A Final Reflection

Somehow, both me and my bike have managed to arrive back in the US, only slightly damaged. Whatta Trip.

My thanks to everyone who played the "home game," your comments and letters kept me going.

For the first time I feel like I've really SEEN a country. Looking back on my past travels, I ask myself: How much did I miss?
All around Asia I stayed in hostels or hotels geared towards foreigners. Backpackers say that people who stay in top-end hotels don't see the country. But now I look at backpackers: have they really seen the country? And expats, who actually live in a foreign countries, probably laugh at me for thinking that I've seen the country.
Either way, I saw WAY more of a country than ever before. And that is what I was after - to really SEE Mexico.

People, of course, have been asking me: "How was it?"

My answer: "It was what I wanted."

It wasn't a party, but if I'd wanted to party I could've divided my time between Mazunte, Palenque, Playa Del Carmen, San Cristobal, and Tulum. It was exactly what I expected: sometimes beautiful, sometimes ugly, but immensely satisfying.
Within those five weeks I created a small world for myself; a world in which arriving at my destination city, however dirty and run-down and sketchy it may have been, was always a reward: I made it.
Small pleasures were the best: I'd be thrilled when handed a really strong plastic bag at a grocery shop, for example. A big, strong bag could serve as a tarp for my orange backpack in the rain, it could protect my water bottles from leaking into my panniers, it could hold my laundry, it could act as a plug for the sink so I could do my laundry, etc... Dinner every night was my little treat, a tasty reward for successfully conquering another Mexican day on a bicycle. Food tastes so much better when you work for it.

This trip reminded me of mine and Reuven's month-long trek to Everest Base Camp in Nepal, and mine and Rich's week-long motorcycle tour of northern Vietnam. Since you're constantly on the move in between small cities, the names of places are hard to remember. Each day you set out with a destination in mind, but it's what happens on the way to the destination - and not the destination itself - that makes the trip. If you're in that "when am I gonna get there" mode every minute is excruciating. You need to trek, cycle or motorcycle appreciating the small things: in Nepal I noticed each rock on the path as I trekked, and cycling I noticed the condition of each road (if there was no beautiful scenery), the differences between villages, and people's reactions to me. Obviously, motorcycling is not a physically gruelling activity, but you still need to focus on the small things. Don't mean to get all Buddhist here, but it's exactly the Buddhist idea of "being in the present" that is created on these sort of trips. You HAVE to be in the moment otherwise you won't make it. And being in the moment, living in the present, is the most beautiful and satisfying way to live. You're happy, you're content, and you're really LIVING.

I still don't know why exactly I wanted to do this trip alone. Psychoanalysts out there will come up with a myriad of theories and explanations about how I needed to search for my identity and find myself. Maybe it's my deep-rooted unhappiness. Or my deep-rooted happiness? A childhood trauma, perhaps?
Whatever. Their theories are baseless bits of fluff and until I see some evidence for ancient Freudian theories I'm not buying it.

Here's what I know: people don't have conscious access to their unconscious desires and wishes. As crazy as it might sound, most of the time we don't know why we do certain things. Our brain is always trying to link together causes and effects to create a more wholesome rational explanation for our world experiences. (Read Wegner's Illusion of Conscious Will for a great overview of this stuff). So I don't know why I went. I can guess, conjecture, and offer up wild explanations but all I can say with certainty is that I felt like going. So I went. And it was great.

Solo Travel tends to exaggerate the feelings of normal travel: the lowest points quickly bring you to tears, and the highest points bathe your body and mind in ecstasy. This trip, my lowest points were the dog chases in Chiapas. The highest points came when I biked the beautiful coastal roads, weaving up and around the mountains. I probably cried more on this trip - a couple times - than I have in the past years combined. It was worth it, though, because the joy of being FREE is unparalleled... the joy of being OUT THERE, alone, in silence, on a long strip of pavement that stretches to the horizon - all on this wonderful invention called a bicycle that enables me to propel myself forward by pumping my legs up and down... to defy physics and fly surreally through the space and time of Mexico.

All along my trip I kept thinking of Thoreau's famous Walden quote:
"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

And then I'd think: I am so fucking lucky to have discovered what it means to live when I was eighteen, during my year abroad. I know what it means to live. I know that my life, in America, is not living. So for the rest of my life, however long or short it may be, I will do my best to really LIVE.