Tag Archives: Cycling

The Bicycle Chase Meditation

The air of the room is held captive by a stillness only meditation can summon. The older meditators are sitting in chairs, as still as stones. The rest of us are on the floor, kneeling, with our butts supported by little wooden stools or cushions.

Addison and I had ridden the bicycles we’re borrowing from Tellman and Jodi over to the meditation hall with minutes to spare. The driveway leading up Solar Hill is steep and long, and I could feel my lower abdominal muscles straining to hold my big, pregnant belly in place as I heaved myself uphill. While parking our bicycles, we attempted to calm our breathing down to a reasonable pace as quickly as possible. Meditation had just commenced and we didn’t want to enter the room gasping like a couple of land-locked fish in the midst of their glorious silence.

Apparently a couple of the other attendees had ridden their bicycles to the morning sangha as well, and no-one had appeared to bother themselves with locking their bicycles up. The entrance to the hall is hidden from view and the building itself is set up in the woods, well away from the main road.

This is amazing, I think, as I begin to settle into my meditation. My back doesn’t hurt!

Being almost 8 months pregnant means that I have been experiencing the unpleasant visitations of back pain, which feels not unlike the an overwhelming visit with relatives who are easier to love from a distance.

 

After a moment however, I noticed that although my back wasn’t really hurting, there was a different concern that had arisen. I can’t really breathe. I wonder if it’s just because the room is stuffy and open my eyes to see if the windows are open. They’re all closed. A plastic tree stands in the corner, wearing a fine layer of dust. And that ‘tree’ sure isn’t helping with the oxygen levels in here.

I shift my weight around, trying to give my lungs more space. But my belly now swells up almost to chest level, so there just isn’t a whole lot of extra space to be had. I should just be present with whatever is happening, I remind myself. Even not being able to breathe properly is something I can be present with.

I can feel my hands getting tingly. I imagine falling unconscious suddenly and falling to the floor. Would everyone remain unmoving, silent statues while Addison tried to revive me? No, everyone would probably leap up to help–albeit meditatively perhaps. But then I’d be responsible for cutting everyone’s meditation short this morning.

The thought of interrupting everyone’s meditation practice by passing out on the floor prompts me to adjust my position. I lower myself down to a supported child’s pose, with my cushion propped under my chest so that my belly has space to hang above the floor. This helps a little. Now at least I don’t feel like I’m going to faint. I take some deep-ish breaths. In, out, I say silently with each in-breath and out-breath.

I hear the sound of softly shifting gravel outside. Perhaps someone is walking up the driveway. A very late meditator coming to join us?

No…I focus in on the sound, my imagination kicking into gear. Someone coming up to check out the bicycles? If someone was going to steal a bicycle, which one would they pick? Mine. Though it’s not really mine. It’s Tellman and Jodi’s. But it’s the one I ride around right now. Mine looks the shiniest. And it would be easy to grab, since it just parked at the foot of the steps with a kickstand.

Shhhhhh… I tell myself. You’re being silly. You’re ALWAYS worried about people stealing your bike… or someone else’s bike that you’ve borrowed.

But there it is again, the crunching gravel sound. I am becoming all but the sense of hearing.

There is a distinctive metal click, like that of a kickstand being released, and then louder crunchings, as though wheels are rolling over the gravel.

I am standing up now and waddling to a side door in the room I’ve never used. If I’m imagining all of this, than this will be a moment of embarrassment to be remembered forever. I wrestle with the door handle for a second, unlock it and then wrench it open. The meditators have turned to watch me as one.

“What’s up?” Addison is asking, but I am hurtling across the deck. A figure wearing a white wife-beater and a backwards, black baseball cap is rolling away, down the driveway, past the pine grove and towards the road. Whoever it is appears to be riding my–no, Jodi and Tellman’s–bicycle. I crash through the tiger lilies and grab Addison’s–Tellman and Jodi’s–bike, which had been leaning on the side of the building. The seat is so high I can barely reach the pedals. But Addison is moving too slowly and time is of the essence, so I point the handlebars downhill.

“Someone stole a bike!” I manage to bark to Addison as his head appears out of the open door. I am flying down the hill, my pregnant belly bouncing in time with the bumps.

“STOP!” I scream at the receding figure. I hear Addison yelling something as well, but I’m concentrating so hard I don’t pay attention. “Give me my bike back!” The whites of the bicycle thief’s eyes flash briefly before he takes a left onto Western Avenue, pedaling awkwardly. The seat is too low for him, and his knees poke out at odd angles as he labors.

I focus on turning without wiping out, and stand up to pedal more easily, since the too-high seat is preventing proper contact between my feet and the pedals.

“That’s my bike you’re stealing!” I holler with air reserves I didn’t even know are available to me. “I’m PREGNANT!”

Somehow this last bit of information seems important for me to relay to the thief. Because stealing a bike is a bad thing to do, yes, but he might still be able to sleep at night after selling it and doing his best to forget about it (and being chased). But stealing from a pregnant woman? That could haunt his dreams for a good long while.

A man in a dress jacket is getting back in his car holding a freshly-purchased cup of coffee.

“He’s stealing my bike!” I call to the man, pointing to the gangly bicycle thief who is now making a wobbly turn down one of the steepest roads in Brattleboro. Union Hill…! “Call the police!” I don’t have time to explain to this guy why I’m still able to chase the thief, who is supposedly riding away with my bicycle, using another bicycle, and I don’t know if he’s actually going to call the police, but I keep pedaling as though my life depends on it.

I’m watching the bicycle thief disappear down the hill and hoping that he might crash thanks to the lack of front brakes on my bicycle. I’d released them earlier that week as they’d been rubbing against the rim of my wheel and I hadn’t taken the time to adjust and reconnect them yet.

My breathing is a heaving, erratic horror story, but I plough on. I’m heading down Union Hill and I see that the young man has wasted precious time by trying to divert onto a side street halfway down the steep hill. The missing front brake has indeed caused him some trouble, and he is now finishing a cumbersome U-turn onto Beech Street.

Chickens are roaming the edges of this little back lane like tiny, modern dinosaurs, their head crests wobbling with each jerk of their necks. They watch the bicycle thief approach with expressions of blank terror punctuated by ear-splitting squawks.

One of the chickens barely escapes being run over, and emits a “bok bok BOK!!!” of alarm. She races out of harms way on T-Rex legs.

“STOP!” I gasp, swerving around the chicken mayhem. At this point I don’t know who I’m talking to… the guy stealing my bicycle… the chickens… myself??

Ahead there is the tall, metal fence that surrounds the playground behind the Green Street School. A steep, non-bicycle-friendly path goes around the side and up into some scattered trees.

The gangly-legged, white wife-beater wearing, backwards baseball cap sporting bicycle thief launches himself from my bike, using the momentum of his sudden exit from his vehicle to hurtle up the path. He careens across the hillside above the school, dodging trees, slipping on loose stones and scrambling for the cover of the bushes at the top of the hill.

I stop to watch my bicycle–well, Jodi and Tellman’s bicycle– slowly fall over on its side, wheels still spinning. I hear the sound of sirens.

I lay Addison’s–I mean, Jodi and Tellman’s–bicycle down and take a seat in the dirt, focusing on my ragged breathing, while the chickens slowly reappear, suspicious, but grateful for the restored peace and quiet.

There is nothing but my breathing for a few minutes.

Then the bell sounds and I raise my head. The other people in the room begin to stir from their statuesque positions. Addison is shifting and straightening his cramped legs. I pull myself up out of my child’s pose and back to sitting.

The meditation leader, a small woman who’s eyes are magnified by her thick glasses, pulls forth a paper.

“This is a poem that was written in the 14th Century,” she says.

And the poem goes like this:

What is this mind?
Who is hearing these sounds?
Do not mistake any state for
Self-realization, but continue
To ask yourself even more intensely,
What is it that hears?”
Bassui

And perhaps I will take the liberty to add to this poem…

What is it that hears the sounds of crunching gravel outside of the meditation hall?

And who is it that went on that bicycle-thief-chasing-adventure?

To the border, and beyond!

When Addison found me on the side of I-35 with my bicycle (Tuesday, Dec. 23rd) I was grinning from ear to ear.

“Wow,” he said me when we sat down together at the gas station picnic table. “You seem so happy. And your face is so tan — I can tell you’ve been riding in the sun for a few days.”

“Yeah,” I told him, sipping on a soda with ice (a tooth-destroying activity that brings me much joy on cycle tours). “I don’t feel stuck anymore. Like I know what I’m supposed to be doing right now, even if I don’t know where I’m sleeping tomorrow or where I’ll be in three days. I feel in alignment with my purpose.”

He nodded, smiling.

Addison has been very sad to see me go, but we both know I’ll be happier finally doing this trip, rather than trying to stay in Austin and avoid the inevitable. And without me around telling him everyday about how much I want to ride my bicycle to Brazil, he’ll be happier too! 😀

“I don’t know why I feel the need to do this ride,” I said. “But I’ve been happier in the past four days since I left Austin than I have been in a long time. I was thrilled to sleep in an empty building under construction–next to that church! I was so happy lying in my tent in that empty room. It’s almost weird.”

“That’s awesome.”

“I do know I won’t be happy the whole time I’m on this trip. I know sometimes I’ll be terrified, lonely, sad, or just craving a hot shower and a soft bed. I know I’ll find myself missing you, and our home in Austin… But that just doesn’t seem like a good enough reason not to go.”

Our next move that evening was to find a place to sleep before crossing the border in the morning. We had an offer to stay with a friend of a friend in Laredo, but Addison felt the need to be with me alone during my last evening in the U.S.

I thought it was probably a good idea. That way we could talk and blubber uninterrupted for as long as we needed to that night.

We ended up getting a room at ‘The Lonesome Dove’. An old hotel off of the highway, owned by an abuelo and his wife. We met them down in the bar…_8MxlBct8n44VoLtDZwEIBEDwoEM5MBiXzQgKgizR1E“Cowboys: scrape shit from boots before entering.”

…and then they showed us our room. It wasn’t much to look at, and the shower water wasn’t exactly warm, but it was private.

I realized that night that there was nothing I could say or do, nor Addison, to make us both feel good about separating. It was just a difficult experience we would have to go through, and it was inevitable.

The next morning I had a call with a seer/shaman/medium named Elena. My dad had offered to set me up with a session with her, to gain some clarity around my trip. She is from South America, and, as I soon discovered, is pretty perceptive for someone who just met me on the telephone for the first time.

“What do you wish to get out of your journey?” she asked me.

I hesitated. For me, just doing the journey is enough. I know I will derive many experiences and lessons as I travel, and it will change my life. So I tried to explain this to her.

She told me about a past life experience that is still affecting me now.

“You are trying to prove something to yourself even now,” she said. “You want to prove to yourself that the world is safe, although you don’t really believe it is. So you are challenging yourself and the world by going on this journey, because you want to know that you are safe in this world.”

I can dig that.

“But,” she continued, “I want to make sure that you know something important: you don’t have to make this journey in order to learn the things you need to learn. You don’t have to do it. Only if you want to.”

It felt nice to hear someone tell me I don’t have to go on this crazy adventure.

“Ok, I think I understand,” I replied. “But I feel that I must make this trip. I don’t think I could ever be at peace with myself if I don’t do it. Or at least try.”

As we continued our session, she talked to me about self love. “You have never actually fallen in love,” she told me. “You may love your partner, but you have not let yourself fall in love, because you are not able to really receive love in return.”

I was surprised to hear this, but not surprised at the same time.

“You will fall in love sometime over the next year,” she told me, “but you will have to learn to love yourself first. You cannot fall in love with anyone until you fall in love with yourself.”

When I finished my session, I felt more clear about my intention for the next year:

Falling in love with myself.

That sounds more difficult to me than riding a bicycle to Brazil!!

But I’m up for the challenge.

After we packed up and left the hotel (and after Addison had written me a message in my journal while weeping and splattering the pages with his tears), we headed for the border in Laredo.

But first we had to stop and figure out how to activate the international plan on my phone.

And I had to buy us some gas station coffee. As I was filling our cups and searching for lids, creamer, etc., I realized I was just as confused as to where everything was as the two Mexican immigrants who had arrived by bus just then. They asked me to help them, and to show them were things were, and I gestured helplessly.

“I’m just as confused as you are!” I told them, laughing.

But I asked for help at the check-out and they found me lids so that I didn’t have to navigate with two lidless coffees through the crowds of Mexicanos that were piling out of the buses.PfKt3HWRntJ4EfCvvxEw8K6G2mFEJIW5aZbBZ_oZd7w

I was so nervous as we pulled up to the border, especially because google maps sent us to the wrong one at first! (apparently it was only for semi-trucks, and the attendants were very distraught at the sight of our little blue subaru coming through the lanes)

We drove through the border into Mexico.

Nothing happened.

Except that instead of a shiny office on the side of the border lanes with someone in a booth asking me for my passport, there was just a crusty old hobo with a tin begging cup standing next to some police officers with huge guns on their backs.

The hobo threw his cup down and ran to our window.

“You need visas? Tourist visas? Permits??”

“Uh…” I was in the driver’s seat, looking at him in confusion. “Si… pero…”

“I take you!” he cried excitedly. “You follow me in my car!”

He gestured wildly to an old, beat up car with its windshield smashed and taped together, and the front fender hanging on by a few ties.

I laughed. I thought he was joking.

That is, until I realized he wasn’t.

He leapt into his old beater with his “amigo”, and tried to get us to follow him.

Instead, we pulled into a currency exchange office and changed some dollars to pesos and asked them where the hell we should go to get visas and permits.

They tried to explain it to us, but we ended up driving in a circle back to where the hobo had returned and was holding his tin cup again.

When he saw us he threw the cup down again and raced to my window once more.

“I tell you to follow me, you no follow me!” he cried. “I take you to where you get visas and permits!”

A truck filled with policemen in bullet proof vests and army boots pulled up. The officer driving said something in spanish, and the hobo ran to his window and explained the situation.

He nodded to us and gestured to the hobo. Yes, you can follow him to get your visas and permits. He won’t lead you down an alleyway into a nest of narcos. That was my interpretation of his gesticulations.

So we followed the car that looked like it shouldn’t be able to drive even one mile without breaking down. It led us to what looked like an official building for permits and visas. A miracle.

The hobo stopped his car in the middle of the road, blocking traffic. He came to Addison’s window.

“Okay, you go in here,” he told us. “You get visas and permits.”

“Gracias,” I said.

“Now you give me ten dollars,” he commanded. “Give me ten dollars.”

I gave him 200 pesos and bid him adieu, as the cars that were stuck behind us began to blow their horns in impatience.

U9eToiTF4uodhqPxpmn39V6XJllBDtxYcqALvhRbTNQAll the signs inside the building were in spanish, so it took us almost an hour to figure out which line to wait in, and by the time we figured that out, we also realized that we had to wait in every single line that we saw in the building, one after the other.

None of the attendants spoke english.

I kept opening google translate and typing in questions, or tried to translate the signs that hung over the lines.

One of us would run outside or poke our head out a window every 20 minutes, to see if my bicycle was still on the back of the car. It was locked to the bike rack, but the bike rack can be taken off.

By the time we got back into the car with our paperwork squared away, it was almost 2 pm. We sighed in relief.

Next stop, General Zuazua where my friend, Ismael lives.

I was very tense as we drove our first miles in Mexico.LI_lm3T7mwajOu0RDkyYDOPDoDrQPU1x26urgIkgz3E

I’ve been in many other countries, but never driven a car anywhere but the U.S.LQJRm_PxJ7vprpiDNZ-aSZ9gqt-Yqf2yx8luD9TWEH0

We arrived at la casa de Ismael a few hours later. Lc_Itfoy7QNkBmusDA7Mz9ZDkoli074Dx-BoV7m5m_oIsmael was not home, but his housemate, Mario, was there.RJZVkLU7005io83b6VcS1IZAkc1DKIlHw9ZtB3yQ6qo

Mario did not speak any english either.

We followed him inside and the three of us sat in relative silence, smiling politely and playing with their two little chihuahuas (Kookie and Kookien). After a while I asked Mario if I could bring my bicycle into the backyard, and where we could put our ‘cosas’ (things).

Ismael had said I could stay as long as I wanted at his house, because he had ‘an extra room’.

What he meant was that he was going to sleep in Mario’s room and give me his room!

We piled all of our stuff in there and then Addison played us some songs while we waited for Ismael to get home from his work at the ‘cookie factory’.

Ismael is a manager at a big factory in Monterrey where they make Oreos, Chips Ahoy, Fig Newtons and Ritz crackers.

When Ismael arrived, I hugged him 2-3 times, as I had not seen him in 4 years or so.

We ate dinner, and then he showed us his artifacts collection that he brought from Chical (the tiny village he’s from that’s located south of Monterrey about 800 km).

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Uu3UPnKAu_RKfzO_Lhdn1-0hvcG8ciYL8pxOXTlle8U

That night I was afraid.

Okay, I thought. Now I’m in Mexico. Now what? I don’t feel any more confident about cycling here than I did before.

Dogs were barking from every cement yard in the little town, and mariachi music blasted throughout the streets.

Addison left the next morning.

I thought if I just stayed at Ismael’s for a few days, than I would work up the courage to get on my bicycle and ride out of there.

Here’s some pictures of the next few days…

2015-12-26 17.13.59
Amigos de Ismael
2015-12-25 14.59.30
Ismael rolling up newspaper to make a sombrero with!

2015-12-25 16.36.35 2015-12-25 16.50.32 2015-12-26 12.28.36

Ismael took me fishing…2015-12-26 12.28.51 2015-12-26 12.46.38

And we accidentally caught a tortuga!

2015-12-26 12.51.31-1

Mexican pizza = a lot of jalepenos!
2015-12-26 19.32.19 2015-12-27 12.19.38 2015-12-27 12.27.55 2015-12-27 12.56.11 2015-12-27 15.29.41

Painting on the left is Ismael’s and mine is on the right (the plant grows in his village and is called ‘Corona de Cristo’)

2015-12-27 14.59.29 2015-12-27 15.53.31

Finally it was time for me to try riding my bicycle in Mexico…

So on the morning of Dec. 27th I packed it all up, while Mario and Ismael watched in amazement.

2015-12-28 10.55.09

And I rode into the city of Monterrey…

I was terrified.

For reasons mostly in my own head.

But I made it to my host’s house in under 3 hours.

His name is Max (or ‘Cejas’, which means ‘eyebrows’).

He is a physicist, a writer, a coder… and he is very curious and fun.

He lives with more dogs, cats, guinea pigs and rabbits than I could count.2015-12-28 19.10.42 2015-12-29 09.17.34 2015-12-29 09.17.19

Oh, and his girlfriend Maria, and his sister.

That night we played Cuban Dominoes (first time for me) over much joking and shouting in spanish.2015-12-28 20.16.45-1

Somehow I managed to win (I never win games!)…

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The next day I was supposed to ride to Ramos Arizpe, a town about 75 km Southwest of Monterrey.

Maria squeezed me fresh orange juice and bid me farewell.

The next four hours scared the living daylights out of me. highway in m traffic

I could not find my way out of the city. The only options seemed to be massive interstates with no shoulders and lots of traffic.

There is no bicycle option in Google Maps, so when I would load a route for walking, it would send me up one way streets going the wrong way, and when I realized what was happening I usually had to do some crazy maneuvering to get out of harm’s way.

When I upload a route for a car in Google Maps, it sends me onto huge interstates where no cyclist should ever set tires down.

The sidewalks do not have ‘ramps’, so to speak, so in order to get up onto or off of a sidewalk (which is usually very narrow, broken up, and will have random trees, posts or blockages in the middle of them without any warning ), I have to lift my 80 lbs of bicycle up onto it, and then lower it down again when the sidewalk suddenly ends or gets too narrow.

I kept breaking down crying, which annoyed the crap out of me.

I felt so alone and confused, especially not knowing how to speak the language, and everyone stared at me like I was a space alien.

After stopping at a Krispy Kreme and charging my phone (and nearly weeping all over the donut attendee), I kept going.

When I found myself dodging enormous potholes and treacherous chunks of cement that were posing as some kind of sidewalk, while semi-trucks and buses screamed within inches past me at 70 miles per hour, I gave up.

I pulled into a gas station.2015-12-29 14.40.27-1

I can’t do this, I thought. I’ll never make it to Ramos, what to speak of Brazil. How is this trip going to be enjoyable if I’m terrified the whole time?

I’m not brave. But I wanted to become brave by doing this trip.

I thought I would feel more brave after a day or two of riding in Mexico, but maybe Monterrey was a bad place to start…

I sent a whatsapp message to my host in Ramos, Julian.

He offered to pick me up.

I cried some more and accepted his offer.

While I waited for him to come with a car, a lady sat near me, watching me curiously.

“Cansado?” she asked me. Meaning, ‘are you tired?’

“Ah no… Estoy esparando a un amigo con un carro.” I pointed to the highway swarming with traffic. “Esta camino es muy malo para el bicicleto.”

She nodded in agreement.

I somehow was able to explain to her that I was headed to Brazil, at which she was duly impressed. However, I wasn’t so sure this was accurate information anymore..,

Than I offered her an orange, which she happily accepted.

When Julian arrived with a bike rack on his car, I hugged him and thanked him repeatedly.

He said, “It’s no problem. This road is very bad even for a car. I understand.”

Julian rode his bicycle from Ramos to New York City about 9 months ago, and then flew to Europe and cycled around there. He knows that cycling in a city in Mexico is much more hazardous than cycling somewhere like Manhattan, where it is a common activity and there are bike lanes and alot of awareness around cycling.

As we drove along the highway to Julian’s home, I stared in horror at the last 40 miles I would have had to cycle.

If I had tried to ride this highway, I think I would have died, I thought.

We passed a semi-truck that had hurtled off of the road into a ravine and was dangling there like a giant, metallic carcass.

On either side of the highway are mountains that literally touch the sky, and at their feet spreads out the desert, with cacti that are 10-15 ft. high.

Julian’s family received me with incredible hospitality, and stuffed me full of pasta, salad and tortas.

Than I crawled into bed around 6 pm, still shaking, and cried myself to sleep.

I wonder when I will be brave?

I don’t really want to ride alone anymore, so I’m praying to the universe to send me a traveling companion, at least until I feel more at home on the road and in Mexico.

To be a part of my journey and help me get all the way to Brazil, please visit Patreon.com/jahnavi

P.S. I’m not writing all of this to complain, but simply to be honest with every part of my experience. It takes a lot of courage for me to admit to being terrified and crying all over the place, so please suspend your judgement if you can! 🙂 Thank you!!

Monterrey
La ciudad de Monterrey