what do you wear when you're riding your bike across the country?

answer: the flyest threads imaginable.

This is the reality of my existence: I can decide to ride my bike across the country — no problem! how do we get this done? — but picking out a tank top to wear to the grocery store takes 45 minutes on a good day. It’s that mirror. Oh, the mirror! My arch-enemy[1]. Fixed and wriggling, I am helpless to look away from this cruel truth: No matter how carefully I cultivate my inner self, it will always be housed in a vessel I didn’t choose and that everyone can see but me.

So anyway, that’s my thought process on a normal day. Now imagine me trying to pick out the only outfit I will wear for the next five months. I am catatonic.

[1] When I was 17, I went 40 days without looking at my reflection. Around day 20, I forgot what I looked like, and in that void, I just assumed I was beautiful. Like Nicole Kidman.

Completely by coincidence, the last day of this experiment was my senior prom. The lady who did my hair was like, “Honey, don’t you wanna see how beautiful you look?” and I just said, “Noooope!”

(Just to paint a complete picture, I also wore a red dress with matching Converse. The fringe of my hair was the color of lime Jell-O, because, of course, that’s what I used to dye it. I made jewelry out of my leftover ID stickers from my AP tests and stuck a couple of pipettes I stole from the chemistry lab in my hair.)

 At midnight, after 40 days, on my way home from senior prom, I looked in the rearview mirror. Damn if it wasn’t just like seeing an old friend.

you don't need a car

this is mr. bear, a frankenstein single-speed i rode around atlanta for years.

It’s been nine years since I’ve owned a car. In that time, I’ve hitched rides with friends and strangers and taken the bus. But I’ve mostly ridden a bike.

I’ve been sunburned and sweat-soaked and caught in torrential downpours and frozen numb. I’ve ridden on an empty stomach, on no sleep, after a few too many beers, crying hysterically. I’ve hit loose gravel and slick pavement and sand. My chain has fallen off and my brakes have given out. I’ve flown over the handlebars, skidded on pavement, and toppled over sideways. I’ve patched flats and replaced frayed brake cables and trued my wheels. I’ve ridden a beach cruiser in Japan and a mountain bike in Africa and a fat-tire Surly in Antarctica. I once biked eight miles with probably 40 pounds of books in a backpack; another time, I rode 77 miles in a blazer and tweed shorts because who says you can’t ride 77 miles and look cute doing it?  

And I’ve biked from Raleigh to Seattle.

traveling alone

sadly, this is the only surviving picture from my first trip abroad. i believe the phrase on the chalkboard translates to, “i am a rubber panties woman.”

The first time I traveled alone was when I was 20. I had a volunteer gig teaching English in Slovakia and Hungary for three weeks each, and I decided to take a couple weeks before that to bounce around Western Europe. Not only was I completely convinced I was going to be raped and murdered, I also felt like a total loser because I couldn’t afford to go with my friends on an expensive tour package. 

But shortly after I arrived, I discovered the unexpected benefits of solo travel, in the form of 10-cent dinner rolls at a bakery in Berlin.

“10 cents?” I asked incredulously.

“Ja.” 

And that’s how I ate for two days in Berlin on one Euro, with no one around to shame me.

For fun, I walked to all the free attractions listed in the Lonely Planet. At the East Side Gallery, I met a Sudanese refugee named Ouda. We smoked a joint on the banks of the Berlin River, and he told me about fighting in Darfur.

“I saw too many dead bodies,” he said. “Too many arms and legs. It was real bullshit.”

I thanked him for sharing his story with me, and we split a dinner roll. Later that night in the hostel lounge, these two German guys shared their beer with me, and I goaded one of them into writing me a love poem.

For the love that she from me took / Her hair was blond, her name was Brooke…

Traveling alone means there’s no one to protect you from all the most interesting parts of travel.

dream

In America, you’re urged to “chase your dreams” and “make your dreams come true.” If you’re doing well, you’re “living the dream.” But also, what did your parents tell you when you woke up from a nightmare? “It’s just a dream. Dreams aren’t real.” So… which is it?

The roots of the word “dream” stretch back to the proto-Germanic draugmas, which means illusion or deception. Chase your deception? Living the illusion?

It’s just a word, you might be thinking. But in anthropology, there’s this idea called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. It says that words both reflect and define the scope of reality. My favorite example of this comes from Chichewa, one of the languages of Malawi. Kuchingamira means “to wait excitedly for a guest to arrive.” Isn’t that beautiful? It’s such a common feeling in their culture — ooh, I can’t wait for my guest to hurry up and get here!! — that they had to invent a word for it. Meanwhile, in English, it’s a clunky eight-word phrase.

There’s no Chichewa word for “bored.”

So what does it mean that we Americans conflate dream with desire? I think it subconsciously perpetuates this idea that our dreams are somehow separate from our “real” lives. What’s real is tangible: our cars, our houses, our phones. A dream is just something to talk about doing, not to actually do.

But what if you did? What if you pursued your dreams with the same focus that you’re supposed to reserve for school, career, and relationships?