Tag Archives: information

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The Happiness of Travel: Stability in Traditional Instability

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I see my reflection in dented metal siding. My face is the borscht pink. My limbs and spine tingle with the weight of exhaustion and anxiety. There is a small, undetectable grin on my face, that even a ruler is placed up against my face may miss. Am I sick? Delirious due to the situational stress? No. It’s perspective.

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That is the extreme situation. I understand why many would respond to that description with a big WTF. Being trapped in Russia due to a Visa violation isn’t Mardi Gras, but it’s still raw adventure, a story for the bulging back-pocket, for attentive eyes, for inducing salivation. This is short and sweet. Happiness cannot be dictated from the higher ups. They can inspire us and implore us, but ultimately it is up to us to define our own happiness. Even then, it may be considered beyond decision, something deeper, involuntary, and uncontrollable like flowing blood. And they will try. They will try to get you to conform to their smiles. To their tears. To their boxes. Don’t check them. Don’t live in them. Don’t pass it on to your next akin, with the preamble of “that’s just the way we do things”.

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All versions of happiness are valid and are form fitting. When you are sitting in your version of a tent, rippling with blistering gales and pelting rain, your drenched to the apple core, and all your electronic devices are gasping for a last bit of life, as their non-water compatible electronic components drown in small pools as you sleep in every piece of clothing you have with you, that is happiness. Typing away at a report in some 4 by 4 cubicle well into the weekend, while your boss spends his Saturday, spending time with his kids….that also can be happiness. Happiness cannot be argued and if it does no harm to others, it should not be prevented. This post reiterates the obvious, but something that sometimes we need to be reminded of, to set long list of duties into perspective.

 

Pause. Put down whatever it is you are burdened by, whether it is thoughts or a stapler. Ask yourself:

 

Are you happy?

 

What can you do right now that will make you so?

 

 

 

Keep Pedaling

Each Mile

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A Stigmatized World: A Different Bicycle Tour

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Time. In a rare moment of space on this planet, I feel I have an infinite amount of it, to tinker, traverse, dance, digress, and deviate; the breadth of possibilities are stars in a multitude of galaxies. My planned departure date for my world tour is Spring 2017, but the planning process has been underway for sometime now. It isn’t simply about the logistics, the financial spreadsheets, different colored tape I must cross, or figuring what high tech gear I can attach to my two-wheeled pachyderm. For me, the main thing to ponder, being that the world cannot be hugged, sniffed and tasted in one lifetime, where would lil’ ol’ me and my house on a bicycle go? And a quintessential component of that question is: why was I doing this?

That sounds like a very motherly inquiry, which is ultimately a method of finding lacking logic in my dreams and thus attempting to dissuade me from partaking in such an insane, immature and dangerous undertaking. But that’s not the angle I wish to discuss, as I can simply answer that with:

“ Ah ma! It makes me happy. And my happiness is insane, immature and dangerous. Period.”

(after which, she threatens me with her own death if I pursue this trip, for which I respond: “I dare you”, calling her bluff)

This is the internalized why. Now, there are a plethora of personal reasons to answer that posed pontification that are strictly selfish: Why? Well, to explore the external and internal landscape (myself), to meet up with similar and different folks from around the planet and do random activities with them, to eat squirming bugs and other living creatures with my hands, to jump off high, rocky outcrops into my own growing reflecting in deep, green oceans; that sort of fare that excites and invigorates my body and soul like the eternal blast of a cold, thick streamed, shower. In fact, most reasons for doing anything have a selfish component to them. Even the most pious, beatified person gets something out of his projected piety: a smile, salvation, high fives, a really great parking spot. Yet a feature of this personal motivation to do a trip of this magnitude, at least in feeling, feels that it will contribute to the greater world and people’s understanding of it. I have already explained that I would like this to be an interactive cycling trip, where you, the reader and online user make suggestions that become the overarching itinerary for this trip, creating a multifaceted, multi-angled travelogue about boundless and sustainable wanderlust, while also spotlighting the inevitable trials and tribulations that go along with cycle touring. Yet, there is also another component, something less obvious about creating such a comprehensive “guide” that goes beyond highlighting your favorite spot to sit or take photos of Orca Whales.

Some people think Africa is a country. Not plural countries, but a singular, unified country, possibly autonomously ruled by an imposing figure, consistently adorned in military garb that is weighed down by a breastful of shiny metals. A different variation of this ignorance, and possibly a more sinister and prejudice conceptualization of Africa, is that a person knows that Africa is a continent and is made up of several, separate countries, but that it’s okay to refer to all of them as Africa, because they are all pretty much the same, in appearance, unruliness and “barbarism”. They then, if you are unlucky to be within earshot of them, list off some really crude and insulting generalizations of “Africa” and “Africans”. These generalizations are not just perpetuated by uneducated people (many “uneducated, a term I hate in itself, people know better), who are disconnected from the rest of the world outside of their small, pocket communities. There are educated people who believe these images, who preach these images, who pass down these images and this frankly stupid stereotypical terribly misinformed view to their children, and so on and so forth, until an external interjection is made. And it’s not the fault of any one person or source. In the media, I am constantly being bombarded with news programming that summarizes parts of the globe as good or bad, creating detrimental binaries and boxy categories and simple equations of people. Muslim = terrorist. Chinese = Communist. North Korean = Crazy. It drives me up the wall and through the ceiling to be constantly labeled and mislabeled and have others be subjected to the same treatment, rather than being seen as individuals who make choices on their own accord, separate of some sort of abstract grouping.

What can I do to change this? Well, I can NOT think like that and tell others to NOT think like that, empowering myself and others to take charge to seek out information to debunk these oversimplification of human beings, of race, of nations. Yet the scope of this plea, personally, reverberates as does a soapbox preacher’s sermon in the rain during rush hour. I could take something I love, such as cycling and promote the stigmatized and segregated places of what should be a positive, unified global community. So that’s what I am going to do! I am going to bike to places that aren’t generally mentioned in guidebooks or travel shows, visit, and where I can, with the real people, individuals who smile when they are excited and cry buckets when they are exhausted and feel a spectrum of things and do a lot of other things that aren’t black or white, but are multicolored, things that we don’t associate with that part of the world, because it’s easier for me and others to see the world as black and white, and in summaries and in concise definitions. I will blog about these people, each one as an entity, a palette unto themselves. I will blog about religions and cultures that don’t automatically make you a terrorist, or evil if you are part of them and that it is only the ignorance others have about them, and the exoticism and foreignness of them from our comfy, Western perspective, that promulgates those stereotypes.

This bike trip, as selfish as it will be, will hopefully inspire people to travel to these places or at least open a dialogue where silence existed prior. Highlight the beauty of culture, of working people, of alleyways, of hole in the walls, of personal Taj Mahals or Great Walls, of speech patterns, of echoing laughter, of devout prayer, of mid-morning motorcycle rides through endless rice paddies. And with that, my selfish pleasure, hopefully becomes your selfish pleasure, and selfish desire to travel, to explore, to rethink, to reconsider what adjectives you associate with people, to burn the strict definitions into a blazing pyre of cindering divisions and ashing and embering delusion, that we, unified and courageous, will dance, dance revolution around, holding hands, seeing hands as hands that we want to grasp, to hold, to understand.

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A Rambling Minimalist Approach to Backpacking

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St. Barbara's Church, Kutna Hora. It is one of the most famous Gothic Churches in Central Europe and is recognized as a UNESCO Heritage Sight, yet is over shadowed by Kutna Hora's main attraction, the bone church.

St. Barbara’s Church, Kutna Hora. It is one of the most famous Gothic Churches in Central Europe and is recognized as a UNESCO Heritage Sight, yet is over shadowed by Kutna Hora’s main attraction, the bone church.

Like the archetypal image of the convict from black and white films, a backpack overloaded with all the “travel essentials” seems to be the unfortunate, yet necessary ball n’ chain involved in backpacking. Quite ironic, right? Backpack is also the unifying verb, used to describe a presumably more economical and sustainable method of travel. I find that interesting, considering that suitcase travel seems to be an older form, which in English, usually means that it, not the newer form would transform via paleologism or verbing…but I DIGRESS!

Art in Prague

Art in Prague

A common sight in a foyer of a hostel in any given country: a line up of tired, impatient and dripping backpackers, waiting to check in or check out, their framed backpacks slumped in front of them like a not-a-care-in-the-world drunkards, resting against throbbing shins, being kicked and shoved, because it’s not worth the effort to hoist them up onto aching backs for the short journey to the counter. Then there are those moments when you don’t have time to check into your accommodation, or that you have no accommodation and you have to shlog your freakin’ life up the side of a mountain, or along an uneven, ten million kilometer hike (not really ten million kilometer, but it sure as hell feels like that). You begin to despise your helpful travel companion, dread the daunting task of finding a safe and secure place to store it, so you can enjoy light-loaded exploring once again. Then comes the further dread of trying to squish your sagging sack into the aforementioned storage space, which through tear soaked pleading and prayer, you personify as someone that through language you can convince and sway to do your bidding (“please, storage container in the train station, get bigger to accommodate my backpack and I will give you many shiny coins”). I use to think, due to my socio-economic status, that this version of travel was the only practical way to go and that the heavy backpack, was just the burden I had to bare.

 

But what if…we reassess what a travel essential is. The Oxford Dictionary of English defines “essential” as “affecting the essence of anything; ‘material’, important”. I interpret essential items, as things that are necessary and vital. If I were to look through many a’ backpackers backpacks, I am pretty many of ‘essentials’ I pulled out, would not fit the mold of my definition. A hairdryer and towel are not vital items for travel in warm places. The several scenarios that call for these items can be efficiently be filled by warm temperatures, supplemented by five minutes of physical spinning and/or sprinting. You may get the reputation as the “spinning man or woman in the shower”, but why not? It’s one less thing you need to consider lugging around and I think that reputation will garner you at least one single free drink at the hostel bar.

Old Jewish Cemetery, Prague

Old Jewish Cemetery, Prague

And there are other items as well that are not really essentials. In 2010, my friend who I was traveling with, challenged me to travel for three months with the same size backpack as he was sporting. Backpack is a generous term for a small knapsack that covered a little less than half of the area of his back. Okay, fine, if he can do it, so can I. You, dear reader, having no idea of who this nameless travel companion was or what his demeanor and prowess were like, giving you no premise to judge if my assertion is logical. I am in the clear to make such sweeping assumptions. I spilled the contents of my backpack onto the Amsterdam hostel bed I was to occupy that evening. Looking down the assortment of shapes, colors and their allocated uses, I asked myself a simple question:

 

With the trip I have planned ahead of me….what will I need?

Flowers, Wawel Castle, Krakow.

Flowers, Wawel Castle, Krakow.

First I started looking at my clothing. All the shades of the rainbow! If your methodology behind packing different outfits is to blend in to the populous of where you are traveling to, to be blunt, more times than not you’re not going to be able to, so why try? Also, what benefit is there to not standing out? If there is none, and if there is, in fact, benefits for standing out (people help you and forgive you when you do something possibly culturally insensitive), then why are you going through such counterintuitive rigamaroo? In these situations, extra clothing, shoes, jewelry, etc. simply amounts to undesirable weight. A few good pairs of socks, two or three undies, a pair of pants, a pair of shorts, a long sleeved shirt, a short leaved shirt, and maybe a sweater, if required, is all you need. If your going to the Gobi Desert in summer, I don’t think a parka is ever going to become a sensible garment to wear. Especially in warm environments, seeking out a washer or dryer is unnecessary. A bar of soap, a sink and maybe something to stop up the drain, and you can wash your clothing and hang it to dry over night or wash in cycles, doing several items at a time to dry throughout the day. Bring durable, clothing you won’t be heartbroken over getting destroyed, because over time, the wear and tear of travel will take its toll on your clothing’s elasticity, shape and color. Skin tight will become oversized, form fitting, malformed.

Adrian Palace, Prague.

Adrian Palace, Prague.

Vitamins, perfumes, facemasks and other niceties are nice additions to your post and pre-bed bathroom rituals, but you probably won’t spontaneously combust if you don’t have them. I understand that there are several toiletries that women require that men do not, but there are also several items that mass media and society says are essential to use prior to leaving your home in all circumstances. These socially induced standards are North American centric. In other parts of the world, ideas of beauty, professionalism and appearance are varied and far from the women of Cosmo or the Men of…..some masculine centred reading material. Again, you are traveling. You are going to be constantly adorned in sweat and food stained clothing, have brown encrusted cuticles and constant layer of fine dust choking your facial pores. We get it. In fact, many people will look at your disheveled presentation with jealousy, wishing that they too could escape the daily meat grinder that was turning them all into wurst. A toothbrush, toothpaste, floss, contact kit, medicine and feminine hygiene products are all you reallllly need. Maybe a hand sanitizer, though, what germs can’t kill you, will make you stronger.

The shop owner near my Prague home in Vysherad in 2008.

The shop owner near my Prague home in Vysherad in 2008. We would exchange English lessons for Czech lessons.

Electronic devices. Is there one device that can substitute several others? A tablet can act as a smaller computer, an e-reader, a music player and a phone. They are big enough to search the web and type emails, yet small enough to carry several PDF or electronic guidebooks, eliminating the old, cumbersome text versions, that easily open up in public and quickly and electronically search what ancient monument or historical artifact that you looking at. It can also be used to store offline Google Maps, replacing the hard-to-refold maps utilized by our ancestors. What about a camera? While it isn’t essential to capturing your trip through photos, it is a nice way to preserve your memories and act as visual aids for your long-winded traveling stories, so your friends won’t be lulled off to dreamland, where more interesting things are happening. But do you need a fancy DSLR? Though it would make sense if you were a photographer by profession and that you had some inkling that your travel photos may look better or have monetary value blown up as posters, then bringing your purdy Canon with five different lenses and several filters may make sense. Yet if you are simply trying to quickly snap an image of that dancing monk or the fast moving, stampeding elephant (random, confusing example images, I am aware), then the camera on a high quality Ipad will do just the trick. And with the numerous Instagram filters and options, your photos will be edited and posted in no time. And to be honest, those viewing them online and in person, will have no clue whether you manually shot them on your expensive-device or dirtily shot them on your Ipad. I may get shot for saying this, but as an avid user of DSLRs, I think alot of the quality I see in their pictures is due to tad of elitism on my part.  And when your Ipad storage with additional 64gig flashcard memory are eaten up? Simply upload them to the eponymous Cloud or DropBox and your back to flashing away.

Wawel Palace Cathedral, Krakow.

Wawel Palace Cathedral, Krakow.

Now, this is by no means a concise or all-inclusive list of what you need and what you don’t need for backpack travel (in fact, I am stopping at this point, because I feel I could go on and on and on…). This list does not take into consideration cold weather conditions, dietary restrictions, people with disabilities, and a plethora of many other variables. Since I was traveling and camping, I required a sleeping bag and tent as well. What I hope to accomplish, in some small way, is to push you to reconsider how you travel and what you need to get up and out there, with no excuses. I believe travel comfort is important and can make or break an experience, an outlook of a place or the concept of travel in general for someone. The ease of mobility as a traveler can make spontaneous trips and walks possible and gives you the ability to cover more distance in a day. Both of these factors may improve a traveler’s chances of seeing more and the plausibility of extending their trip. My anonymous friend challenging me to get rid of my bulging bag in exchange for a more reasonable ruck was a rousing revelation. It had me questioning almost every guidebook pack list I found and think about the consequences of having such burdensome behemoth latched inches above my posterior. Though it’s not always possible, considering downsizing what you bring with you on your journey may open up more outside of the box travel approaches and options. Also, knapsacks fit easily into overhead compartments, under train seats and make pretty acceptable pillows.

Vendor, Krakow.

Vendor, Krakow.