Leaning into Life: Lessons from the Road

Revzilla is a great motorcycle gear company that is running a generous contest for a $500 gift certificate. HURRY: 10/30/11 deadline!

Travel always teaches me a lot about myself and the world. Here are the top 25 takeaways from my 2011 road trip.

1. Avoid fussy fabrics

2. Sip water constantly for perspiration instead of pee

3. 99% of strangers will help you in a pinch

4. An apple beats a bag of chips (on many levels)

5. Elk often rest in high grass — look for antlers above the grass

6. Wind can blow your bike over; don’t park broadside

7. Floodwaters stink after a few weeks

8. Always carry a camera

9.  Recharge — yourself and your electronics

10. Pink looks good on everyone

11. Even the Mississippi River starts out small

12. Start every morning with yoga and thanks to The One

13.  Life is full of blind corners

14. Pack your warmest sleeping bag

15. Leave some of yourself to the imagination of others

Because breast cancer strikes one in eight women

16. You get when you give

17. Everything wobbles, but not every wobble becomes a fall

18. Clothes can double as a pillow

19. Canadian customs will confiscate your pepper spray

20. Donkeys look like horses, but apples give them diarrhea

21. Rethink souvenirs

22. Bless the detours

23. A news holiday is good mental hygiene

24. Turn your ABS off when going off road

25. Campground squirrels are fearless thieves

This squirrel took our watermelon and stashed it in the tree

I’m committed to raising $2500 for breast cancer causes this summer.  Thanks to my friends and the businesses who supported my pre-Conga fundraiser I’m nearly 10% of the way there.

Carolina Breast Friends & Breast Cancer Research Foundation

To make it easier to allocate the funds raised between two worthy breast cancer charities, I’ve partnered with DRUMSTRONG, a Charlotte, NC-based cancer fundraising organization. At the end of my trip in July, I will direct DRUMSTRONG in how to allocate the monies I raised between Carolina Breast Friends and the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, the latter of which is the official beneficiary of the Women Who Ride Conga fundraising efforts.  All contributions are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by the IRS and online donations are just a click away.

My relationship with DRUMSTRONG’s founding family

Some twenty-three years ago my hubby and I took a childbirth prep class with Carola and Scott Swimmer. We were pregnant with Carter and they were pregnant with Mason.  We became fast friends and our boys were born within three weeks of each other.

When the boys were in tenth grade, Mason was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, a bone cancer. We were all shocked. He’s fine now and the story of DRUMSTRONG is proof that there’s a silver lining to every storm cloud. The Swimmer family’s experience with Mason’s illness and recovery prompted them to found DRUMSTRONG

This video tells the story of DRUMSTRONG and highlights its work.

Last year I met dozens of people who wanted to tell me about how cancer had touched their lives. Some gave me trinkets and mementos in the name of their loved ones.

This year I want to honor those who are facing cancer, survivors of the disease, and those who have gone on to a place where the scourge of disease is unknown. I invite you to send me the names of “spirit riders.”

I’ll start the list with my mother-in-law, Patricia Rich, who passed away in late 2009. She had breast cancer when my husband was in middle school and some twenty years later underwent reconstructive surgery that required relocating a muscle from her back to her breast. Her recovery wasn’t complete when my oldest son was born, so she couldn’t lift him.  She lived another twenty years before the cancer she thought was in remission eventually claimed her, showing up again in her bones.

Pat was a pioneering woman in her time who raised five children, got a daily meal on the table by 5:30, earned a Master’s Degree and held  a full-time job as a nursing instructor at a Richmond, VA hospital thatl endowed a scholarship in her name.  We all wore pink ribbons to her funeral.

Please add a comment with the name and any tribute to a person you’d like for me to carry with me in spirit this summer.

Last week I trained for three days at the BMW Performance Center.  The thunderstorms began hours before I awoke for the off-road program and the forecast called for rain throughout the day. While this might not seem like ideal training conditions, as the African proverb reminds us,  smooth seas do not make skillful sailors.

I embedded a video of my three days at the end of this post.

Life lessons from the mud

This next paragraph tells you everything you need to know about motorcycling to follow the life lessons I learned, even if you don’t operate a motorcycle.

Stay above it all. The best way to ride a motorcycle through uneven terrain is standing on the pegs instead of sitting on the seat. The idea is to stay attached to the bike as it moves UNDER you.  From this standing position you can steer the bike by shifting your weight from side to side and guiding it with your knees; you can absorb shocks with your ankles, knees and hips; the seat can’t buck you off when it hits a bump; and when the bike slips and slides, it does so UNDER you. ”CAN” is the most important verb in this paragraph, as my many falls will attest.

If there’s an overarching theme to what I learned about life from that day in the mud, I’d characterize it as “detachment.” You’ll feel the bike slip on mud and fall into ruts, but if you ride well, you’ll keep the bike up and moving forward to safer ground.

Fighting the bike, over-correcting, and freezing into a rigid posture are sure ways to take a tumble off road and in life. As the Serenity Prayer reminds us, there are things we can change, things we can’t and knowing the difference is the key to success.

What about avoidance? It’s not a universally-appropriate response to motorcycling or to life.  Sure, some things are better avoided, but if you avoid every scary or challenging obstacle along the way you’ll live a pretty unfulfilled life.  I tried to avoid the ruts but I found the riding became much more dangerous when I did because the combination of slick clay and gravity usually pulled the bike into the them anyway.  Ruts form at the low point, so if you guide your bike to the ruts on the approach and balance on the pegs, you can’t slide any lower. Sure it’s tough riding in them, but it’s relatively easier.

Parenting tips, too

I learned to expect fishtailing and wobbling and to trust that the laws of physics would keep me upright. Parenting requires similar patience and trust; you have to trust that the values you raised your children with with will keep them aright.

Like children, water  may be deeper than is apparent to the eye. You don’t know for sure until you ford it.

If I had a formula for bypassing trouble, I would not pass it round.  Trouble creates a capacity to handle it.  I don’t embrace trouble; that’s as bad as treating it as an enemy.  But I do say meet it as a friend, for you’ll see a lot of it and had better be on speaking terms with it.  ~Oliver Wendell Holmes

One final observation:  I wouldn’t have been as aggressive in my learning approach if I’d been worried about dropping my own bike. There’s a lesson in that, too — one akin to making omelettes from broken eggs. I’m grateful that the BMW Performance Center insisted we use their bikes and encouraged us to ride to learn. I was able to train on the G650GS, which is the same bike I have in my garage.