The 23rd of June…

Trying to keep my spirits up during the long days of riding, the waiting for weather conditions to improve; or ferries to arrive and visas to be issued, can be trying… The periods of inactivity cannot always be filled with things to do and places to see… Without these things to occupy my mind, I inevitably get to thinking about my reasons for cutting myself off from family and friends; from the relatively stable environment in which I once existed; and exchanging it all for the unknown, and the challenges of a long and arduous test of my determination and willpower…

Climbing a mountain or rafting some great river was never going to be enough for me… I needed a challenge that would take me a long time to complete… A challenge that would take me away from everything that reminded me of my former life, the mood-changing memories that haunted and dogged my every waking day… I felt I needed a great deal of time to consider what the future might hold for me, what shape and form my life should take on the completion of the long journey I planned to undertake…

In 2009, the dynamics of my everyday life changed drastically with the onset of my pending divorce, and I realized that I had to find another way to define myself in my own eyes… My recent “failure” weighed too heavily on these narrow shoulders… In my opinion, men most often define themselves by their achievements at work, the long hours they toil away, and the sacrifices they make to ensure their family’s lives are as comfortable as possible… In hindsight, (Which is always a precise art!) I should have spent more time defining myself as a husband and a father, even though this would probably have meant a less comfortable lifestyle in the end… This is what I should have done, but didn’t… for too many years…

I now know that I had the balance wrong, and while I was grinding through a tough and demanding occupation, my family had drifted inexorably away from me… I woke up too late, finding we were both wrapped up in circumstances that made reconciliation impossible… When the gavel finally came down on our 19 years of marriage, officially confirming the great void that now filled my life, I decided that only a massive shift in how I now wanted to live my life was necessary, for me to maintain some form of sanity… (Difficult when most of your mates already consider you to be a nutcase…!!)

There was no longer a need for me to expend time, effort and money trying to maintain a lifestyle that I no longer desired. I no longer needed to be the “hero”, a status that fathers unconsciously achieve in the eyes of their children, and their wives for that matter… My family had moved 10 000 miles away, another irony considering all the time and distance I had spent apart from them…

Today, the 23^rd of June, is both the date I was  married on, as well as the date on which my divorce was finalized… The irony of it is inescapable… The one neatly canceling the other, making this day truly unforgettable…for both the right and the wrong reasons…

I spent the four months following our divorce, in the Equatorial jungles of Ghana, in West Africa, planning my journey around the world, and in hindsight, without this to occupy my time in the evenings, I might well have gone “off the rails”…!!

And now, here I am, in Cairo, almost 21 000 kms into a trip that I estimate will cover more than 120 000 kms all told… The 19 countries I have visited so far represent only 20% of those I hope to ride in… I have no doubt my catharsis will be a gradual one, but better to do it in a constantly changing environment, than in the daily grind of life lived unsatisfactorily…

©GBWT 2010

Beautiful Reward…

I once sought gold and other shiny things,

My own drug, to ease the pain that living brings,

Now I ride through mountains and down to the valley floors,

Searching for some beautiful reward…

From our house on the hill where that sacred light shines,

In my dreams I walk through the rooms that are no longer mine,

Down empty hallways, I go from door to door,

Listening for the voices that speak no more…

I recall how their hair shone in the glowing sun,

I was so high, yes I was the lucky one…

Then I came crashing down like a drunk on a bar-room floor…

Still searching for my beautiful reward…

Today I can feel a hot wind at my back,

I’m riding through green fields, my shadow long and black…

Down along the Nile’s silent edge I roar,

Searching for some beautiful reward…

(Original words by Bruce Springsteen…)