“That Which Does Not Kill Us Makes Us Stronger…”

(photo taken from cycletrailsaustralia.com)

I first heard this adage many years when I was an undergraduate. I was a work-study student and my work detail involved cutting a road through the woods on campus. I don’t quite remember why we were using hand tools. I was very strong back then and maybe a little dumb. My aim with an axe wasn’t very good either and I managed the break the heads off about three of them in as many days. I learned how to replace the handles quickly. This adage would play out again and again over the years. 

The Northwest corner of Australia is a very remote piece of arable real estate. In the English language it is a region known as the Kimberley. There are several Aboriginal languages in the area that have their own names. It is dry, hot and hard country. It seems to have two seasons: Hot and dry and hotter and wet.

During the wet season, torrential rains accompany monsoons that blow in from south East Asia across the Indian Ocean. Rain fall could be measured in feet. At times big chunks of the Kimberley are submerged. Rivers change course, new goose necks are formed and existing goose necks may become cut off. These are known as billabongs. These billabongs can be home to hundreds of species of birds, mammals and reptiles. The most notorious of these is the Estuarine Crocodile. Also known as the salt water crocodile or, “salty” in the local vernacular. The “salty’ is a Jurassic throwback. It is essentially a ferocious set of teeth attached to the world’s largest reptile. They are gifted hunters, often stalking their prey. Sometimes for days and relying on ambush. They mostly hang out in the sea and are well adapted to salt water. They can swim hundreds of kilometers often swimming and drifting at sea for weeks. They also inhabit brackish water where salt meets fresh. When the rains come to the Kimberley, “Salties” can be found following the water. When the rains end and the waters begin to recede, they may be found in billabongs cut off from the sea until the next rains come.

In late June of 2017, I happened to be cycling across a section of this vast expanse of Australia. What should have been a day and a half became a four day epic. I was on an old highway connecting two small towns. I’d gotten some information that although the road was mostly gravel it was in good condition. Yeah, that information was old. The surface went from bad to worse. Corrugations deep enough to swallow a Volkswagen, deep sand and something I’d never even seen before; bull dust. What looked like a hard packed ridge of mud turned out to be dust as fine as talcum powder as deep as my ankle and able to stop my wheels dead and send me flying off the bike.

So it was on the third night of this “short ride” when I found myself running out of water and seemingly not getting any closer to my destination. At dusk, I came across the miracle of a billabong. It was toward the end of the dry season so it was a bit murky, a little tepid and had clumps of algae floating around in it. At least I hope it was algae and not something more sinister. I’d only seen one or two other vehicles in the two and a half days on this road. I always travel with a water filter. I had plenty of fuel for my stove so purifying the water wasn’t a problem. It did taste a bit muddy.

Dusk was settling in. There was a small rise on one end of the pond. It was brushy but I figured it would be safe from any lurking Salties. I pushed my bike up the hill and as I usually do, I waited to see what the land had to say and to pick a good spot for my tent. It's an intuitive thing, "waiting for the land to tell me." I've always done this. Experience has taught me to wait a few minutes to see what emerges. Sometimes the spot I thought would be perfect turns out to be the entrance of a giant ant colony. Or any number of other things that could make life uncomfortable for the next 12 hours.

Along with the potentially deadly crocodiles, funnel-web spiders, box jellyfish, stonefish, blue octopus and cone snails Australia is home to a plethora of lethal snakes. Fortunately, not everything in Australia is out to kill you. Consider the kangaroo. But even the world's largest marsupial has one sharp claw in the middle of it's hind food designed to eviscerate. Never the less, three minutes into my wait on the hill, came a slithering a snake. It was quite beautiful actually. Shiny, dark gray with a lighter colored under belly. Not all snakes in Australia are venomous. But there seem to be an awful lot of them that are and not knowing which is which I treat them all with due respect and act as if they are ALL deadly. I don’t know what species that particular fellow was and I didn’t care to find out. I moved me and my bike a few yards away. Gently but with purpose. I waited again. I don’t know if it was the same snake or another of the same ilk, but here is another snake. I moved again. And again. Then I noticed some tall grass waving about ten yards away. There was no breeze nor wind. Sure enough, there were two snakes entwined standing up on their tails involved in some sort of ritual dance. I was surrounded. I gingerly made my way out of there and back to the road. 

Even though I hadn’t seen anyone in days, I prefer to hide my camps from the road. That left the edge of the billabong on which to set my camp. I had to decide which was riskier, the snakes or the possibility of crocs lurking in that murky water. The snakes I had seen for sure. But there were no telltale signs of crocodiles. They often leave wallows and very distinct tracks in the sand near the water. Some literature I’d read at the visitor center back in the last town of Kununurra said that twenty five meters from the edge of the water was relatively safe from crocs. I’m an American. I’m not sure what twenty five meters looks like. I translated it to yards. But that put me backed up to a rock wall. I decided in my mind that I was twenty SIX meters from the edge of the water. I set my camp, managed to cook and choke down some noodles and watched the stars come out. The sun had set but it was still hot and I left the fly off my tent. Australia hosts some of the darkest skies left on the planet. What an incredible sight! There was no moon and the stars seemed closer. The night was still and the deafening sound of no sound was profound. I drifted off to sleep with a hint of a breeze coming off the water.

When dawn came, there were a few tiny birds flitting around the edge of the water and it was already warmer. I didn’t see any signs of crocs. What I did see were kangaroo prints and the continuous s shaped print of snakes moving across the sand. With eyes in the back of my head, I ate a hasty breakfast, packed my camp and hit the road.

Cycling: Why it Matters!

I’ve been popping wheelies, hucking jumps and skinning my knees since I was about 7. I had a Schwinn Fair Lady, the girl's version of the Stingray. The bike was purple and had pink and white streamers in the grips. Most of the kids in the neighborhood had a good sturdy steed. We rode to school, around town. We could ride to the beach. The abandoned farmer's fields nearby hosted single track with piles of compacted dirt. Made for some exciting times.  We had our own version of BMX. This was the seventies and we built our own bikes (with help from adults) from parts we scavenged at the town dump. It was real fun! Well, until that one kid got a little too much air, landed badly and broke his collar bone. That tempered our riding styles a bit. We hadn’t even heard of cycling helmets. Our bikes helped fire our imaginations. We lived out entire epic adventures in one afternoon after school. When I turned twelve my Dad bought me a Huffy ten speed from Toys R Us. I cherished that bike! It had the same color scheme as their mascot Geoff the giraffe. It was my freedom and opened up a world of exploration. Sadly, it got stolen when I was 16.

That didn’t stop me though. Time went on, I got older, became distracted by other things. School, friends, smoked my share of ganja and then some. Time went on. I got into a little trouble drinking too much beer, booze and everything else. But I never forgot the freedom of those first two bikes.

 High school was a bit of a blur.  I partied a lot. That was the culture of suburbia in the seventies. In the years following High school, I went looking for adventure. I found myself hitchhiking around the country in the spirit of Jack Kerouac and others.  That wasn’t cutting it. I traveled to Israel and picked oranges on a kibbutz. I got sick of picking oranges and was able to work in the restaurant across the road. There were three elderly women who ran the kitchen. None of whom spoke English. I started in the scullery. I learned some baking from Miriam, the baker. Esther showed me some amazing salads and Nushka.... Nushka just laughed at me all the time. I’ve never forgotten them; Miriam, Esther and Nushka. But that’s another story. At the end of the day, I and a small group of other volunteers would spend the evening around a fire bullshitting each other and drinking cheap Israeli vodka.  I traveled to Egypt and Greece. Then hitchhiked through Europe playing guitar and harmonica on the street. I made some decent money. It all went to beer, food and weed.

This went on for the next eleven years or so. Somewhere in there, I managed to graduate from college with a B.A. in Liberal Arts. The “B.A.” being an abbreviation for, “Bring Alcohol”. At 31 I was living in the Central Valley of California, Fresno to be exact. I’d had a few weird and dysfunctional relationships in the alcohol and drug induced fog I had been living in. Finally, I’d had enough! I hit the proverbial wall. I was a mess and the show was over.  This high (pun intended) stakes game of searching had come to an end. I put the plug in the jug!

In the first year or two of this new take on life (also another story) I re-discovered my love for the outdoors. I was living in Central California; the Sierra Nevada was a 25 minute drive. I finally left the sprawling suburbia of Fresno.  A friend had a school bus on blocks in the hills.  There was no running water or electricity. But it was on a mountain near Yosemite National Park. I didn’t care about going without the amenities. I was living in the woods! I was happy. At least until I almost asphyxiated in the bus one night.  The wood stove got way too hot and the manzanita I had piled next to it started to smolder. I survived that and learned where NOT to put your firewood. There was the time, I got poison oak on my butt so bad I needed steroid injections. Careful where you squat. I was to learn this lesson again in the desert after becoming a guide and I learned all about cactus.

 I moved out of the bus and on to an organic apple orchard where I was the caretaker for the next three years. I was able to complete a course to become an EMT through the local adult education. I received a scholarship for the National Outdoor Leadership School in Alaska. A mysterious benefactor paid a good chunk of my tuition and I got my first job in the outdoor industry. I worked in Wilderness Therapy with youngsters who were like me when I was 18 and 19. A mess.

Looking back to my teens I see now that my friends and I were all after the same thing. We wanted adventure and we wanted something to mark our passage from kids to adults.  But we had no elders to show us the way. We had weed, crappy acid and beer. But I grew up within a walk albeit a long walk to a local state park on Long Island Sound. We went there on weekends and camped out in the picnic area. There was no real campground. But no-one ever bothered us. We made a fire in the BBQ pit and sometimes even remembered to bring some food. The beach was close by and the summer nights were perfect. It was quiet, safe and magical. We made our own music. Sure, we had boom boxes with cassette tapes and the radio. But there was always at least one guitar and a djembe. There was a state trooper who would drive in at some weird hour of the early morning and check us out. Bless his heart, he never kicked us out. He knew it was safer to let us hang out in that picnic area than for us to be out driving. The staggering number of high school classmates killed or maimed in drunk driving incidents at the time was a testament to his foresight. It’s amazing any of us made it to age thirty.

It was on my first solo cross country bicycle trip many years later that this all began to crystalize for me.

I traveled extensively and finally went to work in the outdoor industry. I worked first as a guide in wilderness therapy and then went on to become a clinician.  After several years of this work I began to feel disillusioned. Wilderness Therapy had become the panacea for a wealthy elite. People who had more money than time to spend on their kids. “Wilderness” became a commodity. Something bought and branded.

The bicycle tugged at me. I was an avid cycle commuter.  I rode that first tour at age forty one or two.  In the spring of 2006, I was hit by a truck totaling my bike. Luckily I sustained only minor injuries.  Even the bills from the minor injuries piled up. I hired a lawyer and after a few months received a settlement. I paid off the bills and had enough left for a nice touring bike. Most sane people would be dissuaded from cycling after cheating death like I did. But I dived back in to the deep end head first. I had no idea what I was getting into. In the early fall of 2006, I rode from the Mississippi River to Ridgeway, Colorado.

Riding across the Midwest on a shiny new road tourer was great! The leap from working as a back country guide to a front country cyclist was an easy one. With that first pedal stroke heading west, I realized I had way too much crap. I began to ditch stuff right away. First the heavy water filter. Then the extra pot, cotton tee shirts. Even the front panniers went. I also learned in the first five minutes of that tour that I had no interest in riding on pavement. The rolly-polly hills of the Midwest were beautiful and serene. In Kansas I witnessed the monarch migration. I spent a night camped in farmers pasture. There were Cyprus trees planted a hundred years before as a wind break. They were now dripping with the fiery orange of a few million monarch butterflies on their way to Mexico. I learned that Kansas is, the “Monarch State”. How cool is that? I learned a lot about touring on that ride. I named my bike, “Ayla” after the main character in, “Clan of the Cave Bear”. The gearing on that bike was all wrong for me. It was road gearing. Climbing over the Rockies was like hitting a brick wall. I was walking my bike up the last few miles to Monarch pass when someone in a BMW SUV stopped and asked if I wanted a ride. I took it. Coming down the other side of the pass is about as fast as I’ve ever experienced on a bicycle. The pavement was brand new and it was all downhill for over thirty miles. That’s as close as I’ve ever come to the feeling of flying.

Arriving back in Colorado, I traded that bike in.  I found what would become a whole new generation of adventure bikes. The gearing was lower, the frame more like that of a mountain bike and bigger wheels. That was almost fourteen years ago.

Since then, I’ve cycled thousands of miles both here and abroad. Over the years, I’ve learned how to go farther with less. Self-sufficiency in difficult environments is a challenge I embrace. I’ve even learned about animal behavior. I've traveled in some remote bush country. Understanding animals in the wild can mean the difference between life and death. Cycling in Australia is a great reminder of that.

People and vehicles are still the biggest hazards for anyone cycling anywhere.

The world is not a big scary place with violent criminals running wild in the streets. The criminally violent ones are mostly found in the edifices of government.

People and landscapes are the biggest reasons I travel by bike.  Strangers are more likely to respond with wonder and curiosity rather than fear. A bicycle can be disarming.  Although, I saw local indigenous women in Guatemala running to hide when they saw me coming. But that was an exception. The women in rural Peru were very interested and wanted to hear my stories.  They wanted to know how I gained my freedom. If you think uneducated women in the world are not aware of their own oppression you are sorely mistaken.

Cycling breaks down barriers. It is moving through the world with the windows wide open. We are exposed and vulnerable. We see the world as it actually is, not how we would like it to be. It offers a clarity of vision and hope. Instead of becoming more afraid, we become more bold and willing to be present. Cycling matters because it is one of the most authentic things that I can do to simply show up in the world today.