man, where to start??... roughly two weeks ago I had an abrupt realization one morning. I was riding along on the bike, in the desert heading south into West Sahara region, when I suddenly understood a truth... that I simply do not enjoy riding a bicycle... The places it can take you are without compare, the experiences it can give you, the situations it can put you in, are all one of a kind and something that has influenced my travelling style forever.... but the real physical act of riding the bicycle is something i have found i do not enjoy, which shouldnt be too huge a suprise as i have never enjoyed bicycle riding before. I find the bicycle a bit too strenuous and all around taxing to realistically look foward to packing up everything and moving on day after day after day. Physically i have incredible pains in the knees, real pains, like a white hot knife is being shoved into my knee cap with each pedal! I attribute this to a number of things, years of playing "catcher" in baseball, up and down pressure directly on my still developing knees, over and over for many seasons. Then in highschool i started lifting weights, now that i am well rooted in my understanding of physical training, i see clearly that at the time i was being "encouraged" to lift totally absurde amounts of weight without anyone having much of a clue as to "proper form" or long term effects, all the coaches cared about was me being big and strong at any cost!! The third reason and perhaps a big one, is that the bike i am riding does not fit me properly at all. The bike was generously donated for the trip by my stepfather Pete, who is roughly 6'2" tall. I am not nearly that tall and this bike was clearly designed for him. When you look at a side view of me on the bike it is clearly out of line, (despite making every possible adjustment) the "axle" that secures my legs to my hips is actually in front of the axel that holds the pedals onto the bike, so that i am in a very unnatural and contorted position for pedalling this massive, fully loaded touring bike. One hour into the days riding and my knees and shins and ankles begin to burn like somone is ripping the muscle away from my bones!!! I have zero experience with bicycles but i do not think this is normal, otherwise there is no way anybody would ever want to ride one!!!

There is the physical aspect, but there is more. The planning for this trip went as far as "we meet eachother in Madrid on January 27th".... literally we didnt go much futher in the planning process than that, both being experienced travellers, we knew thats about as far as you can plan anything and that the real key to this kind of travel is flexability and acceptence. However, since i am so low on funds i could only come out this time for 4 months or so, basically to get a feel for the riding for the next time i came back and to experience life in general. By and by we decided just to tour Morocco for the length of our free Moroccan visa, three months. This led to a situation though, after a while i felt like we were just riding around a bit aimlessly in the harshness of the Sahara desert. If we had open time and much more money then we could "move on" to the next country, and like that we would have a goal in mind and a "place" we are heading, new cultures to experience, new people, freshness, newness. But we had much time to kill here in Morocco, and after the first month of experienceing the culture i felt there came a crossroad, either to move along, or move deeper. So i decided it was time to move deeper. I decided to go back to one of the villages we visited before, as something was telling me, shouting at me, that i had much more to learn from this group of people and that i would be wise to return and move deeper into whatever was calling me back there. So i told EL of my plans to go back for a few weeks and learn what i am meant to learn. EL wished to move on further south, so we decided to meet in three weeks time in a city deep in the Rif mountain range. We woke up, ate something small, packed our gear, looked eachother in the eyes and said "see you in a few weeks my friend"... and like that EL and I went our seperate ways, literally in opposite directions. This was a powerful moment for me, we say we meet again in three weeks, but my heart is a travellers heart and it knows well the truth... that i may very well never see this woman again... watching her ride off, knowing that i am not following her today, a tear came to my eye, not out of sadness but just the opposite, out of sincere appreciation and love for the unforgettable experiences we shared together and for her as a woman and as a human being.....
EL is a truly fantastic human being and her love for life is so beautiful that it easily shows on her face. We laughed often, looked after eachothers backs, debated things until we arrived at the best solution, found ourselves in some of the most strange and incredible experiences i can think of..... we shared an unforgettable time together, and for that i give her deep thanks. However, the moment i watched her leave and got on my own bike to ride in my own direction, everything changed immediately. I felt as though a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders, like a fresh, new innocence had just taken hold... i was travelling solo again baby!!! But do not think for a moment the weight was coming FROM EL, she was absolutely no burden to me at all, i very much enjoyed her... but i soon realized the weight was coming not from her but through her. Allow me to explain:

Morocco and subsequently Moroccans, are the most sexually repressed culture i have ever encountered. The seperation between male and female is absolute here, no blending. Ninety Nine percent of the women here are completely covered, from head to toe covered in cloth so that all thats visible is the eyes, usually even the hands and feet have cloth over them! You do not see the female physique at all here, it is considered something very private and personal. On top of this, in countries where the people are naturally dark, there exists a strong desire to be light, fair skinned. The opposite view than from places where the people are white, all wanting to be tan, holding darkness as a concept of beauty, the more tan the more beautiful right?? Well, as the human mind is human, in the places where people are born dark, fairness, whiteness is held as the defining concept of beauty, the fairer one is, the more beautiful.... we all only want what we do not have, because that is the very nature of wanting. So anyways, the Moroccans find fairness the most attractive of all, they hardly ever get to see even the outline of a womans figure, let alone her skin, and taken as a whole, the culture has a view towards sexuality and the human body that one might expect from a very inmature ten year old... To top off this equation (then ill get to the point), there exists this unimaginably strong urge, this total fantasy, a dream, that each of them wish to find and marry a French woman. They have these lofty dreams of the "good life" in a western country (as they are led to believe thru media sources) and since they already learn French in school and are so close to France, the French woman becomes an object of such desire its hard to find an accurate comparison, perhaps as desireable as air would be to a man that is drowning!!Because of these conditions, travelling with EL was really something else!.. Usually i travel solo, and like that, i know that i can completely take care of myself, people have no hidden intentions (besides occassionally someone trying to sell me their daughter)... but in this life i am a man and people know when they look at me that there is not going to be any funny business going on here, its clear cut and direct, everyone knows how to recieve and treat a man. But put a woman into the mixture and wow, everything changes!!... Not only is EL a woman, she is a beautiful woman, with very clear, white, fair skin that is smooth and softer than silk... She has all of her teeth left in her head, and they are strait and white, almost unseen here! She wears clothes that are not excessively tight but somewhat form fitting, you can definitely see her curves, clearly. As if this wasnt enough, she is French. All of this added together and you get a mixture that is just absolutely irresistable to the Moroccans. I started to realize this immediately. They would initially talk with me first, because i am the man and in this type of culture all the important talking is done amongst the men, women are often not even looked at or aknowledged at all. But as soon as they realized that i did not speak french, but she did, it was all over from there. Guys were trying to hit on her everywhere we went, and im not talking the semi flattering type you would find in the west, but this overly aggressive, repressed type of energy that reminds you of a pitbull staring at a piece of meat. Once we would arrive to a place and the men found that i could not understand what was being said, they would just ramble and ramble on to her, not giving any attempt at all whatsoever to talk with me, why would they? theres a beautiful French woman right in front of them and they have an excuse to talk to her directly, rather than thru me which would be customary in this culture.... The Moroccans want so desperately to marry a French woman that even when i am there, directly next to her, both of us wearing wedding rings, they will actively try and hit on her, offering her thousands of Euros in exchange for marriage!!! Keep in mind that while we travelled in Muslim country, we both wear wedding rings and we say that we are married, it helps so much really!! When they know we are married then the questions dont go as deep and usually they wouldnt get any funny ideas of what they might do with this woman, they respect marriage... So after a few weeks or month, i felt like it was getting really a bit rediculous, everywhere we went the men would look at her like she is a piece of meat at the market and they are starving!!! In a group of men, even if they could speak a few words of english, they wouldnt even attempt to try and communicate with me because they had a perfect excuse to talk to her. I could go on and on but the point is that with a beautiful French woman alongside the dynamics change completely.... this i understand now...

I understand this more now because the moment we parted ways, the interactions with the locals changed drastically!!! No longer was every single man breaking their necks to look in my direction, in fact they give me a quick glance, as a white man on a bicycle is still very strange to them, but that is all. There is no more over hospitallity like their was with her, still they are exceedingly kind and hospitable, but with her alongside they were freaking rediculously, overly insistant. Now they just wave to me like a man and not like they have some kind of hidden agenda or desires. Now situations are more clear cut to me, with her around the men would absolutely loose their minds i tell you!!! haha It became very difficult to distinguish people motivations to see how genuine they were!!!.. but now that im back riding solo again, Im just a man, nobody wants to marry me or have sex with me, so we can have very genuine interactions. Also, i realize how i became overly reliant on her, as she speaks perfect French obviously, she was the translator for everything, asking for directions and such.... but now, because i dont speak any of the local languages, its back to the game of Sherades!!! I am finding this is one of my favorite parts of travelling, being unable to speak and learning to develope a huge set of skills that allows me to communicate and understand people and situations on a completely different level... my ability to read people and situations has developed exponentially the past few years of travelling... people think they communicate thru words, but i observe with my own eyes something very different... the real meaning, the deeper truth of what people try to convey is more authentically revealed in their non verbals... i am becoming an expert in this form of communication... my non verbal being communicating with your non verbal being... it is spectacular!!!.... it is easy to decieve someone thru your words, but good luck trying to decieve them thru your being....

FAST FOWARD A COUPLE WEEKS.....

I have been staying in this fishing village for a couple weeks now, no way to tell exactly how much time because nobody seems to know the days or even the month around here really... just existance.... I am staying in this hut with a group of villagers, living with them, eating with them, praying with them, learning with them, laughing with them, and we do not share a single word of the same language! but that is rapidly changing because i am actively learning Arabic from all of them!! In this village there is no electricity, and no running water, one illuminates the darkness by candlelight and retrieves water with a bucket out of a deep well...I came back here because i knew there was more to learn, but i had no idea it would be this much!! I cant even begin to process or describe this experience right now because i am still smack in the middle of it... right now im just here, observing every move, every sound, every smell, every gesture... like a newborn child, taking in everything that comes to me, not judging it, just observing it...this stuff is so far out there i cannot even define it... seriously man this is some National Geographic stuff going on here!!!... I could write volumes on what ive observed already!!! Tomorrow i begin a ten day retreat under the guidance of the Village Shaman, ooooold school yoga practice at sunrise, hours of reading and studying the Qur'an and what it means to be inately divine, meditation and prayer.... it has been a long time since i have felt this much life serging thru my veins... this is it man... this is it....