Cycle of Learning. Anne Fitzpatrick

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Название Cycle of Learning
Автор произведения Anne Fitzpatrick
Жанр Биографии и Мемуары
Серия
Издательство Биографии и Мемуары
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9781922198198



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could sense a renewed confidence in me when they had to leave for work on Monday morning. They must have felt it was OK to leave me since there was no opened food that I could demolish and I was back in my own clothes. Also, they knew I would be kept out of mischief since I had a visit to a school nearby which would take up much of my day.

      I watched some morning television until it was time to leave for the school. It was at this point I realised I had somehow misplaced the keys to Heidi and Tim’s house and shed where Bike and Trailer were safely locked away.

      After a lot of general panicked rushing around followed by some inspired work on the louvred windows of the shed, I got us all to the school, but it was lucky that the police hadn’t driven by while I was breaking into the shed and bleeding all over its windows. At least the visit went well with the local primary school, where I visited each of the classes. We spoke some Tamil to each other (the language spoken in Kodaikanal) and thought of lots of reasons why bicycles are a great way of getting around – not least because it’s easier to drag a bike out of a shed window than a car.

      Tim found another set of keys and gave them to me so I could lock up on the way out when I left for Melbourne the next day. In the morning, I waved Tim and Heidi farewell as they drove off to work and sat with the keys in my hand until my departure time. Proud of myself, I locked the doors, hid the keys in the nominated spot and headed for the highway. My plan was to stop at a school in Werribee before riding the rest of the highway into Melbourne by nightfall.

      After the school visit and a photo shoot for the local newspaper, I pointed Bike north, ready to hit the bright lights of Melbourne. Luckily, I decided to check in with Christine in Adelaide first, and received instructions for a new assignment. I turned Bike 180 degrees and headed back to Geelong since the assignment involved speaking at a school there the next day.

      After my unexpected return, I suspect Heidi and Tim were considering changing their locks (and if that failed, their address) to avoid the possibility of me continually turning up at their house unannounced. They may have had to change their locks anyway if they weren’t able to find those keys.

      Melbourne – Bonnie Doon – Benalla – Albury – Jindera – Walla Walla – Walbundrie – Culcairn – Morven – Holbrook – Tarcutta – Bookham – Canberra – Goulburn – Wollongong – Bundeena – Sydney

      Totals: 2,537 kilometres – 144 hours 16 minutes – $4,197 raised

Map showing route from Melbourne to Sydney

      Bonnie Doon to Benalla, Victoria

      73 kilometres – 3 hours 39 minutes

      I learnt a lot in the past two weeks – how to outride flies, how to eat and ride at the same time, and how to go to sleep with dirty feet – but yesterday showed me I still have some troubling gaps in my cycling know-how.

      In the morning I farewelled Diane and Neil, the hospitable second cousins I had met for the first time only the evening before, packed my bags and headed for the hills. These lasted a long time but weren’t too steep, and there was lush national park and forest around to take my mind off my legs.

      I was feeling rather sunny and happy with my crew. In the kilometres from Adelaide to Melbourne, Bike, Trailer and I had settled into a functional working relationship and I was happy that I chose them as my travel companions. Before I left Adelaide I’d received all sorts of conflicting advice from cycling aficionados about the fancy, complicated equipment I would need. I ended up using a simple criterion for selecting my purchases: cheapness. I was lucky enough in August to meet someone who could help me distinguish between bad-quality cheap and good-quality cheap. I first encountered Harley, a raw-vegan anti-establishment ultra-athlete, working in a bike shop and he took me under his wing, psyched me up with his raw-vegan anti-establishment ultra-athletic philosophies, and led me around the displays, telling me quietly: “You won’t need that; you won’t need that; this bike is cheap but will get you round the country; you can get that cheaper on the internet; you won’t need that …” I left as a vegetarian, with half of my savings intact and a hope that ultra-athleticism was contagious.

      True to Harley’s word, Bike and Trailer were doing a fine job. Although not ridiculously lightweight or high-tech, they required minimal attention and kept me trundling along. Trailer was easy to pack and with its single wheel following directly behind Bike, I hardly felt the weight of my sleeping bag, food, paperwork, clothes and small range of tools that I didn’t entirely know how to use.

      While Bike marked a substantial improvement comfort-wise from the cheap, poorly-constructed bicycle that I used to own, my body was taking some time to adjust to life on the road. The first few weeks of riding were painful – in my shoulders, wrists, back, neck, legs, bottom, head, forearms, and in a spot that’s near where I think my pancreas lives. I had been warned about this by other cyclists – the soreness in general, not specifically in my pancreas – but also been assured that the pain would disappear after a fortnight or so in the saddle. They were spot on, to the day almost, and by the time I was crossing the Great Dividing Range the day before, I was feeling fit and comfortable. In fact, that whole morning I had an all-pervading sense of self-assurance with the performance of my body and equipment that was probably on the smug end of the confidence spectrum.

      Prior to my departure from Adelaide I had a decent level of fitness, though not quite enough or the right sort of conditioning for this sort of ride. In its place, I had a confidence in my body assuring me that I could rise to and withstand whatever physical challenges came my way on the journey. This confidence came from the ten years of martial arts training that had been a huge part of my life since I stepped into my first class when I was 15. I had trained in wrestling, capoeira, a month each of Thai krabi krabong in Bangkok and traditional karate classes in India, and the bulk of my time in a club that practised a mix of karate, judo, jiu jitsu and weaponry.

      This training had given me a multitude of rewards. Through it I learnt how wonderful it is to hone skills with repetition and focus, how to teach others, how something comes alive in you when you find what sparks your passion, and what an amazing tool and instrument the human body is. I learnt that my body was not something to be ashamed of for not looking as skinny or pretty as some parts of society suggested it should be. Why be ashamed of a body that can kick high, kick hard, kick with balance and timing and accuracy? Why be embarrassed by a body that can choke and armlock and throw another person? Why doubt a body that can be picked up and driven into the mats with a crunching wrestling drive, but knows exactly how to tense up and land safely so it can jump up and do the same back to its partner? Why not be proud of a body that can figure out how to do one-armed cartwheels, manipulate nunchucks, staff and sword, and fight round after round of sparring, boxing, kickboxing, throwing and grappling?

      This is the confidence that martial arts gave me. I knew from experience that my body could refine technique, build strength in new muscles, ramp up its fitness levels and adapt however it needed to ride me around Australia.

      In the early afternoon, I hit my usual post-lunch lethargy. Strangely, it didn’t disappear after a while as it normally did. Instead, I seemed to be moving progressively slower and slower. I thought it could be the fault of one of the small apples I had eaten from a tree by the side of the road. So, to test the hypothesis, I ate another one from the next tree to see if I felt worse. I did feel worse but not in a poisoned way, so wondered if I just needed even more energy. I ate some almonds and followed them up with a mouthful of honey, but was still struggling, so next I tried drinking lots of water.

      I decided my body wasn’t to blame, and became more frustrated because, by my evaluation, I was riding downhill and should be going more than the 10 km/h I was. Once I checked for a puncture. Another time I stopped to see if a dead snake was caught in Bike’s chain. I’d narrowly missed running over three already that day, and one dead wombat. I figured, though, that a wombat would be too fat to get caught, so didn’t bother checking for one of those. As the absence of snakes