August 14, 2015
Amanda’s Moment of the Day
Riding along the road today feeling myself getting completely worked up about what amounts to nothing worth getting worked up about; I was able to employ recently learned meditation techniques to calm myself. It was a great feeling to be in better control of my feelings. I also realized at that moment that my hormones are now getting back to ‘their normal’ phase of irrational which likely equates to my body is starting to recover.
Interesting Encounter
We rolled into Cochrane for hot chocolate and came upon about 15 touring bikes all lined up. It was a group of students riding with Two Wheel View. It is an organization that guides children on a cycling tour to teach them some valuable life skills. Colin was one of the guide leaders and was so enthusiastic about the program. Check it out at www.twowheelview.org.
Cycling Stats
Start point: Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Destination: Cochrane, Alberta, Canada
30.2 km trip, 13.0 km/h average speed, 45.1 km/h maximum speed, 2:19 time on bike
What happened…
Andrew writes: I don’t understand how it is that we keep waking up so late. Maybe it’s the late nights of reading? It just seems like we stay in bed until 0900hrs and it’s such a bad habit. Then to top it off, Amanda didn’t get back from the passport office until after 1400hrs. I figured a short day would be just the ticket, at least we would be back on our bikes, and ready to tackle riding around the world again.
I’m always trying to coax Amanda into acting more vulnerable, yet as we stood on the side of a busy highway today with her complaining about me, and crying, it felt a little weird. I’m just never sure how to respond. As someone who wants to be right all the time, I always just want to jump to my own defines, but that doesn’t work. Yet if I just stand there and take it, then Amanda gets even more upset because I’m staring blankly at her. I guess at the end of the day, while I feel like I do my part in the relationship, and one the planning/doing of the bike riding, I’ll just take what she says with a grain of salt and keep it in my memory for those times when I wonder what more I can do.
We are very fortunate to have met Greg during our time in Calgary. He lives in Cochrane, just outside of Calgary, and he’s not only a great host, but just a stand-up guy in general. I really enjoyed just hanging out and watching a movie with him last night after Amanda went to bed. It’s just the right amount of testosterone, and bromance isn’t something that I get a lot of opportunities to do.
Amanda writes:
I woke up in a super grumpy mood. Part of it stemmed from my lousy sleep. Andrew was really congested last night and snored so loud I couldn’t do anything to stop him. I knew he was struggling with his breathing so I tried to put my compassionate hat on and rather than continue slugging him I left the room with a blanket and headed for the couch. The result was a lousy sleep.
I was also grumpy because we were already leaving a day late because yesterday we couldn’t get our shit together and then late yesterday I decided to do some real research on renewing my passport. I’m usually pretty good with getting things done but for some reason I have procrastinated about the passport forever. When I finally did some real research I realized I had wasted the last two weeks in Calgary when the passport office could have been processing it. I felt like such a fool. In any event to make a long story short I decided it was better to go downtown in the morning and renew it now rather than wait until we’re in Mexico. It meant I’d be delaying our departure yet again, but knew it had to be done. I was just so frustrated with myself for not doing it earlier. By the end of the day I was over it and we hadn’t lost another day and instead enjoyed another night under a roof thanks for family and friends.
While taking the steps to process the passport application such as get pictures, walk to train station, take train downtown, wait in line, take train back (4 hours) I had loads of time to think. And while the passport oversight is totally on me I just got to thinking about all the little things that need to be done as part of our journey that I always seem to be doing without Andrew’s support. I had hours to think of all the things that I do for this trip to make sure things are organized, maintained, cleaned, processed etc. and by the time four hours was up I was so frustrated with Andrew. I won’t go into the big laundry list of items I came up with but I was just left feeling so frustrated and unsupported. While I know there is nothing he could physically do to help me go through the surgery for the miscarriage, maybe a little help and initiative would have been appreciated. He plans our routes really well but I’m always concerned with the maintenance of our bikes and I’m frankly embarrassed by the lack of attention we give them. I just hope it doesn’t come to bite us in the ass.
We left Brigitte and Eric’s place and road and Andrew knew I was in a bad mood. He let me be and we just rode and after about an hour he asked me what was wrong and I told him. Who knows if it fell on deaf ears but I felt better for having aired my thoughts. We rode into Cochrane and I was quite cold so we had a hot chocolate. Then we rode to our friend Greg’s place who offered for us to stay with him for the night in Cochrane. What a treat that was; he made us an awesome home cooked meal and we just kicked back and relaxed with him and his roommate Maria. I enjoy easy conversation with people so much … that’s what this is about for me right now. Meeting great people to share our days with.