A Paradigm Shift or How I Learned To Ride A Road Bike

Back in high school, during school breaks when my parents had gone to work for the day and there were no cars in the garage, I would resign myself to a day of reading in bed, watching hours of television, and talking on the phone/interwebz to my equally bored friends. Now, I can't stand being stuck in the house all day, no matter how many frozen bagels are in the freezer and Lifetime movies are on TV (although there is at least one person out there that would sell her entire wardrobe for just one day of this. Give her a break, she has small children.).

So, today, when I looked in the garage and saw that all the cars were gone, I reached back to the guts I had cultivated back in Asia, grabbed the (low tire pressure) road bike that was hanging in the garage, practiced a few times around the neighborhood (I've never ridden a road bike before and let me tell you, there is definitely a different technique than the hybrid hipster bikes with the baskets I'd been riding around Cambodia), reminded myself four times that the worst thing that would happen would be that I fall off, scrape my knee, and then buy myself an ice cream cone, and I set off in my sparkly ballet flats and Asian inspired messenger bag.

And it was awesome! Truly freeing and smile-inducing as I pedaled along the tree-lined roads of my childhood town.

Well okay, not the actual ride because I'm pretty sure the front tire has a hole in it and the braking system is a mystery to me, so I had to stop by launching myself off the seat to the ground and hope to God that I didn't break my leg. And I was scared to put my feet in the toe cages so they scraped on the ground when I pedal, which was frightening. And I couldn't get up the last hill so I had to get off and walk (which I blame on the hole-y front tire and NOT on the fact that I haven't worked out in ohhhh, three months). And that was all in the 7 minutes it took me to bike from my house to my destination. As I write this, I'm still working on convincing myself that I can make it back home without any major injuries.

But when I parked my bike outside the little coffee shop that was my destination, I felt all warm and exhilarated (and not because I was sweating mini-waterfalls from underneath my flowy hipster tunic...p.s. Mother Nature? It's October. Turn on the A/C up there. I have a number of fall jackets that are festering in my closet because you're into this Indian summer kick). I had convinced myself that, despite my fear of falling over, getting hit by a car, looking uncool because I didn't have a car to drive and in Rochester EVERYONE drives EVERYWHERE, or just general failure at bicycle riding, I could do it. And that was all it took for me to do it. The idea that I could. So I tried. And it hurt, and I made mistakes, but I also got this picture of the Erie Canal:



Now all I have to do is make it back. Although I may just walk the bike back. Did I mention the hole in the front tire? Really tough to ride on. I mean...yea, definitely have to fix that hole.

What have you done this that you've never thought you could? What do you want to do, but might be scared to do?

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

On Getting Things Done

"Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone."
-- Pablo Picasso

Looks like I will not in fact be doing laundry, but might stop into my favorite cafe for a hot chocolate and some alone time with my new book.

What can you cross of your to-do list today?

In Which I Test My Travel Skills and Cross the Vietnam Border

It's quiz time, blogger family!

Ready?

Okay. I'll wait until you get your lucky mechanical pencil out...

Now's good?

Okay, where can you ride a bus in which a small woman falls asleep on your shoulder, a rooster crows nonstop despite it being well past sunrise, the bus is full yet people still seem to be hopping on at random points along the way, and no English is spoken except for the occasional "Where you from?".

Okay fine, that could be multiple places, including New York City.

But in this instance it was the local border crossing bus from Cambodia to Vietnam. And while I was ready to whip out the three Vietnamese words I knew in case the tough got going (because Vietnamese customs officials take you MUCH more seriously when you say "Good morning", "Goodbye", AND "Thank you" multiple times in rapid succession), the bus driver actually handled most of the border crossing, despite my frequent, undoubtedly helpful interjections of "THANK YOU". The point is I made it through the border into Vietnam, and no one suspected that I had no idea whats the heck I was doing (except for the bus driver, the customs official, and every other person on the bus with me).

It was so taxing that the minute I arrived in Saigon I took the next sleeper train out to the beaches of Nha Trang to lie on the beach, dive and surf. Tough life right?

From the Road: Sihanoukville

Cambodia. To the French, it's Cambodge. To the Cambodian people, it's Khmer. To jerky Americans like me, I like to refer to the quaint little country chock full of tuk-tuk drivers and a little short on patience as Cambo.

After I exhausted myself at Angkor Wat, instead of heading to Cambodia's busy capital city of Phnom Pehn, I decided to take the road (not at all) less traveled and head for the virtual French Riviera of my little Khmer country, Sihanoukville. Settled on the southern shore, Sihanoukville is the largest port city, and seemingly Cambodia's largest open air garbage pile. Literally, there's trash everywhere. But I think it's going to get better (for better or for worse).

Given Cambodia's fairly recent history of genocide in the 1970s, the country has been pretty slow to rebound. Although it has a pretty basic tourism industry, Sihanoukville is what Bali was in the 1980s: cheap, full of backpackers, and, yea, a little dirty. But it's okay, as long as Angkor drafts are still fifty cents.

However, that seems to all be changing. They have built some new parks to the east of the main backpacker beach in Sihanoukville, and the rumor is that the private islands have been bought out by private developers. Word in the hostel is that Cambodian beachfront is the new Koh Samui (which is Asia's Ibiza for Europeans...which is America's Cancuun for Brits...you get the point).

So, the question is: is it better to leave developing nations as is, letting them get hip to the tourism game on their own, allowing the trash to stay as is, but also the quaintness and the culture? Or is it better for Western countries to develop their own resorts and pour tons of money into the beach town, if the consequence is the destruction of the Cambodian culture, but also the wall of garbage on the beach?

I'm not sure, but let's think about it over a Sihanoukville sunset shall we?



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Night Buses. Gulp.

Because if this is what you had to look forward to for the next 10 hours, you'd be gulping too:




Enter copious amounts of Dramamine. Cambodian beach, here I come!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone