk to a
pigeon, you have to think like a pigeon, part of your mind has to
be a pigeon. For a moment, she was divine. Watching her, we forgot
we existed and we sympathized with that pigeon. When we sympathize
with something we become that thing for a moment. Isn't she wonderful?"
A few days later, I ask the bartender how she feels?
"Fine," a stock answer.
"I brought you a book. Do you know Lance Armstrong?
He survived cancer and then won the Tour du France six times in
a row."
"Oh, thank you. I like to read anything that
may help." Her eyes begin to flood with tears, "Thank
you so much. It is so scary sometimes," her voice warbles,
"but I am surviving."
My eyes flood and my voice warbles, "I hope it
helps."
I realize this is what it feels like to cycle around
the world. I am now free to be whatever I be, which is to say no-thing
or everything. I can be the frog or the prince, or both, or neither.
I can feel the panicking of a pigeon, or the fear and hope of a
bartender dying of cancer.
I imagine myself a whale and I feel the sun on my
tail.
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