Cycle of Learning. Anne Fitzpatrick

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СКАЧАТЬ I left Adelaide I’d received all sorts of conflicting advice from cycling aficionados about the fancy, complicated equipment I would need. I ended up using a simple criterion for selecting my purchases: cheapness. I was lucky enough in August to meet someone who could help me distinguish between bad-quality cheap and good-quality cheap. I first encountered Harley, a raw-vegan anti-establishment ultra-athlete, working in a bike shop and he took me under his wing, psyched me up with his raw-vegan anti-establishment ultra-athletic philosophies, and led me around the displays, telling me quietly: “You won’t need that; you won’t need that; this bike is cheap but will get you round the country; you can get that cheaper on the internet; you won’t need that …” I left as a vegetarian, with half of my savings intact and a hope that ultra-athleticism was contagious.

      True to Harley’s word, Bike and Trailer were doing a fine job. Although not ridiculously lightweight or high-tech, they required minimal attention and kept me trundling along. Trailer was easy to pack and with its single wheel following directly behind Bike, I hardly felt the weight of my sleeping bag, food, paperwork, clothes and small range of tools that I didn’t entirely know how to use.

      While Bike marked a substantial improvement comfort-wise from the cheap, poorly-constructed bicycle that I used to own, my body was taking some time to adjust to life on the road. The first few weeks of riding were painful – in my shoulders, wrists, back, neck, legs, bottom, head, forearms, and in a spot that’s near where I think my pancreas lives. I had been warned about this by other cyclists – the soreness in general, not specifically in my pancreas – but also been assured that the pain would disappear after a fortnight or so in the saddle. They were spot on, to the day almost, and by the time I was crossing the Great Dividing Range the day before, I was feeling fit and comfortable. In fact, that whole morning I had an all-pervading sense of self-assurance with the performance of my body and equipment that was probably on the smug end of the confidence spectrum.

      Prior to my departure from Adelaide I had a decent level of fitness, though not quite enough or the right sort of conditioning for this sort of ride. In its place, I had a confidence in my body assuring me that I could rise to and withstand whatever physical challenges came my way on the journey. This confidence came from the ten years of martial arts training that had been a huge part of my life since I stepped into my first class when I was 15. I had trained in wrestling, capoeira, a month each of Thai krabi krabong in Bangkok and traditional karate classes in India, and the bulk of my time in a club that practised a mix of karate, judo, jiu jitsu and weaponry.

      This training had given me a multitude of rewards. Through it I learnt how wonderful it is to hone skills with repetition and focus, how to teach others, how something comes alive in you when you find what sparks your passion, and what an amazing tool and instrument the human body is. I learnt that my body was not something to be ashamed of for not looking as skinny or pretty as some parts of society suggested it should be. Why be ashamed of a body that can kick high, kick hard, kick with balance and timing and accuracy? Why be embarrassed by a body that can choke and armlock and throw another person? Why doubt a body that can be picked up and driven into the mats with a crunching wrestling drive, but knows exactly how to tense up and land safely so it can jump up and do the same back to its partner? Why not be proud of a body that can figure out how to do one-armed cartwheels, manipulate nunchucks, staff and sword, and fight round after round of sparring, boxing, kickboxing, throwing and grappling?

      This is the confidence that martial arts gave me. I knew from experience that my body could refine technique, build strength in new muscles, ramp up its fitness levels and adapt however it needed to ride me around Australia.

      In the early afternoon, I hit my usual post-lunch lethargy. Strangely, it didn’t disappear after a while as it normally did. Instead, I seemed to be moving progressively slower and slower. I thought it could be the fault of one of the small apples I had eaten from a tree by the side of the road. So, to test the hypothesis, I ate another one from the next tree to see if I felt worse. I did feel worse but not in a poisoned way, so wondered if I just needed even more energy. I ate some almonds and followed them up with a mouthful of honey, but was still struggling, so next I tried drinking lots of water.

      I decided my body wasn’t to blame, and became more frustrated because, by my evaluation, I was riding downhill and should be going more than the 10 km/h I was. Once I checked for a puncture. Another time I stopped to see if a dead snake was caught in Bike’s chain. I’d narrowly missed running over three already that day, and one dead wombat. I figured, though, that a wombat would be too fat to get caught, so didn’t bother checking for one of those. As the absence of snakes cast no light on the situation, I gave up, dismounted and started pushing Bike and Trailer along. I looked over my shoulder to check for traffic that may think me soft, and realised I had actually been riding uphill for the past five kilometres or so. I know I have a bad sense of direction, but there is something odd going on when I can be on a hill and not know if I am going up or down it. Around Australia suddenly felt like an incredibly long exercise and my position on the confidence spectrum slid swiftly to the bottom of the chart.

      This morning it was only a short ride to Benalla and the idyllic scenery kept me distracted from over-analysing the gradient of the road. I passed fluffy sheep eating the grass on the hills, flocks of birds, clear blue lakes, and children being towed behind speed boats (in a recreational, fun, non-abusive way).

      Tomorrow I would ride out of Victoria. I had made it through the state in less than two weeks. Thanks to minimalist results in the school-booking department, I had pushed through the quiet countryside at a steady pace with Geelong as my only extended stop. It was worrying me that a state with such a significant proportion of Australia’s population wasn’t interested in me; or rather, that I hadn’t captured any interest.

      There was not much to do though, but keep pedalling and hope that some better marketing skills developed along with my leg muscles, or that I would become more interesting the further I got from home.

Thursday 24 February

      Albury to Walla Walla, New South Wales

      52 kilometres – 2 hours 53 minutes

      This morning’s dark 6 am start for a high school in Walla Walla provided me with not only the chance to use my beloved three-function headlamp but also to ride through a breathtaking sunrise as I went up and over the Jindera Gap. I spoke during an assembly which was themed “How much stuff do we need to be happy?” I was tempted to base my talk on the fact that everyone needs a three-function headlamp to be truly happy, but instead shared some of what I had observed during my time in Kodaikanal.

      On the one hand there is definitely a lot of “stuff” that most of us have in Australia that families around Kodaikanal happily do without. On the other hand, there are things that, through poverty and social inequality, some families miss out on: easy access to clean water, adequate nutrition and health care, the opportunity to go to school, political rights and, quite often, three-function headlamps. These aren’t luxuries, but things that everyone should have the right to.

      Wary of the fact that I was not an expert in Indian sociology, poverty or development, I tried to base the majority of my talks on information given to me by the PEAK team and on interviews I conducted with students when I returned to Kodaikanal for the second time.

Return to Kodaikanal

      For this fact-finding return visit I navigated the Tamil Nadu trains, buses and sweet shops to retrace my steps back to Kodaikanal where the women wear fragrant strings of jasmine in their hair; men enquire after your “good name”; children either stare with horror at you or laugh with bewilderment; you get asked “You came here alone?” with a certain tone of disapproval, and “The food here is very pungent, yes?” with a certain smugness; and the hilly location means it is cool enough to not be sweating all the time as you do in the plains.

      At Sacred Heart СКАЧАТЬ