The Count-Down Is Go Houston!

For the last 6 months I have been saying the phrase “I’m gonna ride my bike around the world”! Now I realize that this is not a sentence that usually makes into a dinner party conversation, but it has mine. I have said it so many times to our old tapas bar customers that somewhere along the way it lost currency. As the words formed in my mouth they somehow separated from meaning, kind of like ‘how are you’. We don’t really care how they are doing and if we get a long-winded monologue on Aunty Sally’s cats fungal infection we rarely think to ourselves ‘well, I did ask’. And so it is for me here now.

But something changed for me yesterday, a switch was flicked and I’m almost certain the people sitting around me in the café thought my medication was failing. Surrounded by the hordes of mediocrity and consumerism that is the smell of a sterile Australian shopping centre, there I sat and wrote those exact words in my freshly purchased journal. Then it occurred to me, in 2 weeks I am going to head east and then, should the gods smile upon me, in three years’ time I will return from the west. I have no worldly reason nor desire to purchase anything from the home-maker centre. Nor the clothes shop, the phone shop or the electronics department. In fact if I can't put it in my fuel tank or mouth, I don’t want it. A reduction of needs to Maslows lowest level (food and shelter) while having a foot firmly planted in the highest (self actualization). I’m skipping the crap in the middle that inflates credit cards, suppresses with mortgages and puts ‘image’ on the essential rack. This is freedom, and finally it has dawned upon me. 

So here I am, sitting in an airport lounge using the free wi-fi and making my one cup of over-priced, weak coffee last two hours. We are on our way to Adelaide to say a few goodbyes then back to Brisbane for the final pack and crate the bike for shipping. The countdown is really on now and we couldn’t feel more ready for the adventure!

From the Road…..