Certainty is mindless

Not at all sure that I could pull it off but absolutely sure that I would go on Thursday I set off by bicycle to Spain. I did not check the route nor the distance, the only certainty is that I have to go. Embedded in my mind the long gone past of touring Europe, yet my garden still gets absolute care. Care to the extend that Geo and I start killing rats by hand, since we haven’t cats. Rats and vole do disturb the growth of plants and I want to keep my garden food secured. I am not sure when I will be back, because however certain I am, I also feel a big doubt.

When I have left, I communicate my struggle and doubts. One of the best attributes of our relationship is that we are honest and open to each other. With a 100% trust between us and being ourselves as much as socially acceptable.

When the aubergines show signs of full swing, the cucumbers announcing itself by it’s male flowers and the coriander lush, I leave. There are vegetables I grow for certain recipes and summer is the only time I can splurge. But soon I am walking around in the supermarket buying expensive cucumbers. But if I want to cycle in summer, I have to make a compromise. I am expecting to continue the Bosnia and Hercegovina experience, which I so enjoyed.

1. From the start I doubt that my Tour de Force can be a success as the temperature reaches 36ºC, climbing to 40ºC degrees. Upon leaving the home I am pushing the bicycle through sand like a beach. I prefer to stop already but we are only a kilometer from our home. Geo accompanies me to the first village, somewhere in between we stop to have some fun in proper ballerina style.

Cycling over roads I have to share with cars, the heat and full sun drags me down, as a dragon sitting on the luggage carrier spewing fire. I manage to cycle 15 kilometre further.

In my camp I eat the coriander from home, and I start to long for much more greens. Undoubtedly like the young deer that start to nibble on the grass at sundown. Surrounded by mice it feels good to be back in the yellow dome of the Hilleberg. The tent is the only place where I feel I could be anywhere in the world. It is synonym for the unknown and unexpected and feeling safe. I do sweat a lot once I am in however.

2. Second night I find a clearing in an abandoned pear orchard. The Hilleberg tent is not the best choice in summer and so I leave the vestibule open. At one point in the night a heavy thump knocks against the tent. In a reflex I turn myself into a tortoise while the pot and gas burner are knocked over by a deer stumbling in. The drowsy animal then trips over the tent pole and regathers himself not far from me. Unknowingly we have slept all very close to each other. When I leave the orchard I pass a blob of blood and a heap of intestines. Someone was just killed and gutted on the spot. I did hear a shot and enthusiastic voices but wasn’t concerned about my own quiet comfort time among the mosquitoes as I hide well.

3. Cruising the Hungarian villages another cyclist comes my way. Dressed in a Lycra shirt and football shorts he betrays not a fellow tourer when he comes closer with his large round belly. What’s below his belly is however of another order. He completely spilled ‘it’ all out from underneath the short trouser-leg. First I think I imagine what it is I see. Yet it is all aimed at my side of the road and I do see correct. A logic thought goes through my mind: ‘Is he airing his nuts and willy?’ But the way he is holding the whole package, confidently propping it up, is off. Ignoring him altogether I cycle on, with an aftertaste of disgust.

The food I dream off (and could have) and the reality below are two very different pictures.

Reaching the Mara river provides me with early rest and a bath, one that washes over me with a manifestational force. If I knew this was a visited spot I would not have undressed to my skin-coloured cycle-short. The first visitor loudly announces himself by screaming a lot. It is Janos and he comes here with a purpose: dog training. As a Roma they tend to have somewhat odd ways and I doubt that the 8 months old dog will benefit from his throws in the river.

A bit later, soft, slow rummaging through the thick jungle alike growth behind me tells me a bore might be coming up, yet the next visitor turns out another man. His looks at once repels me: a slim, younger man with a Taliban beard, his blue eyes lay slightly apart in a flat forehead, his mouth filled with rotten teeth covered by the long hairs of his moustache. He speaks only Hungarian and does so quick and enthusiastic, offering me home-brewed beer, asking whether I smoke weed and announcing an ‘illegal party’ nearby at the river. Boiling eggs at the shore where now the sun reaches me, I give off signs that anyone would read as ‘enough now’. The guy seems dumb and he picks up only the friendly outgoing part from the beginning. Starting to catch frogs barehanded, sitting cosily close to crazily chat with me and eventually asking me to film him on his phone while he goes into the river, I end with a clear: ‘No, I will not!’

The only way to have my rest back is to pack up, haul the bicycle and panniers separately on the high banks of the river and get out of here. While I am packing up, he walks into the river up to his neck. He is fully dressed, something I do appreciate. With his cellphone recording his excessive narrative, he comes back on shore with a dripping wet phone, asking if he can leave his bag with me while he returns later on. ‘Nem,’ I reply, totally over-heated by sitting in the sun with an idiot, I leave at 19.15 PM.

When asking an elderly lady for water, I mistakenly ask: ‘Do you want water?’ Luckily I manage to get a liter after fleeing the river, unable to get out of my pyjamas.

4. In my new found camp spot it is marvelously quiet, except for the highway nearby. Sitting in a forest turning to avoid the sun piercing through the leafage and just resting is a very beneficial way to be in nature. With 3 liter water, a small yoghurt, homemade granola and sourdough bread, 4 boiled eggs and moulded Parmesan I decide to take a day of rest. Rationing hard on the water I manage to keep headache at bay (maybe because I took one Ibuprofen). Somehow my toe is inflamed and the feet turns red and swollen. I knit the whole day and enjoy doing so little. However, I keep asking myself why I am here and not at home, where a cold outside shower with well water awaits me. Where I can drink as much tea as I like, whether it be mint, tulsi, muscatel sage or a mixture of all.

5. Early mornings are the best, still cool, I feel filled with energy, a zest for continuing. The route I am going is one of a continuation of villages, roads and traffic. Not until I reach the Alps. I am not looking forward to where I am going but I do want to move. I’ve never written so much in my diary as now, filled with contradictions and ongoing doubt. I have not enjoyed one single moment outside the cool mornings that last 2 hours, sitting in the shade.

When I reach a camp spot in Croatia it is one of the lesser enjoyable ones. Surrounded by Roma settlements, a route lined with trash, large patches of burnt household furniture, TV’s and fridges, a party at night, I do find solitude. I also find a lot of restrictions in being a traveller in summer. The notion to keep moving, to miss my ‘home base’ with plenty of water, delectable food, thick walls that keep the heat outside, but most of all the healthy habits that come with a steady base. To miss all this is rather frustrating when weighing against the misery I am in now. I need to buy pricey bottled water to wash myself, surrounded by a cloud of mosquitoes, horse flies and normal flies that, I never knew, do sting. The insects leaves streaks of black on my skin when they mingle with the soap. The space under my nails become black, the skin with insects bites a wrinkly red. My clothes and panniers strained with kefir splatters.

Can you guess what this is? It’s something only available at home, something (our home) I seem to miss most parts of the day

A few things are poorly chosen to take along on a summer trip. One is the legging I sleep in: the tight fabric enclosing my legs feels like a straight-jacket made from foil but not wearing it is no option (mosquitoes). I lack about everything I long for, including Geo. The tent is wrong, the food is poor, I lack water, I miss the yoga mat and the YouTube teacher. It’s hardly ever shady enough and it’s not at all beautiful. I cycled here before and turned around for the same reason.

It feels as poverty to have no good food, instead I am depended to what the food industry offers. It is poverty to have no water to wash my hands after I went for a toilet in the woods, to be on a road with traffic, to be surrounded by unnatural sounds. Only in full surrender can the long haul be a success, when there is no opposition pulling.

When Geo offers to pick me up, only a 2.5 hours drive away from home, I need no time to think: the frustration and struggle in a 40ºC moist heat combined with no beauty and the knowledge it will stay hot for an unknown time is not pleasant, nor a challenge that I need. When Geo pulls up at a parking lot in Čakovec I jump with happiness towards him, like Skippy the kangaroo.

The trip has become a major failure, or so it seems and yet it has absolutely renewed me. In retrospect I think I have dishonored my body-mind and am fully back into obeying what the menopausal me needs, and this can only be achieved at home. Reset and sprinkled with new leaven I rise up: our own street becomes the start into the forest. Never new yet always attracting.

It is a beautiful example of the control I have over my actions, not the results. An experience that I want to recapture and think over. Obviously, focusing on outcomes can lead to feeling stuck. Coming home I feel reinvigorated as I know exactly what I am missing out on!