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rickshaw run blogs jan 2014 North to south pan-india on a glorified lawnmower
for our second run April 2015 (west - east across the top 3000+ Km @ 40km/hr) go to DO blogspot
To demonstrate learning you have to show you know. That AHHHAAA moment when we get it varies for each of us with every lesson. It generally comes after incubation. The determining factor as to whether we are quick learners or slow. My dad once remarked to me - Lisa sometimes it's like you need to get a whack on the back of the head with a piece of 4 by 2 to get the lesson. I thought we'd leave Goa for our 6th state Karnataka and be straight into verification. This should be the easy bit the push for the finish and celebration of the last dash. In flow flow, rush rush, all systems go. We could proceed to the stop. It was all over bar the shouting. Lurking in the back of ones mind is always the what if ...What If... 3006kms is really to far for an auto to stay together and transport us safely. What if we don't make it in time for the finish line. Our frame is now severed in two at both weld points on the roof. We have used everything in our kits except the freeze dried kiwi meals and the tow rope. We are over the fun stuff and it seems that the last three days blurs into the dust of India. We roar out of Goa heading South with the first sign of discontent in everyone's navigation and mood set. None of us can quite get our insides to agree to a gut feel on if we should take the main highway or the coast. Our data is not cooperating, we've lost trust in which roads will be the best, coastal , smaller or highways and we are starting to blow up our gear. We are still all being nice to each other across teams with no one quite wanting to take the dominant role and visibly bossy role to tell everyone's rumbly tums to shut up and go in any one direction. Inside the tuks marital pressure is building as road weary and dreading the end of the journey everyone gets a bit over the road and our significant others. We all think we know what we are doing and all our versions of how to do this are our own and no one elses. We don't get far before Sweetie pie starts to choke. It's a Sunday and we are meant to be pushing 300kms today. We sulk into the only Christian village we have settled in for weeks. Every body is at church. Approaching our taxi rank knights in shining armor the crowd is not that welcoming they pretend interest and the self appointed mayor duly arrives to see what it is that we need before we can push off out of town. It's hot, it stinks and this place is so basic there is no one selling bottled water, the hotel for a coffee stop sparks terror at the thought of being stuck here, there sure as Bethlehem does not appear to be any rooms at this Inn. There are two men asleep or expired on bench seats in the dark interior and the proprietor is high and toothless, empty bottles line the counter tops waiting to be refilled with grog, the only food is a mound of fried piled high in a beyond filthy cabinet, we are not sure if they take our order as they don't reply, they apparently do but they serve us outside . Is that because they know how we feel or they don't want us to come back in? They are so wary of us I can't give away any pens. I manage to give one young boy some all black stickers and a ruler and pencil set but an elder rips it out of his hands and reads every possible label to work out what the tide has bought in. Edwards indulgences in the Arabian Sea are creating waves in his gut and he sleeps while we wait for god to materialise a mechanic. Our Sunday is vanishing and morphing into a true day of rest. We can't move or do anything. An hour slips by- the tuk tuk is cool enough to move forward. And they run us out of town. 5 -10 kms away there is a promise of someone ungodly enough to help us out and the mayor has sent a runner who relays us in that direction. Every km or so he vanishes from our lead. The engineer is earning his full degree by coasting sweetie down hills so that fuel can flow into the engine enough to provide faltering putt power up the next hill before she chokes again. The relay runner reappears with another family member on the back of his motor bike. To be introduced and to get a pen. His daughter, son and wife in 10 kms we verify them all. The first mechanic up a side street ignores us literally and our scout decides to abandon us as well. He cautions us to stay put. By now Sweetie is too hot to trot and Ed's gut is about to show us all it knows it's in India after all. Worlds fastest kiwis are demonstrating incredible patience and resilience as they are still breakdown free I'm sure they'd love to gloat. We wait on the road side for help to arrive. Every one loses the plot as Edward has to fulfil a road side emergency evacuation. Making each of us retch we can verify that swimming in the Arabian sea is the biggest risk to health. None of us has been ill from food. But Edwards arse ejects half an ocean, and Warrick and I have ear infections setting in, Heather is congratulating herself for choosing a pedicure over a swim. Though the joke is almost back on her when she side steps Edwards drain painting - just. Our guide reappears and whisks Edward away to the promise of mechanical genius. The universe picks up flow again and Sweeties carb is cleaned of crap. All of us feeling a lot freer head South, keeping Edward hydrated and moving admiring his resilience as he sleeps at every Chai stop and makes good use of the vegemite and electrolyte emergency supplies. By night time he has come right again. A university city a lovely hotel, great food and books of intellectual genius on nano tech and heart surgery remind us that India rivals the world in many fields. We are reassured enough to eat chicken and tuna club sammies for breakfast. The kms swallow each other interminably - stop and proceed - every 100 kms we stick rigidly to our strategy to get through the distance. 3 days to do the last several hundred the journey now feels long, dirty and over dhaled. The last night on the road we optimistically head for the coast again. A resort found on line and booked with the typical fury at data that teases by dropping out of credit card authorisation more times that we can curse. Panic sets in and the first hint of competition as we roll up to the door of our last resort to the sight of more teams. Have they booked? Have they taken our rooms? A frenzy of walking faster than one would like to appear as the Italian, Swiss, Swedish, Kiwi 100m dash ...we calm ourselves enough to secure our beds. Singles and we can't get the hot water to work. Marital harmony is terse in both camps. We are up before sunrise for our last pack up and each person is in their own bubble. Hovering on the edge of the last state. None of us feel in a celebratory mood. We fit out the tuks in near silence worlds fastest kiwis have a detour to navigate as luxuriating for so long on the journey is a time restraint to catching up with their friend in Kerala en route today. He is temptingly close to the hghway and a long way from the finish should they decided to visit him on the way. The thought of us having to cross the finish line separately after so long together is weighing heavily with each of us for our own reasons. The thought of perhaps not making it to the finish line at all is for the first time a reality and it's not helping any of our states of calm. We are all good on the outside yet you can feel it underneath, as each person deals with what the last day on the road together will bring or not bring. Are we over it? We are so far from the end that we can't be. It's all the clichés in the world, so close and yet so far. The show we know; the Ahha factor this morning on the 14th of January is that we may have left our last dash to the 7th state of celebration a little late. Kerala - are we there yet. Can the celebrations begin? Cut off is at 4pm this afternoon. And if I ever had to learn the lesson of being very careful what you ask for because you will get exactly what you expect then today is the day. "We are going to need every single minute of today" will forever haunt me - my mantra of the morning repeated so often the gods delivered it with glee. I used it to encourage Warrick to meet up with his friend once we cross the finish line. I should have used it more when we stopped for our last chai break and 100 km cool down. Why not just push on through and keep an hour up our sleeves. As we pull out of Kappad in to the dark of the last dawn I'm crying. Crying at my last set up of sweetie, my last day of the journey my last sunrise on the road and just crying because I can in the back. Theme songs are on repeat. Everything seems in technicolour. The streets are full of early morning rituals and my ahha radar is triggered everywhere - India is in her glory. It's time to celebrate our learning. How we have come to love her and how we all realise our lives have been altered for ever by time in her presence. Time is not on our side. The first village is full of people in the streets loud speakers, hundreds of men and boys in white. Bands, acrobats, crowds of women smiling and watching. Cool very cool. By the second village, third and fourth we begin to get suspicious. Has Matt Dickens Rickshaw Run master gone overboard on the celebratory budget and arranged crowds to wave us slowly through each town on our last 200 kms to the finish? If so they are starting to get in the way. 5kms per hour is not going to get us to Kochi by 4pm. There are flags, and people thrusting cups of juice at us, bags of sweets at us and packets of biscuits. It's a party. Just not ours. Mohammed's birthday and it's a big one indeed. By lunchtime temple duty is done and the roads clear for just a moment. Then it's into industrial action and agitation. The highway is blocked by chunks of concrete, barbed wire and trash every few hundred metres another barrier. No point lifting the tuks over though we try. As a little up the road another and another and another. The roads are manic, there are buses abandoned and trucks parked the wrong way in one way alleys. It dawns on us this is deliberate. Matt Dickens upping the anti again? Or protesting truckies and auto drivers who find the toll roads are crippling their lively hoods. I kick myself for not being RAS activated to a place name while reading a newspaper announcement of todays agitation three days ago. And the sign in the post office advising that the 14th of march they would close. The agitators and birthday celebrants are planned and organised in their chaos. Police and military vehicles appear to have also missed the memo they are as jammed in the chaos as we are unable to stop or proceed anywhere. Auto drivers as friends in disguise are directing traffic back on itself and it takes us an hour to realise that the brown uniforms will not show us the way this time when feeding us around and around in circles, data not supporting our journey, no live maps at the right time to get us on track we are back at the start with adrenalin mounting. Lost. Every cell in our bodies is screaming at us. We did not come here not to finish this journey. Various internal dialogue becomes external, The realist Edward saying we are never going to make this by 4pm. Me the optimist coaching him - Do not put that thought out there we have the perfect amount of time to do what we need to do, we can do this! I'm not sure how WFK were feeling each team is communicating the bare basics, worried we will lose battery or each other before we get the last direction across. The rickshaw run is not a race it's a fund raiser. We know this and have lived and breathed this. Insurance won't cover you in something as hair brained as racing a tuk tuk from one end of India to another. We have gone back forwards to prove it and managed to be well behind the pack all the way. Today though we become manic. We must finish this on time. Before the finish line closes at 4pm. A did not finish just is not an option. the race for the finish is on. Willing time to slow down as tuk tuks speed up. We get lost trying to avoid the protesters and then take a long way round to get back on track. In our panic Edward and I have blown up the inverter by attaching the cables to the wrong battery terminals and all our devices are now flat. We have no maps, no theme music, no phones and no clock. We are relying on radio to WFK's and their battery life is limited too. At a set of traffic lights with a spectacular digital countdown we run out of fuel. Like a le mans pit crew we leap out and throw our last of the two-stroke cocktail mix at the rear of each tuk tuk, spilling it on our feet slightly thankful you can not smoke in Kerala while Heather counts us down. We have 11 mins until the finish line and 13 kms still to cover. We are screaming at each other and willing our machines to keep going. Manic laughing and celebrating the chaos the locals act like the village idiots are in town. They politely look away at the road in front, check their voice mail and pretend we don't exist at the lights. Kochi must be immune to the madness , it reminds me of Aussie ski week at home. At 4pm, 1600 hours Kochi Kerela gods own, with all our facebook followers in the dark at our last lost post we scream around a random corner to see the finish banner in our peripheral on our right. Shoulder banging back seat drivers screaming, both tuks slide in to base camp in a cloud of dust with us hysterical and crying - "Are we in time?? - You did say 4pm on the 14th of January didn't you Matt?" We can't stand, we can't walk - team 68 and 69 across the line, we scribble our names on the finish sheet before they can pull it down. The deed is done and we are fully undone. The finish line is quiet except for us. Other teams sip coconut juice and look rested, lines of neat and orderly tuks stripped of their gear fill the yard. Ten teams are unaccounted for but there are no bugles to celebrate us being the last. One would think that was it the adventure over - until Matt tell us he needs the machines back NOW - it throws our celebration we forget to do finish line photos or to smile for the media. We head to our hotel where the staff line to welcome us and we ignore them throwing belongings off the roof reattaching rear doors and finding insurance papers. Our manner does not stand us in good stead for the rest of our stay as they show us as much consideration as we did to them for the next couple of days. It is only on the ferry to the finish party that we realise we are truly done, spent and wrung out. The four of us separate for a few moments. Edward runs off to join the start line crowd, there are fireworks and near arrests and crowds pushing us onto the ferry - we are each one a part of the mass and as we pull up to the party with the fairy lights and ungst ungst music we reconfirm that the 7th state has been reached by all on board and the celebration really can start. It becomes apparent that this journey will never end. Our teams are split for the first time in 14 days. Warrick has caught up with his friend, we nearly lose Heather as she slips between the boat and the wharf. We begin to understand that we are going to be apart again and that we won't be able to be there to support each other through every challenge and adversity. The celebration is cathartic - wild dancing, loud sing songs, nations of the world united in a journey of a country that we all have achieved apart. We are aware that our lives are forever changed that our facebook friendships with each other will remain and that one day on another adventure we all promise to meet again. The dawning of learning is that you can not separate out the seven states of learning each intertwined as it is in the other, you celebrate the preparation, the globalisation, initiation, elaboration and incubation. The verification will be there for the rest of our lives. With every decision and moment that follows India we show we know. The understanding that life; any life is great and should be honoured. That risks must be taken and that what appears dangerous to some is common place to others. That what appears safe is where the real risks lie after all. And that beauty exists everywhere at every moment you just have to drive slowly enough through life to enjoy it. Each day you pick a route and create your own realities. What you say , who you meet and where you stop or proceed mark the journey. Friendships are made and cemented on the Rickshaw Run and runners whether we spend moments or lifetimes together will always be family. Thank you Edward, Heather, Warrick, Mr Matt Dickens, 200 participants, 78 teams, all the charities our generous sponsors supporters and friends on the journey. And thank you mother India for India is great.
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We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. Caress the detail, the divine detail - Vladimir Nabokov Elaboration when you are into the journey is as inevitable as it is incredible. How we can recall every small detail of our experiences yet not how many times we have told the same person, listening patiently to our travel sagas, bored with image after image of holiday photos. It's the detail that makes a journey life changing, makes the learning permanent and that carries the most impact. The smallest of things or the synchronicity of flow, where events group and cluster themselves to have pattern or meaning to the learner, the observer, yourself. Sometimes it's even when you are doing nothing at all that the elaboration takes hold and you find yourself swallowed in the wonder of sights and smells. Or when the once surreal becomes so common cameras are away because we have enough camel shots. Day 9 on a road side shot I spot graffiti on the DO logo - who dares to suggest option A... Do nothing? A quick camera roll audit shows the molestation was pre race start. It's right in front of me yet I've failed to see it and Edward is quick to pick up on the point that without any driving hours under my belt and his commandeering control of the music it would appear to describe my role well. Maharashtra was our fourth state in India. Where routines were established and the patterns emerged. We were living on tenterhooks waiting for breakdowns that for World's fastest kiwi never came. Expecting the roads and challenges to become insurmountable. Plans for what we would do should a team fail to run a police check point. A forward route and time to head back North to see something spectacular are all the cul-de-sacs that elaboration take you on. By the finish line Curry pie had been to the shop four times. Nowhere near the mechanical darma we had pre planned for. We quickly learnt if it ain't broke don't fix it. And the engineers became so adept with #sugru, number 8 wire and gaffer tape that evenings in the hotel room were rarely workshops. Our chassis snapped at the roof line, a weld broken, realising that even with a broken frame an auto offers no protection against any impact so we chose to gaffer it, bind the gaffer in #8 and tuk on. It didn't even register as a breakdown when the other side snapped as well. Our day 2 spark plug ejection had held up well to early repairs, the day in Sai town had fixed the clutch though we were not 100% convinced that had even been a problem. In Maharashtra some crap in the fuel line was sorted and that was it breakdown tally 4 at a push and I only had to DO that once. Some teams had more than 50 breakdowns and spent a lot of time in the shop. When you stop you just sit, until the person seemingly wearing the best clothes in the village we called the Mayor, would arrive and direct proceedings, enquiring why we were loitering in their town and arranging to accompany us to the rescue. If you were limping along you target an auto taxi queue. And if it's sunset - you find a hotel with a bar and hope that when she has cooled her lid sweetie will perform in the morning. The advice from pre run to never push your tuk more than 100 kms without a chai stop and an hour long cool down were our rituals to avoid more drama. We'd picnic on road sides, brave man towns for water bottles and loo stops and take dal with truckies and pilgrims. Our data would amuse and confuse with devices random as to where they would work. But most days by 2pm we had decided how far we thought we could push on and started to find a bed for the night. We'd battle data outages to try and book on line, this is still the holiday season and the best places are busy with travellers and we know Goa is going to be packed.Our strategy for accommodation had become based on comfort, food and laundry. Many runners will scoff, once we realised we were all about enjoying this journey we were seeking the boutique Indian experience. A chateau, the Ivy restaurant, a trip advisor listing - booked on line so they could not refuse us at the door. Nothing of course was as expected. The chateau had gone broke in the GFC when they started importing wine to meet demand and hit market evaporation and a currency crisis. The Ivy was great at keeping the Chateau Indiage wine cellared or was it just no one had been there post GFC to drink it? That's not to say we ditched local lodgings closer to 2 star all together the Sitara near Indiage provided us there most delux of rooms - though no power to that floor for a while and going up class mean going upstairs, many flights with much luggage and no porters here. We did find their linen cupboard so helped us selves to more sheets. While no cleaner they were folded giving the illusion of freshness and motivation to rise in the dark and depart before the light would prove how wrong that assumption had been. Pune and the golden arches. Touches of western comfort for breakfast a bacon and egg mc muffin a vege birger or chicken - way to a mans heart. We were becoming accustomed to the segregation of women or so we thought until Man Town Kolhipur where Heather and I were evicted from the hotel bar for being unaccompanied. And the feeling on road side stops in parts was that our comfort zone really was eating in the autos as inside a permit room went just too quiet with so many stares that our nerves were exposed. We had rituals of worship for our autos, fresh flowers in the morning and fuel stop functionality with storage of funnels and hoses to keep dust out of their carbs elaborate. When you finish the run people always ask how often you see other teams - not often. Well behind the main pack rumours tell of 32 teams in one bar going in Goa but they will be long gone by the time we hit there. We see a few of the girl teams with four in a tuk on route, enough for a drive by wave and toot session. Perhaps 5 mins on the side of the road to check in and see if everyone is doing ok. But apart from our two tuk twosome we are alone on the roads of India with her people not ours. We pass the Irish team member who is alone as his team mates have had to return home for a funeral and another tuk keeping him company. We hear the Koreans withdrew on Day 1 and that 3 tuks have rolled and more have flipped. We meet the team from Barbados a couple of times, they are ducking off roads to find temples in search of a new experience. The most common request when you meet another team is for Rizzlas which goes to show what many may be up to on the road. Excitement watching the donations to our charities growing we are blown away with how friends and family are contributing to these causes and excited to know that this epic journey for Live More Awesome is raising real cash to fight depression back at home in NZ. The charities of other teams are inspiring - The Italians have gone to visit their charity and cooked pasta for them. The Cool Earth guys are chatting to us on social media encouraging the journey and thanking us for the money we are raising. The tracking map haunts us the main pack are way ahead, though only 20 odd teams of the 78 seem to be posting. You text your position each night so mums and dads at home can tell the kids the days installment. We have no idea where we sit except towards the back but we are comfortable there in our elaboration of the journey, this long middle piece, early starts in the dark of morning, late finishes as night falls, eating up miles and pushing for Goa our rest stop , our party place, the next state - Incubation. Every journey conceals another journey within it's lines; the path not taken and the forgotten angle. Jeanette Winterson Less than 40 days and 40 nights until our departure on the Rickshaw Run the length of India. Caught up in the illusion that we are mapping a clear path and getting ourselves organised. What about the journey within the journey. The causes and charities this event will support. What they DO or stop DO-ing to make the world a better place? We have selected two great causes to be beneficiaries of our journey hoping that what we put out here will come back to them threefold. Each of these organisations demonstrates great actions to take the world to a better place. Today is my admin day to work on the digital touch points for our adventure, to introduce our charities and to start the exchange between our sponsors and community partnerships. Getting the donate links to talk to the facebook team pages and back to DO home is a journey all it's itself. We've kick started the giving with a contribution to each charity. BE CAUSE their agendas are what is behind our epic journey. We want to involve you all in the journey and ask that you spread the word to others to DO the same. Live More Awesome is an organisation tackling depression head on in New Zealand. Creative strategists behind great initiatives to help others to Live More Awesome and to find other ways to deal with overload and depression. Jimi Hunt of LMA author of A little bit mental; is no stranger to doing epic things. His book tells the tale of a journey down the Waikato on a lilo. LMA have created the worlds biggest water slide, initiated the "Gratitude in schools" program and have some 25,000 followers who gain inspiration from their life shifting articles and innovations. Please click the donate now link to Give a Little to Live More Awesome. Go to their webpage on www.livemoreawesome.com to be inspired and find some tips for more Awe, and to read more about their GIVE ME FIVE strategy for funding. There ain't no journey that don't change you some - David Mitchell Cloud Atlas Cool Earth seemed ironic when I first envisaged myself in India - I was thinking summer, sand, etc. The reality is the Rickshaw Run is nothing about comfort, this is not a summer sojourn. Night temperatures will plumet and the tuktuks apparently only work for a while when they themselves are cool so 5am starts are our first tactic. Although the unroute may lead us through the beaches of Goa and environments already deforested; pictures of puffers and thermal blankets at the start makes me very aware of the climatic extremes we are likely to experience on our journey. These places - a long way from home are hard to envisage and connect to from a distance. Out of sight, out of mind perhaps. What if we DO think about them, engage with places and spaces outside of our comfort zones. What would we see there, learn there and find there...a call to ACT-I-ON? What of the journey for our planet, her forests and her future? Cool Earth is the primary charity of the overall Rickshaw Run Jaisalmer to Cochin January 2014 event. All teams registered ( I think there are 70 plus) in the January Run must contribute to raise a minimum of 500 pounds for this great cause. Cool Earth work with urgency to save tracts of rain forest under threat right now. If you have any desire to scare me donate then squillions. The team that raise the most money for Cool Earth win a trip to a piece of threatened forest complete with nightmarish bugs, and extreme conditions. To see first hand how Cool Earth work with indigenous people to save rain forests under immediate threat. The New Zealand local government clients that Edward and I work with through DO and Rationale have helped us to be very aware of the effects of climate change, changing use of assets and the impact on our world as we know it. Finding ways to protect habitats, and to live more sustainably are paramount to all our futures. Give to Cool Earth and know that your donation is going to a great cause. BE CAUSE without trees there just isn't as much to breathe. “Well," said Pooh, "what I like best," and then he had to stop and think. A year from now you will have wish you had started today - Karen Lamb I'm juggling the learning of "staying in the now" with my manifestation skills and ability to create my own reality. A dream, an urge, a goal is fully future paced, it confuses me. How DO I put thoughts out there to attract what it is that I want to attract yet stay 100% present here and now? Without anxiety, care, concern. Without dreams, joy, excitement, happiness and the fun of imaging just what will I be DO-ing later, something is lacking. Anticipation is the power force behind actions, it creates my will, my ability to DO what it is that I need to DO today to get where I want to be. Stuff living in the now - I want to daydream my future. I want to add the colour the noises, the smells and the flavours to each and every experience that I want to attract into my world. As if it's closer than it may seem to be. I want to suck it to me like a slurpy slush. Knowing that the ice cream headache may be one bright smurf blue intake of freeze away, yet far too impatient to let matter soften and melt a little ...I just want to get on and have the thing! This morning's blog is posted as the second update to my Rickshaw Run challenge. The most exciting-wee-wow anticipative thing I had added to my reality in half a decade. Because this last weekend I've been rolling around in the anticipation of it. Booking flights, looking into visa requirements. Who would have guessed that along with Finland, Laos and Myanmar, good old gods own NZer's have membership to the club of nine countries able to get tourist visas on arrival into India? Even those from the land of OZ need to pre apply but not us... there is logic in there somewhere I'm certain. I've been trolling guest houses in the golden fort city of Jaisalmer , studying pictures of 1st class vs. 2nd class aircon train cabins from Jaipur and Jodphur. Drafting sponsorhsip proposals to those I think would have synergy from our mutual exposure. Who may choose to support us and our chosen charities during lead up events, blogs and on the journey. I have targets for creating value for those who will sponsor us - facilitating workshops for sponsors teams, following a pre-determined media plan with the foreknowledge that I will work with them to maximise the exchange. I've been adding radios, solar panels, funnels, kidney belts, driving gloves, suture kits and clean syringes to my packing list. For just one moment there I wanted it to be harder than I thought it was going to be. Be very careful what you wish for! I wanted to have to apply for the visa, to have my international drivers permit take three months of process. To feel like I was DO-ing the thing already. Training is helping - exercising, eating well, taking my vitamins. Adding detail pouring over pictures of how fit and prepped the Kings of Good times look in their pictures having just completed the April run as winners. Realising that so far we have an offer of sponsorship for our insurance because that is all I have asked for up until now. There is so much more still to DO. OOhhhhhh the excitement, the butterflies in my tummy. I can't wait to be there to smell the rubbish, the urine, the open sewers I've read of. The anticipation of road side hawkers, crispy pakoras and piles of water melons. The heady purchase of on-line glow in the dark gaffer tape and miscellaneous bling with which to pimp our tuk tuk. Anticipation lifted me out of a pre-snow Arrow seasonal affected disorder day. I sat bathed in the cosy glow of my yunca fire enjoying each and every child serene moment of their DVD watching. Connected to my future by the sights, sensations and stories of India. Like a mini break before the real deal and I plan to do a lot more of it. Tantalising out of reach our future is what we think it will be. Dissapointment lurks when we let the dream get too out of hand. If we D.A.R.E not take into account how another's journey can impact our experiences. How long the planning and preparation will really take with a few of the unforseen cul-de-sacs to take us through detours on the way. Sometimes we recognise how much we were anticipating something only by how blatantly life fails to deliver on it. When the person we have waited for all week decides to spend time with another. The longed for prescience, the presentiment can become a crush to the heart. When the ideas we held for how we were going to spend our time are shattered by the weather, lack of resources or an absence of support. When a higher power has taken the trump card and we are left kicking pebbles along the path of life wondering WTF just happened to our dreams. These are the times to remind ourselves that God has only two answers YES and not yet. That we may feel better by thanking the universe for the experience we have just had because somewhere in the scheme of life we put that thought out there or needed that lesson. So that further along in the journey we understand what it was that we needed to be DO- ing instead. So that the universe could bring us that or better. When the cosmic joke is fully on ourselves, we need to take a chill pill and stay exactly where we are here and now. Realising that perhaps we got just a little over excited, and arrived to early for the show. We may need to remind ourselves to put the work in, send the proposal, make the phone call. To stroke our self esteem and tell ourselves to calm the F* down. Enjoy the moment now and wait. You see - if we have truly dared to dream a little, to put out the thoughts, feelings and messages of what we want to create for our futures it will happen. Perhaps not right now, maybe even not in this dimension, in this lifetime - then in another. But because we are taught that it will be ok in the end. And as any dedicated studier of India in all her glory will know after a weekend of DVD watching we can "Eat , Pray , Love" on the Darjeeling Express while searching for our own Last Exotic Marigold Hotel where if it's not ok then it's not the end. Be sure to find something you can anticipate all day long. Long intros are cool because there's a little bit of anticipation, you know? A lazy Saturday morning with the engineer trolling Facebook posts and laughing at friends adventuring across India on a pimped up lawnmower has somehow ...12 hours later translated into he and I being paid up entries into the January 2014 Rickshaw Run from Jaisalmer in Northern India to Cochin in the South as team Goodbye Curry Pie. New Years in the desert of India learning to dirve a weed whacker what more could a girl want? This is almost more excitement than I can deal with. Certainly a huge motivator to hit the health wagon, raise some money for a bloody good cause old chap and to laugh and plan our best yet bucket list adventure together as husband and wif. https://www.facebook.com/TheRickshawRunSupportSociety?ref=stream Support the team in the link above because they are out there right now DO-ing it... their stories, pictures and the manly colonial pith helmets they are sporting have been our catalysts. After two lifetimes of deliberation we are now certain this is how we are to explore India...the engineer and I have stumbled across our destined path. This is their charity of choice... and ours. http://www.givealittle.co.nz/cause/rickshawrun Please donate to LMA cause and encourage these April 2013 Rickshaw Run Kiwi's to fly. We will hit you up for ours in a little while... As tonight 9 months from our own departure in Jaisalmer we are blissfully warm, pampered first world inhabitants having just eaten a delish curry from Arrowtowns' Mantra restaurant to get us in the mood... 110% oblivious to the dramas that lie before us. Thankful that Oma has happily agreed to look after the Guy Girls... I'm wondering why I suddenly feel like a pie and a long lie down? |
Team: Goodbye Curry Pie
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