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Published: August 27th 2014
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ROUTINE OR RHETORIC? We are making our way home on a northwesterly course and the homecoming experience is always bittersweet. While part of me wants to get home and go through a ritualistic regrounding, most of me wants to stay out here in my world on the bike and continue exploring more of the vastly different areas that we have ridden through to date, and see if Elvis really still lives and venture into N'Awlins and all the other places we've bypassed due to the lack of time. We chose to ride scenic route 7 out of Hot Springs National Park through Arkansas, and the onset was a welcome change. Cool temperatures hovering around 24, green trees drying off after last night's horrendous thunderstorm, winding and gently curved roads traversing the Osarks and Ouachita mountains, burping out into the Arkansas Valley showcasing idyllic pastures and rich farmland dotted with patches of woodlands. Once we reached Dardanelle, however, we turned left once more and the road and ride became quite mundane and routine. Don't get me wrong, the countryside is lovely to look at, but there's so much of it. I think I need some diversity ... hills .... steeper curves
Ian's selfie
Ian had the small camera out today ... ... the occasional hairpin ... mountain climbs ... and some west coast ocean breeze to spark my spirits.
I know I physically rode through 400 miles of mostly flat terrain, cutting off the top northeast corner of the state of Oklahoma in the process, but I am astonishingly aware that I don't remember about 80 miles worth. You know those moments you have when you drive a few blocks at home and you have no recollection of how you got from A to B in any detail because you've been in deep thought? What I do recall is thinking that this section of the route was rather routine, and then I started to analyze routine in my own life, or rather, the lack of it, and do I prefer life this way or when I had more routine? I am definitely in a stage of my life with little routine, and I think I love it. I rarely had routine during my university years, choosing to study when I felt like it rather than during scheduled study blocks, working when I felt like it or, more precisely, needed more money. Once I graduated and entered the real working world,
routine started to creep in. My next stage in life was finding someone with suitable genes to produce superior offspring (hope you're laughing), and as soon as my first child was born, routine became a big routine in my life. Newborns, as we all know, desperately need and thrive on routine, and it continues at infinitum through the school years - get up at 7, porridge, school, home, snack, physical activity, homework, dinner, bath, story and books, bed. Get up tomorrow .... Without routine at this juncture, life for children would be extremely chaotic. Life for the parent, me, revolved around their routines. BUT, the kinder grew up and now in university themselves, and the concept of routine for the parent, still me, evaporates. And, I think I like it this way. It's not that I'm disorganized - quite the contrary. I love organization, and I'm a neat nick and clean freak. But, this trip is a great example of the lack of routine in my life. We don't know where we are going from day to day, or what time we will get up. We don't know how long we will ride each day, we just feel it out
as the day progresses. We don't know what time we will eat, or where. It is a good feeling. Where am I going with all of this rhetoric? Oh yes, getting home and regrounding. But wait, I thought I liked the freedom non-routine permits. I do, but regrounding is coming home to something solid, my girls and family, and my own bathtub where I don't mind getting my toes wet and where I plan to eat breakfast for at least the first week I'm home. Yes you heard that right. I tell people it's an English thing. You should try it, you might love it as much as I do. For some people, routine drives their lives, and power to them, but for me, it no longer plays a large part. For me, no routine permits a new-found freedom to do what I want and when. It's extremely liberating. The cat's out of the bag: I am turning the fabulous FIVE-ZERO in a couple of months, but I feel THIRTY. I want that to continue. To my beautiful girls, remember you inherited these genes from me! So, it took 80 miles to figure all that out, and I was just
about to share with Ian over the mike my thoughts on going home and the realities of routine or not, when I was interrupted by a sharp bend in the road coupled with warning signs of an upcoming switchback, suddenly far from routine. Another doodoo moment as to my thought processes coming full circle.
Don't you love these blogs? Come on, boaterbikers2 is no ordinary travel diary. It's a travel blog extraordinaire psychologique. "The thoughts evoked by the power of motorcycle travel". Come to think of it, we really haven't written too much about the physicalities of most places in detail. You can find that anywhere on the internet, but you can't find our most intimate thoughts. Until now, that is. Perhaps this could be a new form of self therapy: all you need is a motorbike and routine roads!
What on earth will tomorrow bring? I'm hoping for no farmland!
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