A long distant trip on a tandem bicycle is fun, awe inspiring, with beautiful sites, great food, and good conversations, but at the same time it is a continual exercise of polishing one's attitude. It's not a real big secret that a person's attitude is one's filter of the world. On second thought maybe it is. That gal who wrote THE SECRET sure made herself a bundle off the idea. But, hey, the idea has been kicking around for a long time.
My favorite story is about the guy who is running from a tiger, falls off a cliff and then grabs a grapevine to keep from falling to his death. Death below, death above and right there in his hand is a grapevine with a cluster of grapes on it. About that time he sees 2 little mice, one white and one black, gnawing away at his grapevine. What to do? What to do? Yep, he eats the grapes; delicious. Enjoy that moment!
As a teacher I've come across lots of people that simply hate where they live and can't wait to get away from there, but, if you engage them in some conversation, invariably their life sucks in general. And it's that the crap in their life through which they see and pin their misery on where they live. We humans project our inner world out there on the environment. Attitude is everything! Well, that might be a little too much, I mean that it might be possible to effect the material world with our thoughts. Maybe Mohammad really did have the mountain come to him rather than him going to it simply by believing (he must have also "believed" it back, as no one reported a missing mountain). However, that's not a philosophical stance that I'm prepared to defend, but I do KNOW that Attitude is a big part of our trips, and if you're going to do some long distance touring then make a resolution to find of little ways to do polish your attitude and keep it fresh and positive.
The first thing I would recommend if you wanted to keep a glowing, happy attitude is to take Kamala along. Sorry, if she's already riding with me she's unavailable. Kamala is a romantic optimist that will find something good in even really funky situations. She is the PR person on our team. She waves and yells at kids, she says hello to old ladies, when some guy yells the typical contact statement given to tandemists, "Hey she's not pedaling," she puts her fingers to her lips and smilingly mouths the words , "Don't tell." She talks sweetly to cats, and dogs, horses and cows. I swear, at a farm in Kansas she started sweetly talking to a herd of cows and before it was over they were galloping, (Yes, cows galloping) along with us. When I start worrying about where we're going to throw out our bed roll for the night, she just cheerfully retorts. "Oh, don't worry, we'll find something." Don't get me wrong, Kamala is not just some Pollyanna with her head in the clouds, but she just has the ability to see good in most people and most situations. But ever once in a while she can get down and that's when I'm supposed to be MR. POSITIVE. The advantage of the tandem is that you always have someone there to help up you up. If you can't get Kamala, get someone who sees the world through those rose-colored glasses. I cannot imagine doing a long trip with a pessimist.
Obviously, attitude is, at least in someways, tied to a person's personality, but little things help. Like here's a little game that we call Omens. Now before I get into this, Kamala and I consider ourselves spiritual but not religious. Does that confuse you? It's just that you can't get out into Nature very much to realize that there's something a tad bigger than our little egos, but religious dogma seems contrived and made up. It's okay, whatever works for you, go for it! For us, we kind of enjoy giving special meaning to objects, plants, and animals. We make up our own omens. This game did not originate on bike trips, but from one of our other lives when we used to do quite a few long road trips into the Mexican backcountry, but it fits perfectly into a bike tour. It requires being aware of the natural world that you're pedaling through and it polishes a good attitude at the same time.
Let me explain by example. There is a beautiful rose-violet colored thistle plant out here in the Southwest. I believe people actually call it a Rose Thistle, but Kamala and I have another association with it. Years ago, on a particular hike in the Sacramento Mountains we took a little dog we had named Whisky (because whisky is a licker, get it? licker? liquor?) The bright thistles were everywhere. Now Whisky was a beautiful spirit that just showed up one day and gave us about a year's worth of joy and then disappeared just as quickly. So we call the Rose Thistles "Whisky Thistles" and the meaning we gave to it was that "You need to enjoy what you have and don't take anything for granted." As we go pedaling, up hill or down, good road or bad, when we see a whisky thistle we have to look at our lives and appreciate what we have. It's always a positive and makes us feel better. How's that for polishing your spirit. Whisky Thistles became the trip flower the year we went to Seattle.
The white Lilly Thistle represents a "tough but beautiful journey" and was our flower the year we rode mountains in New Mexico and Colorado.
Poppies became the "Can Do" flower for our European trip when we began to see so many on tough stretches of road.
Hawks are hunter's and as such represent good hunting, meaning you should be looking at yourself and determining exactly what it is that you're looking for, or something you're looking for is at hand; pay attention.
You get the picture? So these prophetic symbols are pure fantasy from our little "Cognitive Factory" (or are they?) . They're fun to play with. When something keeps coming across our consciousness we tag a positive meaning to it. And you can stick a positive meaning to most anything; take crows. Crows mean Death, but we take it as, not some creepy, gloomy premonition of our immediate death, but as - are we living like we are prepared to die. That's just another way of saying - of all the things I could of done, I chose to be here on this bike at this time (tough or easy), So am I making this my first priority or is my mind somewhere else - Pay Attention!. Some stick and stay around for years, some just last for a few days and fizzle into oblivion.
Try it! I think you'll enjoy it. We do. Give something a meaning and then treat it as if it's true. Just keep it positive.
I don't want to give the impression that we're two buddhas, floating over the landscape. While we've got a long, strong, loving relationship that has just seems to keep improving with age there are "Times". Times when the day is long, the legs are tired and the stress from the ride has made the cognition fuzzy at best. At these times one, or both of us get a little "cranky". I get too harsh in my retorts. Kamala begins to "wobble" in her thought process. We just don't click and a conversation that is usually clear and understandable seems to be coming out of different realities. Kamala's trick to disagreements is to just to stop pedaling. Where's that fellow that always yells, "She's not pedaling," when you need him? Now that really stops progress on a tandem. My options are too limited. I could yell and curse, but I learned a long time ago that's just going to get us deeper in the muck. I have gotten off the bike and just sit down, but, although the thought has arisen, I have never just walked off. Now, luckily, since 99% of our disagreements are frustrations from displacements and once we realize that the other person is getting hurt, we back off and after a few minutes of silence, we regroup, apologize and try to figure out what needs to be done to get on down the road. What we have found that the more we "polish" our general attitude, the less these little crazy times occur.
