Riding Towards Infinity

I’m at that point again. It seems to be creeping up on me earlier and earlier as the years go on. The world is starting to speed up its descent into spring, and I’ve been struck with my yearly bout of wanderlust.

It always happens to me at the point where I start to get tired of the snow. The grey/brown slurry that coats the road starts to turn into ice with a mid January heat wave, leaving everything dirty, brown and impossible to clean. My world is of dirt, and not in the good way. It is about this time each year where the world has reached the peak in its descent into winter. There is nowhere to go but to be pulled faster and faster back out of the funk of winter into the life and love of spring. It will soon be the time of exploration, new trails, long days, warm nights, and long roads stretching to infinity before me – an infinity only reachable by thousands of pedal strokes.

Stroke…

I’ve always been compelled by something to travel. I've felt an indomitable need to get out past the horizon and see what awaited me at the other end. This need to explore new places has perhaps been hardwired into our genetics by generations of natural selection, or it perhaps visits only a select few of us who get itchy feet with the turn of the seasons. Whatever the cause, humanity would not have progressed as far as it has without those who are drawn to the remote places in the world.

Now, in the fast-tracked lifestyle that has become common in most cities and urban centres, there are more and more of us who have become accustomed to the sedentary lifestyle. We sit behind desks for most of our days, waiting until the weekend when we can have some semblance of the exploration that is second nature to us. However, we cannot get too far away from our desks and we cannot bear to leave anything behind. We have become trapped in our mundane lives and the only way out is to cut all ties and let go. The age of exploration is all but gone and only those who throw away convention are left wandering the peripherals of society.

“It will soon be the time of exploration, new trails, long days, warm nights, and long roads stretching to infinity before me.”

The need of exploration is so great that we’ve invented ways of getting to these far off places without actually leaving home. We’ve got whole digital worlds that are full of life and accessible from our armchairs. We’ve got documentation of the most remote places on the planet. All of this is accessible from the most comfortable place in our lives: our living rooms.

There are other avenues of escape as well. With our more advanced transportation, crossing previously insurmountable obstacles like mountains and oceans is done with the ease of a child hopping over a puddle. We can be anywhere in the world in under 24 hours if we have the means. The world has shrunken to the size of our backyards and we tend to do with it as we see fit.

“I’ve felt an indomitable need to get out past the horizon and see what awaited me at the other end. This need to explore new places has perhaps been hardwired into our genetics by generations of natural selection, or it perhaps visits only a select few of us who get itchy feet with the turn of the seasons.”

The fact that we can be anywhere within the realm of human existence in under a day has trivialized adventure. Anyone can go fly to Patagonia, pay a local to lead them around and come back in time for work. Travel in the conventional sense doesn’t excite us anymore in the way that it used to. There is no drastic lifestyle change associated with a grand adventure; there is no lesson to be learned from a two-week vacation to a resort. There is no appreciation for the beauty that is in nature and the subtle way it has of teaching us how to be human, except for those who are willing to do something different.

I am stuck in a place that I do not consider to be my home. I’ve learned all that I can from this place and it is time for me to start moving again. The walls of snow built up around me are starting to melt away and I have the need to get the hell out.

Winter has a tendency to freeze people in place. The roads are bad, trails impassable and general malcontent causes people to hunker down and retreat into themselves. Now that that deep freeze has begun to thaw, the stoke is building up again. The gathering of parts and rebuilding of old friends has finished, I have been left with two shiny finely tuned adventure machines that are just waiting to be taken on long open road rides.

“Travel in the conventional sense doesn’t excite us anymore in the way that it used to. There is no drastic lifestyle change associated with a grand adventure; there is no lesson to be learned from a two-week vacation to a resort.”

Maybe this move will be the last in a while. The need to put down roots is manifesting itself in me. I would like to have a home again, somewhere that calls to me and makes me actually want to live there. I want community. I want to build a home. The call to root myself firmly in one spot, while still being able to roam at leisure is strong, but I am not in the right spot for it.

I’ve got one more big move in me. One more new place to call home, one more set of new roads to explore, to learn, to love and to call mine. New climbs, new trails, new descents, new views, new coffee spots and new roads that lead to places that I’ve never been. Infinity reached only by thousands of pedal strokes.

Stroke…