The long and winding road

I am an aggressive bicyclist. Years of biking across a college campus of drivers late to class, pedestrians and the occasional skateboarder have made me a hostile person when you get between me and my destination when I’m on two wheels.

(There were many instances in college when I was biking to campus and felt the need to comment on the perceived stupidity of the person who just walked out in front of me, as I would have done if I was driving. The one huge difference in this situation when one is biking and one is driving is the lack of enclosed space when one is biking. ie. When you call someone an idiot/or cuss someone out on a bike, they can hear you.)

This situation has not changed since I’ve moved halfway around the world. There are fewer cars, but more chickens, goats and small children that run out into the middle of the road as one is trying to bike to work.

The thing, though, is that “road” is a very relative term here. Basically, what became the road is the path that everyone walks. (As long as you greet the family whose front yard through which you pass, you shouldn’t have a problem.) When I first moved here, I always got lost going home in the dark because I wouldn’t be able to follow the path of the “road” to my house.

Roads in American belong to the vehicles. And the more wheels you have the more you have a right to that road. Here, the roads belong to the children and the neighbors and the chickens. It is not uncommon for someone to walk down the middle of the narrow path on which I am trying to bike or for a child to be standing right around the corner of a tight turn.

The truth is, that here, it is those people that have much more of a right to the road than I do. Roads don’t lead from your house to the boutique. They lead from your house past the lemon tree under which your neighbors nap during the afternoon, with a turn at the hair dresser with a television that all the kids in the area try to watch through the window, past the woman who sells gas and only speaks to you in local language where your colleagues occasionally hang out, past the woman who sells fried tofu around 6:30 each evening to the boutique where you are greeted by name.

When you’re on the road, you’re not just trying to get from point A to point B, but to see where the journey there will take you.