silence is golden but ducttape is silver

Happiness

One of the great secrets to happiness is to be immersed in an activity that is complex, where you have the skills to match that activity. By stretching your mind as you work, you enter into a state of mind where you lose all sense of time.

Keeping it Real 2008- day two (may 2nd)

Brrr. woke up quite cold, despite the fluffy. again gorgeous day. said goodbye to Kitty (or Katy?) and her husband, and paddled towards sicamous.
"it is not rick to go round the world these days. You can pay a lot of money and fly round non-stop in less than forty-eight hours, but to know it, to smell it and feel it between your toes , you have to crawl" (Jupiters Travels by Ted Simon, cited in Back in 6 years, Tony Robinson Smith). That must be right. i was definitely crawling, but without that i would probably not have heard the millions of frogs quaking along the highway- frogs that have only one thing in mind... you know.
there are some very strange things you start to notice on a really long bike ride: one is, butterflies are really fast- they are not idly flapping their pretty wings, they actually can go quite quick, quicker than i at least. same for bumblebees- its an astonishing experience to ride side by side a bumblebee, let me tell ya. or trucks- usually i think that they are rather annoying- except uphill, when the air flow they create pulls you along with them.
then there is the heritage aspect- i stopped at "the last spike"- the last spike that connects the trans-canadian railway. hammered into the ground on November 7th, 1884. a rainy morning and apparently the poor guy who had the honor of hitting that spike home, messed it up- bent the first spike and had to use a second one.
best part of it all are probably the random ppl that you meet- today, it was the guy who works at "The Last Spike" at Craigellachie. two degrees- civil engineering and forest biology- who told me all these little great tricks for a cross-rockies bike ride. how would he know? well, i did one two, before he became the loving father of two and tried to avoid working in either of his two degrees (hidden message?). According to him, there will soon be leg cramps- but a quarter cup of apple cider vinegar each morning can cure them very easily. mmhm yum.
no matter- the absolute favorites of the day are Nicole and Graham- who granted me asylum in their little house- (even though they are out of town!) and the best welcome i have ever had: little notes, relaxing shower gels, dinner prepared. I am mind boggled- really thankful and really full of good food.
and now i will go sleep- tomorrow: up to the pass!

Keeping it Real 2008- day one (may 1st)

Woke up this morning around 6:30- still half asleep. That was some really good moollee yesterday.

One look out the window tells me that it did not snow, in fact it is a super beautiful, blue sky sunny day. I say goodbye to Adam and have breakfast with Nat- really good coffee by the way. a last nice warm shower and a lot of dillidalling around. I finally made it onto the road around 11ish. WOOOOheee! Of I go, up the first hill on sexsmith and then the backroad to winfield. Through an odd detour-non paved road and along okanagan lake towards vernon. I decided to take the backraod to vernon, because it is appearently very scenic. It is gorgeous. It is georgeously steep. It is a funcking gorgeously long steep hill, I f-ing hated it; hated it vigoroulsy all the way up- but then I liked it.

Well, took me about 3? Maybe 3.5 hours to get to vernon. The thought of coffee and some treat the only thing that kept me going. The date bar was delicious. Sean joined me for about 3/4 of an hour for a chat about ice climbing all all kinds of other fun stuff.

Left vernon behind, on my way to enderby-partytown. Passed a poor hitchhiker twice! Will probably see him again in revelstoke. Made it into and out of armstrong, my butt getting sore, my legs weak, still another 13k to enderby…boo. Paddle paddle paddle. I don’t want to admit it, but I was pretty glad when I got into enderby- a 89.9km ride- not counting the fucking hill on the backroad to vernon. Next goal: find a place to stay. There are currently two functioning motels in town. 79.90$ or 80$ plus tax. Haha. There is something about a good night sleep. But whatever it is, it is not worth 80$. So instead, I went to subway to get myself some dinner, and ran into kevin- no no a different kevin, one who I had never met before and who I asked if there was anywhere else towards sicamous maybe- he lived in grinrod, and almost offered me to stay at his place. But only almost. We left it at the - 'well, if I see you on the way....' non-commitment. Anyway, turns out that the other four ppl I had asked if there was another place between enderby and sicamous were either not sure, or sure that there might be a slight chance for a motel in sicamous. Another 40km. Yak. So, I got onto me bike and paddled- watching out for any deserted barn on the way. Why else did I bring my sleelingbag?

Around 5 k past enderby is the cedar park inn (6376 Highway 97A). Since asking does not cost anything, I knocked at the door, with my most exhausted look on my face (which was not difficult at all). No vacancy. Broom-cuppoad, shed, barn, garage, anything? turns out there is this old stinky rv in the back, which Kitty let me have for free and brought over drinking water and water for the toilet and a little heater! Super sweet! I looked everywhere, but the only flowers I could have stolen to thank her, were her own. l'll have to leave at least a note tomorrow morning. So and now i am sitting in my downjacket (cause I am still quite chilled) ready to go to bed at 9:10pm, which I will do shortly, and then off to another day of fun paddling. Jeicks.

Keeping it Real 2008- the night before

8:30om. i am finally done packing- and repacking, and then packing again. and cleaning up little bits and pieces around the house. stored my last little bit of stuff in a box and the box with some more stuff in the dresser. jeez- how can one person accumulate so much stuff in just two years? i feel the urging need to downsize. to dispose off my worldly possessions. for now all those worldly things are neatly packed in a storage room- i just could not make myself to throw out the clothes i have not worn for at last 4 years.
I said good bye to kevin- with a tear in my eye- it really is a little bit like the end of an era, and biked my first 10km to Nat & Adams domicile.
well fed by Nat's fan-freaking-tastic Mulle (or molle?) Adams home brew and Katy's newest gossip, i went to futon- fearing that what was forecasted could become true: cold, rain, flurries. hey, but where better to hang out for another day than with N&A? the night sky was clear, stars sparking.

Permanent Residency

i never thought i would cry for joy because i sent my passport away for 120$.
i finally got a little peace of freedom- to work wherever i want.

When life comes full circle

A year and a half ago, i flew home from Germany. i watched "in her shoes" on the plane. a total chick-flick. light entertainment, made to make young girls cry but a movie soon to be forgotten. it was odd- i cried, in the plane, next to the cute buy, and i tried so hard to conceale my sappiness (he had turned off the movie 10mins in). What made me cry initially was a poem by- i know now- Elisabeth Bishop "the are of losing". after that things changed. not because of the movie or despite of it. they just changed.
tonight i watched "in her shoes again". this time, i knew the poem, and i knew the lines, cause just last week i had written a 'reading journal' for exactly that poem for my creative writing class. funny, that after all that analyzing on my own, i had still missed the important part- the art of losing does not talk about losing a lover, but losing a friend. just as i have.
the movie has of course a good ending. may be my friend and i have too...