A friend asked what I love the most about cycling, and I realized…

The moment I get on the bike, I feel transported back in time. Is it to the child mind, where I am free and strong and can go anywhere I want? Not completely true, since I have to contend with the annoying constraints of gravity and national borders and financial woes.  But cycling always takes me out of the worry and concerns of daily life.  Maybe then I’m not transported back to childhood as much as liberated from time itself.

Consider that moment when I notice that I’ve cycled several miles without a thought.  Up and over a long hill, past fields and forrest, city and shopping mall and industrial blight.  Out of time, out of mind, out of body? Or into body experience so much that my chattering mind finally shuts up.

My friend then asked what I’d learned about writing from the Sun Magazine workshops.  This gave me pause. Attending the last three of the Esalen workshops, each time I had trouble connecting with the retreats, felt I didn’t open up, that I didn’t really learn much. 

However, on this last tour, writing on this blog became a genuine creative outlet.  I strived to reveal more of my personal experience, to become more transparent, to tell the inner story of emotion, of conflict, of loss, of desire.  Wrote things that previously I’d reserved for my personal journal, or for intimate conversation, or for the realms of nightmare and fantasy. 

December, while working the floor at FireWorks, several people told me they’d read the blog.  At first I was taken aback, stunned, blushingly embarrassed.  People where actually READING this?!  Lots of people.  People who were customers, business contacts, total ‘strangers’.  And also several casual friends who I’d kept at arm’s length, reserved.

Take a breath, Ocean.  Relax.  Pay attention.  Oh, that’s right, I’ve always wanted this exposure, this transparency, this chance at being authentic, being seen, being real.  OK, thanks for reading, all of you, as I muster the courage to respond.  Thanks for joining on this life journey, at times intense and painful, always intimate and personal. 

So writing is another way I transcend the bounds of space and time, to cross over into the realm of dreams and imagination.  The cycle, the journal, the blog, the body, the mind.  Time machines.