On Tuesday March 23, as with much of the country, I was laid off from my job. Even though the experience was part of a massive adjustment to our economy as a result of the Global Covid -19 crisis, it didn’t hurt any less. When I got the call from my boss at 10:51 am, I was sitting at my makeshift desk, at the kitchen counter, fully prepared to put in a full Monday, dressed in my black slacks and sky blue Henley shirt. Stepping on the brakes at a time when I should be ramping up for the busy season was indeed a surreal experience, but it was a reality and there was nothing I could do about it. Customers had begun shutting their doors in droves due to new protocols and I was pretty much out of business..

I felt like a deer in headlights, going from a hundred mph to zero in only a few short days, but, once the initial shock subsided, it didn’t take long for me to switch gears and sink into the lethargic pace of the unemployed. I found the nastiest pair of beige jeans and a collared purple sweater, which was to be my new uniform, and over the course of the next few weeks I would wear it everywhere. To this day I have washed my jeans only once, maybe twice, as I now have the paint splatters exactly where I want them, and why wreck a good thing, right?

I have decided to begin a new adventure and, of course, I can’t have an adventure without a blog, so now that I have time on my side, why not pursue something that I’ve always wanted too?: A travel blog! Of course, being in lock down, I can’t really go far, but when has that ever stopped me? I recall only a few months ago I was able to complete an entire traverse of five provinces by bicycle without ever leaving the proximity of my own town! 4044 km of pedaling, over two years of peaks and valleys on the same set of tires and I still slept in the comfort of my own bed every night. Okay so it wasn’t a real cross-continent traverse, but the point is, I was able to focus on an endeavor and complete it, and I discovered something about myself along the way that I never knew I had: Grit.

I’m not as gritty as some, but enough that I have what it takes to dig in my heels and complete something relatively difficult, for no other reason then to see it through to it’s end. Which is good news for me, because now I have come up with an even crazier plan. I will need all the Grit I can muster, and lets face facts, we are not getting any younger, so if I am going to leave my mark on this earth I need to move fast.

Stay with me folks, this is all leading somewhere…

In November 1989, during a whirlwind rail trip through Europe, my friend Randy and myself took a ferry from Dover, England to Calais, France, where we caught an overnight train, baguette in hand, to what is known as the city of Love; Paris, France.

For three days it rained. Packing only the bare necessities, and pulling a tip from a Rick Steve’s travel book, one of the items we brought along were water proof ponchos. I cannot tell you how valuable this item became as we trudged our way through as many of Paris’s key interest points as we could, looking like two scruffy homeless people. As it turned out, the only point of interest we really cared about was whichever was driest and looking back now; hind site being 20/20, if we’d found an indoor cafe and stayed there for three days, we would have experienced a better version of Paris then the grueling tour we had decided upon. It would come to be that, in my next trip a couple of years later, I took my own advice to heart and spent the majority of my time sitting in local pubs and cafes mingling with the locals, which is a much better way to experience a new culture. But, we were new to the travel scene and the whole trip, as eye opening as it was, felt more like an exhausting test of endurance then a vacation. Eight countries in fourteen days in the 1980’s when each country had it’s own currency and there were no smart phones, so we had to lug around our fat travel books in knapsacks, as well as the plethora of soggy road maps. Like I said: Exhausting.

Back to my point: I really feel like I did not do Paris it’s due justice by experiencing it unconscious, so I have chosen Paris as a symbolic point of destination for my new, Shelter-in-place expedition. The yellow bus you see in my header will have significance too, but I will touch on that a little later. The distance is 675 km from Bristol to Paris, via London and I am taking a few modes of transportation. I will walk until I am conditioned enough to run. ( and I have a good pair of runners) I will run until my bike is back in riding order, and then I will row the distance of the English channel. Approximately 50 km from Dover to Calais. Please don’t ask how, I’m not sure yet. I am considering purchasing or renting a row boat and taking it out to the lake, or just figuring out a way to do it indoors. From Calais, it’s back on my bike for the 287 km ride to Paris, and then in Paris, I have a plan, but I can’t really say anything about that yet. Not until I have made it that far.

So, there it is. I put it out there in the open where I can be ridiculed if I stray too far off course. As per my previous writings, as I traverse this “pretend” road, there will be stories and musings about local culture, sites sounds and, of course, if I can find it, I will test local beverages and food which parallel each region I pass through. I will also be paying myself a buck a kilometre to start, just to raise the stakes a little, and the money I earn I can do with whatever I want at the end. I’m considering 600 games of Fast and Furious: SuperCars at the local arcade once this dastardly pandemic is over, or I might just put it towards an actual trip to Paris. Who knows?

I have posted a road map of England and France on the wall in my home, and have given myself a timeline, so I can trace a black line through the main roads, tracking my progress as I go. It’s a great way to maintain focus for guys like me who gravitate to shiny rocks, and often, after stopping to chat with a passerby, forget why we are even outside. Some of us are able to seize the day with a determined focus like an eagle zoning in for it’s prey; but some of us need a track to run on with speed bumps and traffic lights so we know when to stop and and when to go; when to slow down and when to speed up. I fall somewhere in the middle. I’m the Eagle that waits for it’s prey to be in the exact right spot before I dive for my dinner in order to minimize the chance of failure. I guess that would be a Vulture…

No, I take that back. I am not a Vulture! Perhaps an Eagle who simply just forgot who he is? Learning who you are takes a lot of falling down and getting back up again, as I have discovered through the years.

My youngest son Marshall, along with his brother Rowan, spend half of their time with Mom out on twenty acres of rugged property belonging to her partner. It is not uncommon that he is returned to me every few days with a new collection of scrapes, cuts and bruises and a battery of wild stories to go along with it, and I’m good with that! He rides mini bikes, snowboards and plays for hours in the bush; which is exactly where a boy (and many girls) should be. (This is a good lead-in for my next blog by the way.) But, the point is this: he’s got the stories, which are his reward for not playing it safe all the time. I have definitely been one for adventure, especially during my younger years when I had a chronic itchy foot, but when I grew up and acclimated to the family life, somewhere along the way my spirit for adventure was replaced with the tedious tasks of safe living. How boring! But true freedom takes guts and pulling a point from a film I recently watched, it appears most people who live in the free world tend to choose “safety and security” over freedom. It’s our natural default to want to be taken care of, which is a tragic flaw in our system, I suppose. But old habits can be broken with a little work.

Perhaps it’s time, especially now, to really put our core values to the test. Break away from a social system that seems to be rapidly closing in on us and step into the unknown where failure becomes an option. In the process of building a secure environment for my family over the years, I have accomplished one thing: I have come to the realization that security is an illusion which balances dangerously on the slope of control, and a life controlled cannot and will not thrive. As a case in point; try keeping a happy house cat. The cat’s natural desire is to constantly want to escape, but when she does, she has become so bound by the limitations which were instilled in her fledgling years, she carries her cage out into the world where she will then need to relearn her identity. And only when she becomes in tune with her natural environment, will she then be truly free.

In closing, I have posted this quote before and never has it become more relevant for me, but, also perhaps for many of us as a collective society, as we navigate the after shocks of our recent crisis and the ensuing measures to contain it.

Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do then by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover” ~Mark Twain.

It is now time….

Over and out. Simon Kelly

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