Random thoughts from the road (5/4/2022)

Yesterday I followed the Melendiz stream as it wandered through our current home town of Aksaray. I followed it through neighborhoods, past businesses and people basking along its banks. As I walked,  I thought about our lives on the road. Places we’ve been. Things we’ve seen. People we’ve met. I thought about what this trip has meant to us, how it has changed us! One word kept coming to mind…humility. Humility has been defined by some as the absence of pride or arrogance.

It is easy to be humble when after seven weeks, the average two year old here can communicate better with his/her parents than we can. I’ve learned the basics – please, thank you, entrance, exit, yes, no, it was very good, yummy, I would like… (fill in our favorite food item). If it were not for Google Translate and the English language skills of the locals – we would have a difficult time navigating any but the most basic of interactions. And we regularly need to interact with and request the help of locals. Asking for and accepting help is also a wonderful way to stay humble.

It is easy to be humbled by the challenges of traveling by bicycle. You’ve maybe heard the saying, “the older I get the better I was!” While we are quite pleased by our ability to still handle the hard days – the miles, the hills, the headwinds all take their toll. This all used to seem a lot easier. The occasional rest day has become more of a necessity than a luxury.

One might forgive a bit of pride on our part for planning and executing a five month long bicycle trip far from the comfort zone of common language and culture. Yet, we are regularly humbled by the people we meet. In addition to traveling, volunteering and working all over the world, Patricia and Chris have now been on the road for seven+ months. When we finally part ways, they are going to continue east – through Iran, several of the -stans, the Pamir highway into China, and … who knows? Binni – our most recent acquaintance – left his home in Germany last August. He has no end date in mind. The couple cycling with their 10 year old daughter were in the midst of a 2-3 year trip. So many of the people we’ve met have done more, traveled farther, and have larger dreams than we can imagine. Suddenly our “grand adventure” seems like just a brief holiday.

Years ago on a kayak trip off Vancouver Island, we met a couple from Seattle. As they talked about why they participated in medical missions to the Philippines he said, “We all recognize that we won the lottery being born in a wealthy, western country.” I’ve carried that thought with me over the years. It came to mind again recently as we travel through the less prosperous areas of Turkey. While we may whinge a bit from time to time about the challenges of the trip – we are here by choice. We have the freedom and the wealth to indulge our rather frivolous desire to travel. And if we should tire of faffing about, we can wave a plastic card and quickly be transported back to the comforts of home. All this largely due to the fact that we won the birth lottery by virtue of our U.S. home towns. Many people around the world have no choice other than to make the best of what may truly be a bad situation. That is a humbling realization.

Finally, just the act of being exposed to different places and ideas keeps one humble. We are proud to be Americans. Having said that, while we are proud of our 250+ years of history, civilization has existed  20-30 times longer than that in this part of the world. That is humbling, and truly awe inspiring. We have also come to realize that America does not own the patent on all the best ideas of how to do things. Some humilty in that regard might do us all some good.

So, just some random thoughts during one of our all important rest days. Hope you enjoy following my mind as it meanders along.