Last night at CalMoto, my local BMW dealership, I attended a book event for Glen Heggstad, the Striking Viking. He traveled around the world on a BMW GS Dakar from 2004 -2006 visiting under-developed countries, deliberately taking the road less traveled. Glen seeks to understand humanity by traveling. I don't normally attend book readings, but one of the sales guys at CalMoto seems to have read my future; he enticed me to attend with a comment, "well, you aren't riding around the world yet, but you will be."
My travels outside the US, in Southeast Asia, Western Europe and East Africa took place over a twenty-year period before I started riding. I have mentioned my dream of riding the Silk Route on a motorcycle to only a few people, and that sales guy wasn't one of them! From Turkey to Xi An, China - can I acquire the skills I'll need to do that ride? Sure. It isn't the physical challenge of riding across Asia that concerns me. It's the social challenge.
I'm an introvert. Given a choice of going out with a group of people or staying at home to read or write, I'm more likely to stay at home. Most human beings not only enjoy the company of a bunch of other human beings, they are recharged by that social interaction. Introverts typically enjoy the company of a few select people, and recharge by being alone. The thought of having dinner with a group of kind folk who are opening up their home to me, who want to do the cultural equivalent of breaking bread and finding the truth in wine (in vino veritas) makes me very uncomfortable. I marvel at people who exude that "Hail fellow well met" energy all the time, as Glen clearly does.
Kari, co-owner of CalMoto, observed that Glen is different from most other people who travel around on motorcycles who are often gear heads. The same slide show he presented to the assembled group of motorcycles riders at CalMoto he has shown to tribes in Kenya, small villages in Borneo and Vladivostok. Glen can talk to gear heads about the sub-frame bolts that broke off while he was riding through Africa, or the conditions under which his Ohlins rear shock gave out. He can also learn to communicate in the local language in a few hours.
He has both a knowledge acquisition method and a dictionary strategy. First, the dictionary strategy. As a traveler he needs the words for "north, south, east, west", "gasoline", "water", "meat", other foods, "how much", "please", "thank you", and the "five w's (who, what, where, why and how). When he arrives in a village, often everyone runs away. He takes out his digital camera and takes a picture of something, like a dog, and shows the image to the small child who is the first to give in to curiosity. The next picture is of course, of the kid. When the kid sees his picture, and tells his friends, it isn't long before the whole village comes out. Between the pictures of his travels, and the limited vocabulary he acquires, he is able to secure a place to sleep, buy gas, and earn the trust of the people of village to allow him to stay a couple days.
Glen is a pretty big guy, well over 6 feet tall, 200 pounds. Although now retired martial arts competitions he's still rather formidable looking. So I was surprise at his message to his American audiences. He joked about how if we Americans don't watch TV, then we aren't informed about what is happening in the world, and if we do get our news from the TV, then we are misinformed.
He was absolutely passionate about how cultures that we Americans are often taught to look down on as being "uncivilized" are remarkably hospitable and tolerant of a stranger in their midst, and much better informed about us than we are of them. He didn't "hide behind the maple leaf" nor did he stretch the truth and claim to be Norwegian, which he is, by descent. He told them he was American, and claims that other than in Columbia, no one instantly hated him.
I was amused to see that his camera can't help but find beauty, often female beauty, and he does have an eye for irony. Worldwide human females are neurologically wired to enhance themselves in some way to be more attractive to compete for a mate. Glen's travels beg the question, who is to say what is "barbaric" when talking about mutilation of the body? Here in the West one technique women may use is breast implants.
In Myan Mar (Burma) he photographed the Paduong women who lengthen their necks with gold rings. The women's necks aren't actually stretched. Rather, the weight of the rings gradually crushes the women's collar bones, producing the illusion of long necks.
In the mountains of South West Ethiopia, lives a tribe of 2500 semi-nomads called Surma. Surma are related to the Nubians and to the well-known Massai tribe from Kenya and Tanzania. The women have an ancient custom of wearing a lip-plate in the lower lip. The size of the lip plate increases the woman's value for marriage. Think about how far your lip would be distended from your teeth by a plate 5 inches in diameter.
His presentation was entertaining, educating and challenging. In addition to the pictures of the small children sitting on his bike with delighted expressions, he talked about human slavery in India, the genocide happening now in Darfur, and how it is our responsibility to tell our government that it must reconsider how we as a nation involve ourselves in the human condition on this earth.
At the end of his slide show, his book and some of his photographs were
for sale. His personality was so strong that although I wanted to say
thank you, I found myself hanging back. I purchased a photograph, but
not any of the ones with people in them. He also had photographs of his
bike in various predicaments, usually on its side in mud. I bought the
picture of the bike standing up, stuck in mud, with river water up to
the tops of the wheels.
* * *
You can hear Glen's own voice here.
This seems to be the month for Adventure Riders. Mikel Werner informed readers of his blog, Motorbiker.org, of Gaurav Jani's search for self-discovery on his 350cc Royal Entfield. Entitled "Riding Solo to the Top of the World", Gaurav filmed his trek while traveling alone to one of he most remote locations of the world; the Changthang Plateau, in Ladakh, bordering China.
The plateau is located at an average altitude of 15,000 feet, covering 30,000 km2. There are not road, no gas stations or McDonald's, and in the winter the temperature reaches -40°C !
Gaurav filmed this epic motorcycle journey in style like "The Long Way Round", minus the support staff, support vehicles, donated motorcycles, etc. He produced a documentary of the journey. Gaurav has put a teaser video clip on the site. It's worth watching - you'll need about five minutes and a broadband connection. Gaurav is currently looking for a distribution company for the DVD! The teaser opens showing the road out of Delhi, that's the last road he saw.
The film is about Changthang, the people there and their culture and
life style.
The film is a spontaneous way of looking at the world around, about the
difference and similarities between an urban traveler and the nomads of
the region who wander constantly in search of pastures.
The landscapes in the teaser are breathtaking. This film has won awards in Indian film festivals - I'm looking forward seeing the people he interacted with as well.
This entry is about my most recent experience with peri-menopause. Before you go surf some other site, consider that I'm not going to talk about anything that will make you feel squeamish, but I am going to talk about an unexpected side-effect of this "change of life", depression.
Have you seen the television ad, "Depression Hurts"? [The link goes to a Psychology Today article about the phenomena, and not to the site of the advertiser; I don't want to imply an endorsement of the product.] You know how you resonate with some ads, and actually watch them, while others give you an excuse to rummage in the kitchen for a snack? The "Depression Hurts" ad spoke to me the same way the Budweiser frogs spoke to me, and I don't even drink Bud.
For nearly a week I only left the house to go to Aikido. As for work, without broadband and the VPN, I would have had to call in sick. Training on the mat was pretty awful, it is hard to move well when your brain and body parts are suffused in a dull ache. The bike didn't move at all, it stayed in the garage - I didn't dare get on it. And that was depressing all by itself.
The worst part was being unable to stop the downward spiral of feeling unworthy. The feeling is just like realizing you're in a decreasing radius turn, everything tightens up and in moments you're looking down a suicide chute. Like many women, I've had suicidal thoughts associated with the occurrence of my monthly cycle ever since my teens. Once I figured out the connection, I realized I could talk myself into "snapping out of it", or, go for a long bicycle ride to flood my brain with endorphins which would re-balance my brain chemistry.
As an adult I became a fan of St. John's Wort, a plant-derived selective serotonin retuptake inhibitor (SSRI), but for the past few weeks St. John has not answering my prayers. I remembered that fellow MBIweb founding member and uber-tech, Richard, aka "Old Guy", has a resource on his site, Old Guy's Depression in a Nutshell. Richard has distilled a lot of information into a well organized, easy-to-read page. I found validation that my symptoms might be related to the hormonal changes I'm going through, and from there Google took me to some resources for treating peri-menopause related depression. So, more experiments, this time with 5-HTP, a serotonin precursor, and SAM-e. I'm not recommending anything...I don't know if the fact that I'm feeling better is due to the placebo effect, or if I've found a combination that is the right stuff for this month's symptoms. Either way, I'll take it, I'm riding again.
Riding in traffic tells me about my mental health. A couple days ago I was happy to ride in my lane with the cars. I watched other bikes zip in-between lanes, and felt no desire to follow, I would call it "zero risk tolerance". Well, I guess it isn't really zero, I mean, I am riding a motorcycle on a major highway during the morning commute. But I've got nothing on this guy's commute:
A Palestinian rides a motorcycle past burning tyres during
a protest by
Palestinian security forces to demand unpaid salaries from the Hamas-led
government, in Gaza October 22, 2006. REUTERS/Suhaib Salem (GAZA)
(thanks, Mike)
With a week's worth of the new supplements in my body, lane-sharing looks like a reasonable option again. Not like what I was doing a couple of months ago when I slipped between a passenger car and a tallish SUV. It seemed that time passed by slowly as I watched my right mirror slip under the side mirror of the SUV, while my left mirror slipped over the side mirror of the car. Lest you think that I had a moment of confidence in my spatial reasoning, let me be clear, this was an "oh shit" moment.
Today I smelled the warm chocolate from a hotel kitchen on Highway 101 just south of the airport on the ride north. The aroma of freshly baked raison bread filled my helmet just south of Oakland on Highway 880 heading south. I have a long way to go re-achieve a sense of balance, but I'm getting there.
If you suffer from depression or know someone who does, check out Old Guy's site. I believe we are each responsible for our own happiness. There are no guarantees of happiness, but with the support of this Internet-based rider community, we can feel better.