Play

Standing next to a cliff with fresh ice melt trickling into a stream, weaving between hundreds of animal skulls and pelts; the smell of the rot is overwhelming. I carefully, and respectfully, walk away from the ritual grounds while never turning my back upon the site of ancient magic.

A small group of Tibetans greet me and there is a community of three or four families living in permanent, mud packed structures. I watch her laughing to herself as she marches along the perimeter of the organic, white washed, wall. Walking towards the stupa, she slips her hand into my palm. Closing her tiny, weather worn fingers around my hand and we look at each other and smile with a child-like gaze. No one is leading nor lagging; traveling together in unison and harmony; souls complementing one another.

The touch reminds me I’m human, with all my insecurities and fears; overwhelmed with the innocence, imagination, and purity of the child’s love. We play with the horses, laugh under the prayer flags while inspecting and investigating everything that sparks our curiosity. She falls over with giggles after watching my attempt to milk the goats, even after her excellent hands-on instructions. She is flying around all of us, feet barely ever touching the ground, buzzing with energy and joy. Her brightness and warmth glows as intense as the last, and single ray of sunshine.

wandercyclist_5719

We have forgotten how to play, as adults, like when we were innocent children. We have been conditioned to follow the herd which leaves our child self yearning for approval and tending to. We are losing our imagination. We are losing our desire to spend countless hours with our self to hope, dream, recollect, and LOVE.

Every day, I find somewhere to dance, whether it’s in my room or in the streets during my evening walk that I take every night after 11pm. My street disco has made some laugh, some smile, some point. I have to do what makes me happy while causing no harm to others. I’ve begun to learn a new instrument and I’m going back to creating art, such as sketching and drawing. I allow myself more time away to stare out the windows and watch the storm clouds without the guilt I should be “working”. I’ve had to find a way to survive in this society that has told us we are “ill” or “wrong” for straying from the herd…refusing to be led to a life of apathy and complacency.

In light of this weeks events, I’ve made a big mistake and opened my mouth before thinking and writing it out eloquently and posted it on Facebook. I apologize for all those I upset, and please feel free to request I remove you from the mailing. I’ve shut down Facebook because it’s proved to me that most of those 1002 “friends” don’t know me, don’t know my tone, and have no idea what I do with my life. They have no idea of where I’ve come from nor care where I’m going. I’ve only recently learned how depressed people become by watching a FB newsfeed…so I’ve decided to quit blasting people with positive and thought provoking ideas. You can come here, and as some of you know, I respond to every email I receive.

Because I plan on writing this book about finding a selfless path and mindful way to live, it’s becoming easier to voice why I chose to go on a “journey”. In retrospect, my journey was much like a spiritual pilgrimage where I found my own church, temple, mecca, stupa, and learned to love myself. In the night sky, I found my constellation…the lone huntress with her antelope at her side. She sparkles so bright and lights the way ahead. “Stars can not shine without darkness”…and I birth my genius in the blackest of nights.

I have been refusing a simple label of “ill” for the past 22 years. I refuse to believe that we as humans, as soulful, compassionate, loving, and nurturing bundles of amazing energy, can be simply labeled as “ill” or “wrong”. The mind is an amazing muscle and it needs exercise, freedom, love, and understanding. I left on my pilgrimage to save myself…to find a reason why I am the way I am. To find a fulfilling path in life and to understand that life is not purely for the benefit of the self. Sacrifice. I’ve had to face, and still daily, all the horrible, selfish, demeaning, embarrassing things I’ve done over the past 35 years. But I know in my heart, it was learning, it was developing, it was that led me here. How else was an adult suppose to survive that was told she was “ill” at 13? Telling that to an adolescent is like handing her a death wish…especially a very awkward, out of place, funny, loving, and creative girl.

As someone that has faced death by choice more than once and has come too close by accident, I want to say one thing. Do what you have to to survive. Anything, ANYTHING. But do it with thoughtfulness and awareness. Question everything. Look! Feel! We are losing dreamers, thinkers, creatives, loving, empathetic, selfless people to suicide. The universe is losing the souls that will make a difference, that try to save us from ourselves, that are telling us to open our eyes.

We are not “ill”, we are living in a diseased society that refuses to allow us to be true to our nature.

I’m not really sure if I should post this, or I will…but I want to thank each and everyone of you for having the bravery to live your life to the best way you see fit. I didn’t start this blog to be popular or win friends. I did this for me…and I hope I can share something with you. Even if before you write, “Please remove me from your mailing list”, I hope I provoked you to think about what’s going on in our culture.

Granted, not everyone can just jump on a bicycle and whiz around the world to figure it out. I get this. I’m beyond blessed. BEYOND. And every day I wake up thanking everyone, the cosmos, the heavens, mother nature, father time, God, Allah, whoever is listening…that I’m here, with another chance to make amends and do good. I hope this weekend you can take a hike into the woods, or go to the beach, or read a book…or turn up that music and just dance like no one is watching. I want you to laugh so hard you fall on the floor with your belly full of joy.

All this stuff has really helped me developed my voice as a photographer as well. We all know the world is suffering, I’m now looking for the voices of survivors. Those that can inspire us to think and live differently. Uyghurs, Central Asians, Tibetans, Bangladeshis…I love them all equally and I always turn my thoughts to them and see their smiles under back breaking labor or brick dust coating every inch of their body.

I’ve consciously chosen this path of being alone, working alone, being broke most of the time. I don’t need a lot in my life, I went without for so long. I can’t think this life any other than a blessing…because I’ve found peace within myself.

DANG, this felt good.

LOVE PEACE AWARENESS CLARITY ACTION AND CONSCIOUSNESS…GO!

Survived Another

Some people really enjoyed the birthday chronology photos on Facebook so I thought I’d share them here.

Birthday #30 (Gramma’s backyard)
DSC_0078

Birthday #31 (Inner Mongolia with a toll gate operator I had met the day earlier)
2010_East_North_Central_China-7914

Birthday #32 (On the roads in Yunnan)
2011_Yunnan_Sichuan_Tibet-3082

Birthday #33 (On the Assey Plateau – damn amazing!!!)
IMG_2200


Birthday #34 (Back at Gramma’s with my Momma)
photo (2)

What did I get for my birthday? Well a little cash to help afford this baby…
She’s a bit sick…haven’t really gotten to ride.
image
But the view looks a whole lot different down there…first oil change…for both of us.
photo

She will be my sanity this summer, as I’m sticking around to teach some photography courses and hear if I’ve been accepted to a very prestigious photography workshop.

Feeling Lesser Than A Woman (Does that mean I’m a man?)

Oh dear God, Allah, Buddha…it’s been ages since I’ve sat down and pecked out my thoughts to share with you and you and you and you and you.

Here I am, sitting in Dayton, Ohio listening to some modern folk, alt-country rock and sipping my herbal tea with soy milk…my stress at an all time high (unable to sleep and eat) and my back in constant pain. Okay…okay…okay…here we go. Are you ready?

257154_10151232405965579_41486660_o

Like I’ve stated here before, “I’m more woman than you could handle.” I know this simple fact about me, but here in the other “real world” when I’m sitting here alone in my room behind a flickering computer screen hoping for a loving transmission from anyone…the doubt creeps in faster than the cold into my feet on the Tibetan plateau.

Don’t get me wrong, I have no desire to go on a date. I have no desire to have to do all that relationship stuff because I just don’t have time or the energy for it. Everything in my life, I have made or chosen, is difficult and love is one thing I feel like I shouldn’t have to work so hard at. Frankly, because, well I deserve it…damn it! (To be quite honest, I’m not yet over something of the past.)

Okay, I’m trying to keep this cohesive and lucid, before I run off the rails.

I do NOT have “balls”. –edit- Perhaps this just comes with being in a territory that is predominately men. My hair has come up in conversation close to a dozen times and I really doubt men have these types of comments made to them. For the record, I do not shave my armpits or leg hair…so men make comments about this and sometimes it goes further. I’m realizing that the people who make these comments to me are making cheap shots because I threaten their masculinity. Such a pity. Such a pity that a human life form that has a frailer bone structure, less muscle mass (generally), can conceive and birth life form, has a higher thresh hold for pain, and generally better at endurance challenge your XY chromosome. -edit-

This is not to be a men bashing post at all because some of the worst bullying I’ve received in my life was from female peers. Also, I want to state that all the men I’ve traveled with were always decent. Most of the men I’ve crossed paths with on two wheels have been, there are a few rotten ones I have encountered…or maybe it was over inflated egos.

I was a “tomboy”. The only girl in a neighborhood of boys. The baseball was hit further, the tree was climbed higher, and the punches thrown harder. When I got tired of being the “nurse” when playing “war” or having to tend to the fort while the boys were out hunting and gathering…I would retreat to my room and play Barbie’s – ALONE. Once a week I would attend Girl Scouts and my dance classes that went on for about eight years – the one thing in my life I regret giving up. I wasn’t all boy, I was still a girl…with long stringy tangly brown hair.

There is a memory of getting ready for my First Communion and I remember looking at my knees. They looked horrible…scabs, cuts, bruises continuing all the way down the calves. Of course I couldn’t remember how I got them, of course outside having fun as any normal child would. My mom told me it was nothing but I remember looking at other girl’s legs and they didn’t look like mine. I knew I was different from a very young age, and it’s been a battle every day.

The internet personality, the Wander Cyclist, probably appears cute and confident. You may think that I was a pretty popular girl growing up. “Popular” if you mean teased and gossiped about. If you mean not getting invited to slumber parties, and later on “make out” parties. I always had the pretty friend (or “easy”), where I was left in the shadow. Ellen of yesteryear was terribly awkward and “different”. A very small southern town in Virginia, I always knew I didn’t belong with the masses. With the gangs. With the others.

Maybe the reason I’m so “tough” now, why I can handle what I’ve put myself through is because growing up was far from “easy” and “comfortable”.

Gender roles. This is what I’m trying to get to. Defining attributes, physical, mental, and emotional.

It’s 2013 and I’ve been reading articles on the internet and following some popular culture. What is with all this women bashing.? I’m also talking about women bashing other women, i.e. a woman stating that a cheerleader was too chunky to be cheering. What is wrong with us, WOMEN?! Damn it, you and I have it hard enough and then we go around criticizing one another for their body type and what we’ve chosen to cover it with.

Why is that the only thing a woman has to offer society is her looks?

Just go take a gander at any modern man’s magazine and look at the imagery of women. That is not real! Real women do not look like that. Real women have something so much more to offer. Real women are mother’s taking care of their children, with extra weight and perhaps stretch marks. Real women are the ones in politics fighting for justice, using their brains. Real women are those that are on the front lines in our military. Real women are the ones that live for themselves, that better themselves, that have something more to offer this world than a good pair of perky tits and a slim waist.

I recently watched the first two minutes from a comedian, Miss Marbles, and she was ranting about the people she hates at the airport. She spent two whole minutes explaining how she doesn’t trust girls who can travel with only a backpack. “What kind of girl are YOU?” I’m watching her overly made up face, and coiffed hair to have a “messy” look ramble on about how her makeup takes up a certain amount of space. I don’t know Miss Marbles, what kind of girl AM I? Yes, I do wear makeup…stick of eyeliner, mascara, one eye shadow, and maybe a lipstick or two. Simple. Yes. Hey, and get this…I love wearing dresses too. One major reason is because I have difficulty with pants because of my cycling legs. What kind of girl AM I? I’m a girl that wears sports bras all the time because wires jabbing into my rib cage are uncomfortable and only to give perky breasts for the benefit of WHO?

Am I a woman?

Well, I’m beginning to think I’m not by the standards that are sent through the media. That I may never be. I honestly should quit spending time on this question because I know something most people will never know. I know me. I know who I am, what I stand for…I can spend days and days with only myself. No fear of what I may learn or realize. Comfort with who I am.

This isn’t so cycling and tour related, or even photography related but I really felt like some things needed to be stated.

I do think my tour took some characteristics away from me that are usually deemed “female”. OR…or…MAYBE, JUST MAYBE…I never had them to begin with and my struggles pre-tour was more about trying to fit into what was expected of an XX human.

Maybe we are all a blank slate and we become conditioned by media, friends, and family to fit into a certain gender mold. I know that straight men who may be seen to have female characteristics have it much more difficult than us straight females. So, to conclude this post I’d like to ask all of you to do a simple challenge is to drop the definitions, to quit being a “man” or a “woman” and just be you.

With these conclusions, I do know that when I’m ready for love it will not be a man and a woman, a boyfriend and a girlfriend, but two completely equal human beings. Undefined. The other will not define the other. The relationship will not define anyone’s worthiness. Each will be a protector. Each will be a provider. Each our own. The most important, the respect of each other’s solitude.

Well folks, I’m not sure how this went but I hope you can take something from it. Mostly, I hope some little odd ball girl stumbles across this post and realizes she is far from alone. That the whole wide world is out there, waiting for her. That she has the courage to do it alone…and it’s best that way.

Men make comments about how there are few women like me out there in the world. Well, I’ll tell you this, by the amount of private emails and notes I know for a fact a lot more of us exist. But, it’s a fact we are more difficult to find and even more difficult to catch. You’ll find us tucked away in bookstores, on a lonely trail, in a tent on a plateau, in an NGO office in some far off country, or as simple as standing alone in the grocery with a frozen pizza under one arm and debating over which micro brew to indulge in for the evening.

Don’t forget about the Etsy store. I’m trying to raise funds for my big move back to Shanghai and unfortunately things aren’t going so smooth. I ACTUALLY cried last night. I thought I couldn’t do that anymore…I’m trying to soften up. The life on a road has toughened me up, perhaps too much. A boy nicknamed me “Ice Princess” in my early twenties…and I guess it’s just gotten colder since then. But we all know that usually the people with that thick and cold exterior are often the softest, warmest, and most loving under it all.

http://www.etsy.com/shop/MosemanPhotography

Also, my website is under construction, 4 portfolios up now. Go check it if you’d like to kill some time today. Ah, yes, and the book for the Kickstarter rewards is in progress, and additional will be for sale.

I’d love to write more, but maybe I should save some stuff for that book I’m supposed to write someday.

Not only cyclists…

…but damn cool folks, and amazing artists.

Tailwinds on your next journey, Pete & Mary.

www.twoonfourwheels.com
www.peterroot.com
www.marythompson.co.uk

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/thailand/9874682/British-couple-killed-in-crash-on-world-cycling-tour.html

Happy Valentine’s Day

It’s been months since I’ve sat down to peck something out here, for you.

So, for all my fellow solo cyclists, adventurers, and those of you sitting at home behind your computer screen without the presence of another human…I send my love. Hopefully, you have found your fulfillment and “happiness” within yourself and aren’t longing for someone to be by your side. Maybe you are even like me, and find yourself hugging yourself to sleep every night…not “missing” anyone or anything.

If you are “lonely”, I have a cure for you. If you don’t “love” yourself, I have the perfect cure for that, too.

Go on a very, very, very, very long bike ride until you obsess over yourself and ONLY yourself. When you think about your life, and your wants, and your desires, and what you deserve from life. Quit caring so much, especially about other people. Care for ONLY you! People will tell you are selfish, and crazy, but YOU know you aren’t.

This very, very, very, very, long bike ride will cure you of your self-doubts and learn how to ward off boredom. Sometimes I get emails asking how I deal with boredom, and to be honest, I’m not sure if I have felt boredom since high school…sitting in class after being reprimanded for daydreaming out the window.

Some people I have told what my tour became about. Others have asked, “Can you sum up your tour?”.

Yes, I can…”I learned to love myself.” I care a whole bunch about myself, and about others, as you know if you have listened to my interview and browsed through my photos.

You want to know a little secret? The only times I have felt loneliness is around other people. In a large group, social gathering, or even a relationship. Those are the only times I’ve felt “lonely”. So to all of you, that are alone, rejoice in your freedom.

Rather than snarl and say sarcastic things to those lovers we see today…us folks, that choose to be alone, can give each other high fives for being “birds of a feather that” DON’T “flock together”.

Love.

404473_544171955617692_792181764_n

Personal Time

It’s the end…and I need some time and space to think. Don’t go away for too long, expect a post in a week or so. Just need to go along with my feelings and thoughts…alone. You know, how this journey was meant to be, solo…for me.

…and to celebrate…

I’ve gotten a private room at the hostel here. It would be my first room to myself in months…only my second since March.

And you know what I had for my midnight snack, as I load Russian poetry onto my Kindle…a tasteless, unsatisfactory tomato. I’m so lazy that I made the plastic bag I carry my spices in into a bowl so I could pour the salt and dip this tasteless tomato in.
All of this while chatting to Barry online and listening to Black Sabbath.

My dinner of cucumbers was much more appetizing. And yes, I eat them just like the locals do. First peel and then eat it like a corn dog, dipping it in salt.

OH, now you are thinking, “dang girl, you don’t eat enough!”

Well, you didn’t see me earlier sticking my fingers into the peanut butter jar because, again, I’m too lazy to even be bothered to look for a spoon or knife. I must have had about about…eh, 2 dozen index finger tips of PB.

Let me explain to you a cyclist’s metabolism. We burn calories…fast. But as soon as you hit a rest period, they aren’t burned but our bodies still crave those 5 meals a day. Honestly, I’m hungry but can’t give in…I already had that chocolate bar today…and for dinner last night on the bus I had the other 3 Turkish chocolate bars from my emergency stash.

Oh, and then there was the 2 bowls of oatmeal this morning. The staff here offered me some soy milk when I was eating my second bowl and I told them “Oh just pour it in here”. They thought it was weird I was adding all kinds of random shit to my oatmeal, i.e. raisins, crystallized ginger, and yogurt.

*sigh…life is good.

I would love to hear from you!