Itchy feet and a gremlin mind…

I am sitting here with a blank screen wondering where to start.

Wondering whether to start…. Should I?

Is this helpful or am I just using my blog to exorcise my irritation and frustration?

I think I am… but then I think I should…

So here goes…

I love a challenge. I love that feeling when an idea creeps into my mind and lurks quietly behind everyday thoughts of work and daily tasks.

It sits there staring at me like our cat Millie when she’s politely letting me know she’s hungry. She doesn’t utter a sound.. she just sits, upright, feet together in my peripheral vision staring, unblinking with her big green eyes. Until I acknowledge her, and as I begin to move she dashes to the kitchen.

Ideas that watch me until I move and then they dash to the forefront of my mind so that every ordinary thought from that moment has this idea perched on top …. smirking.

As a direct result of these sneaky unrelenting, heart pounding, eye twinkling, breathless ideas I have taken on silversmithing, kick boxing, climbing, diving, sailing, windsurfing, backpacking, kayaking, I decidied to opt out of my life and travel the world with a man I met a week ago (Al!)… run my own businesses …. and I have experienced motorcycling adventures as a pillion  throughout the UK and Europe on an Africa Twin and a Harley with Al.

So it’s not too much of a surprise when my little gremlin mind began to wonder about riding my own bike …. Could I?

The only times I have every ridden a motorbike by myself before was once when I was a kid and I tried my big brothers … ending up in a hedge, and in Greece when my then boyfriend hired a small motorbike for a day trip and I found myself, through lack of understanding the language, being taken miles and miles away in order to collect it only to realise I then had to ride it back to our campsite on my own … having never ridden a motorbike and having no clue where I was!

After riding the wrong way up a few one way streets I finally found my way back and rocked up to the tent feeling a bit shaken and battered ( but also a bit pleased with myself) only to be greeted with a complete disregard for my mini adventure and to be told off because my breakfast had gone cold.

Nice.

So, the other evening Al and I are sitting on our sofa watching Ewan McGregor and Charlie Boorman on their latest motorcycle adventure travelling through South America,….

My inspirational niece has also just headed off to backpack around South America  …

…and I can feel my itchy feet starting to tingle.

Now, in the past couple of years with recent global events .. my itchy feet have been firmly and securely happy in their big woolly socks, comfy and relaxed and content to be slouching around home without any extra  challenges than the ones we were all facing from a global pandemic. Like many folk I have spoken to, I felt it was like being given permission to hibernate, read a book and stay cosy.

So I was a little surprised when I started to feel that familiar, slightly uncomfortable, prod … that moment when I realise I’ve just had a thought that isn’t going to go away.

And more of them than not, at this point the universe has a habit of sending me signs and reinforcement to the idea …. and that’s when I know I’m on another exciting, terrifying, exhilarating adventure.

I would just like interrupt myself to mention, that when this occurs, and the final destination seems so far away or unsettling, I break it into ‘fairy steps’ so that it doesn’t feel so daunting. And I am only on the first fairy step so this story may go in a completely different direction if in the future I decide this isn’t for me … but, you see, in this particular story, the adventure isn’t my main focus.

Here I am, with a little demon thought in my mind…. and slouched here next to my biker husband, I know that the minute the words leave my mouth, Al will be so excited at the prospect it’ll be even harder to back out.

On the TV, Charlie and Ewan are riding along on a dusty bumpy road through Chile on their Harley Davidsons….. and I feel the words forming …

‘Wouldn’t it be really cool if I got my licence so you and I could go on an adventure like this together…?’

There it is.

I’ve said it.

It’s out in the world.

Al just turns to me and grins… ‘hell yeah!’

So that’s how it began.

In the weeks that followed I have been slapped with sign after sign from inspirational women bikers heading off to Nepal for an adventure of a lifetime to finding my dream first ever bike within moments of starting to look.

The most incredible, heart expanding sign occurred at the old airfield that Al took me to to have my very first ride. I hadn’t been on my bike for more than a few moments before a spitfire appeared from nowhere and began doing loops in the sky above me. We grinned at each other ...a sure sign that my dear old pops approves.

So I have my bike, I’ve had a little play, now it’s time to take my CBT (Compulsory Basic Training) so that I can hit the road as a learner.

And this is where the real intention behind my story begins.

I found a training facility who offered a CBT course with the potential to progress quite quickly to a direct access course to pass my full tests and achieve a motorcycle  licence. It was headed by ex police officers and had good online reviews… except one.

One review was from a guy who had encouraged his wife to book so that they too could ride together. He was complaining that when she attended the course she was faced with such sexist verbal abuse that she left mid morning and didn’t return.

I read this… and was a little horrified for this poor lady but then after reading a few more positive reviews decided it was most likely an unfortunate incident or a misunderstanding of some kind.

I should have listened more carefully.

I arrived on the course to join a small group of four as the only female. No worries there, I expected as much.

I’m not going to go into details but what followed was a shocking barrage of fear tactics, bullying and vile sexist remarks aimed only at me.

I am no wallflower.

I have experienced many all male environments in my time, I grew up around mostly boys. I have taught kickboxing ( one of the MOST male egocentric disciplines!), I have lost a job through refusing to sleep with my slimy sexist boss, I have even been forced to move into an entirely different subject at art school in order to pass my finals due to a sleezy lecturer who threatened to fail me, and like most women I have many many more examples. And I also know that my experiences pale into insignificance compared to so many women.

So I’m not new to this.

But I can honestly say, I have never faced such gross language from a person of authority on a one day course that I am paying to be on.

Shocking.

What did I do?

I concentrated on passing my CBT.

I said nothing.

The point of this tale is less about what happened or will happen.

It is more the growing irritation, once I was home and sharing my experience with Al, that as a woman we are so often faced with this kind of crap, subtly or completely blatantly.

Out of all the other riders that day, I, not only had to keep my nerve to ride a motorbike on the road for the first time ever, participate in answering questions to show my understanding and take part in bike handling tests but I had to do all this while navigating a sexist egocentric person in authority who has the power to fail me.

Which would have been annoying and expensive.

I chose at that moment to direct my energy to concentrating on my purpose.

To pass.

To ignore.

And to continue through my day with  compassion towards this man who must be very unhappy and insecure to feel the need to behave in this way.

I chose to walk away at the end of my day, certificate in hand, and return to my life, confident and strong and at the beginning of something wonderful.

My day was tainted… but that’s where it can stay. In the past. Just a day.

It just really struck me how, as a woman, the challenges we face in the world are so often laced with peripheral issues, that are completely extraneous to ourselves that need to be navigated to achieve our goal.

I have experienced the often pointlessness of making a formal complaint… the frustrating realisation as the words leave your mouth that the issue is already known and is not given any importance. Or the person at fault is too valuable to the business, college … whatever.

The moment you speak up to a wall of aggression directed at you for daring to rock the boat.

So I switch my mind.

I choose to pick my battles. I choose how much of my energy I would prefer to put into my own life.

Of course, I am absolutely not suggesting we should never speak up or fight back, hell no!! I’m just saying, for my own sanity… I pick my battles.

I am such a strong believer in the concept of our own ability to create our own world, our own habitat.

The place we spend all of our time.

If you have been reading our blog regularly you may remember in ‘We need to talk about skulls’ I discuss the symbolism of skulls in Buddhism.

In Buddhist belief, skull imagery is often used to represent the emptiness of the universe. The concept that nothing in the universe has an inherent meaning of itself.

The idea that if the universe is empty, and our experiences within the universe arrive to us with no given meaning, then we are free to attach significance and meaning to them in any way we choose. It is literally up to us to choose how we interpret every single situation we find ourselves in. Nothing is inherently bad, or good, easy or difficult… it is simply our interpretation that creates the label we use to describe it to ourselves.

Flip it around.

Re-write it.

We can use a level of compassion to imagine the possible pain behind a persons behaviour, not to make up stories, but to imagine the potential turmoil they must be experiencing to make them behave in such a destructive way.

To choose to allow that behaviour to only effect them, not me… to leave it behind and walk away.

I have the power and ability to re-write my day. To see it as a learning experience led by a troubled individual who deserves compassion. My life will continue on with love and light, but his is an endless Groundhog Day of battling his potential insecurities played out by intimidation and gross language.

I feel sorry for him.

Now, I can turn my raptor gaze to the next chapter of my adventure.

I have my certificate…. I can ride my bike.

Who knows how this will go…?

I have my little skull to remind me that  I can choose to fill my universe with positive energy.

And when I do that, magic happens.

Positive energy creates more positive energy and suddenly life feels like a mossy rock, rolling down a hill uncontrollably collecting more moss…. more positive energy.

Magic.

p.s …. I know technically a rolling rock gathers NO moss… the entire point of the proverb, so I was going to change it to snowball , but I like moss …and rocks, so its staying… bite me!!!