Finding myself in the palliative ward of a hospital.

After my last post, I walked around Moncton some more. Like all cities out here, it has alot of beautiful architecture and beautiful trails by the water. I was near an old church when Fernand, the man who had offered to let me stay at his place earlier, drove by. He hailed me over and invited me to dinner with him and a friend.

We ate at "Calactus", which I think roughly translated means: holy-crap-this-restaurant-is-amazing-despite-being-Vegetarian-only. Turns out he is a doctor. And also a music appreciater and dabbler. He also cycles and is much more active than I ever plan to be (he has done over 100 triathlons and has done 15 world loppets! Which will mean nothing to you unless you are an avid cross-country skiier, look it up...). We had some good conversation, and turns out his wife is in the hospital. She has been fighting cancer for 14 years with 3 recurrences, a tough woman. A few days earlier she had finally been switched over to palliative care. And yet this man was still so hospitable and warm.

They left, paid for my dinner, and brought his wife some take-out from the restaurant. He gave me his address and said he'd be home in a couple hours. I then proceded to slowly make my way to his house, stopping to phone various friends and catch up.

I arrived at his house around 8:30 and shortly thereafter busted out the musical instruments and beer. Mandolins, acoustics, electric guitars, harmonicas, instruments from all over the world (he is a collector). He listened to and appreciated my songs, and we jammed to covers he knew. It was midnight before we knew it and retired for the evening. A truly great night.

In the morning we had breakfast. Over breakfast I asked him what it was like to be a doctor and have a wife dying in the hospital. "You really learn who your friends are. Some colleagues don't even acknowledge it. It is like they are scared, or do not know what to say. I would rather have them say anything, even if they accidentally say something insensitive, than nothing." After breakfast he sort of sheepishly asked me, "Would you be willing to come up and see my wife? To play a few songs?" I happily agreed.

And so I found myself in the palliative care ward of the Moncton hospital, playing music with a beautiful couple who have had a long road battling cancer. She was tired. She was appreciative. She doesn't have much longer left on this earth. He is figuring out what life will look like now. I said goodye and thanked his wife. 

"What is your song about, that first one you played?" He asked me after.
"It's a song about trusting God. I wrote it in my third year of nursing school during my toughest semester both inside and outside the classroom. Its a prayer for me to really believe God's goodness, and his ability to use hard things. It's sort of a mental check for me to reorient my mind to believe that He is faithful."

It felt weird to say that to a man who is suffering hopefully more than I will ever know. But I really do believe those truths, and how much more important are they for these times? He thanked me, saying he too believed God used everything, that everything happens for a reason. He anticipates doing the Camino in Spain in the next few years, for many different reasons, emotional, spiritual, and physical.

He treated me to a second meal at a delicious Moroccan restaurant for lunch and we went to his house and parted ways. "I do not think we met by accident, thank you Derek." A truly beautiful and surreal 24 hours.   

Hobo 4 lyfe.

I had a decision to make last week. I got to Moncton earlier than expected and had a week to kill before my sister arrived. Do I a) bike around for a week, maybe make it to Bathurst or b) rent a car and go to Cape Breton for the week.

I chose b). So, sorry for those of you who thought I biked to Cape Breton, I did not. I will be back on the road shortly to do PEI and then head down to Halifax though! Fret not!

Cape Breton is one of the prettiest places I have been. It reminded me of Hawaii with its wide open panoramic views of the ocean and hilly countryside. It had bits of the rugged north with its sharp rock faces and forrested appearance. But disctinctly Atlantic with the lighthouses, oceanside homes painted bright colors, and people who look like members of Duck Dynasty who spent a decade or two on a sailboat.

One night in during stealth camping: SUV edition, I found a gem. I saw a side road that looked like it pitched over the side of a cliff and backed up to see if I couldn't take my car that way. The trail would have indeed taken me to my death had what looked like the foundation of an old house not been carved into the mountain. The cement slab offered me a 180 degree panoramic of the Atlantic stretching from Meat Cove to the Bay of St. Lawrence. The sky that night, removed from any semblance of civilization,  was the most dramatic display of stars I have seen. There were so many! If I had a long enough straw I could've drank the milky way! It was spectacular. Needless to say, I had a poor sleep. But just as I had fallen asleep to the sunset on one direction of my camping spot, I woke up to the sun rising from the other. Truly a spectacular find.

I was able to visit a friend of mine, Sean Morgan, twice. He is living in Sackville and on the way to Cape Breton we went camping. We found an abandoned... something (shipping building?)... and climbed around, drank some delicious beer and chatted until it grew dark on the Bay of Fundy. We visited Hopewell Rocks the next day which boasts the highest tide in the world, worth a look. Returning to Moncton last night I stopped and Sean, myself, and a friend of his jammed in the chapel with a guitar I rented, his cello, and a piano. The reverb in that chapel was spectacular, definitely a treat after not being able to play music for so long.

I left my rental car today, and let me tell you, it feels great. Driving is a lonely way to travel for someone who is... well... alone. You drive in your solitary vehicle. You go to grocery stores and get food instead of restaurants cuz you have more means to make it. You go to all these beautiful places and experience it by yourself (I kept track during my time in the Cape Breton National Park of people I saw travelling alone amidst the hundreds, total number: 1, besides myself of course). I am an introvert, so most times its enjoyable, but it is a lonely way to travel. But! Hop on a bike loaded with your life and you are now a talking piece. Within an hour of getting on my bike I had been approached and offered a place to stay tonight (french Canadians are winning in the hospitality department!). I pass by the shops more slowly, taking in the atmosphere and the people. I feel my muscles rejoicing with satisfaction of being used. Its a warm fall day and I am happy to be on a bike.

So tonight, I will dine and rest at Fernando's house. Tomorrow night I will welcome my sister at the airport. The day after tomorrow I start the final leg of my trip, around Prince Edward Island and to Halifax. Then I get to be home! To see family! To have a fridge to store beer in! To be able to do laundry at a whim! To make music and jam with friends! To not have to sponge bath in fast food restaurants! To not have to steal toothpaste from the homes of hosts by squeezing it into my little travel size tube (if I have stayed with you, I have likely done it...)!

Hobo 4 lyfe.

Quebec

Its my last night until I hit the maritime provinces. My last day of butchering French and speaking my continuous phrase, "Je ne sais pas." I should've made a t-shirt and saved some time. Fortunately most people have been able to parle Anglais avec moi. It is strange to me to meet people that don't know English in Canada! And have got a few similar reactions from Quebecois who feel aghast that I only know enough French to introduce myself and know where to take a leak.

Pulling into Quebec city I was fortunate to meet up with a cyclist who asked where I was from and what I was doing. This conversation turned into an invitation to stay the night at his house with a good dinner and warm shower. We biked into Quebec City, passing the house of Louis Garneau (the bike maker), whose helmet I was wearing. This evening was one of the more pleasant memories on my trip. He was an environmental research scientist who had taken up biking 4 years prior with a fierce passion. He was quite impressed by my powering up the 100 meter, 18% grade hill with all my gear on the way to his house (he told the story twice!).  We talked music, travel, language, cycling. His sibling in-laws came over and we shared wine and I sat back enjoying the French and English interchange. His wife spoke little English, so we defaced each others' languages and attempted to figure each other out. I left the next morning with fresh pastries his wife bought me from down the street and a warm invitation to return, such great hospitality.

Yesterday I had another lovely encounter with a man who also spoke little English. I reached a small city and found a park where I could have a snack and enjoy a view of the canal. A man came over and sat with me and we started talking. He shared with me some prayers he had written on pieces of paper. We understood little of what each other said, I could make out about half of what was written on the pieces of paper. After 10 minutes or so he left me with a prayer in broken English and a thick french accent. "Remember, what you do, work or eating or sleeping or travel, do it for love of God." His broken rendition of the verse and earnest prayer touched me quite a lot.

The St. Lawrence is now oceanic. I stopped in an amazingly beautiful little seaside town this morning called Kamouraska. You can look across to the North Shore east of Quebec and it looks very much like the gulf islands in BC. Rolling hills, seagulls, salty breeze. The Atlantic is close. For the first time today I also joined up with part of the trans-Canada trail. An endeavour to make a trail all the way across Canada fit for walks and bikers, packed gravel trails. It has been gorgeous. Fall colors, rest stops and campgrounds along various creeks, looking out over the rolling Quebec countryside. It was a treat to bike today. And tomorrow is more of the same, but mostly downhill!

It is striking me I am getting closer and closer to home. And despite all my thinking I am no closer to having life figured out. However, being OK with that is what I think I needed to figure out. Allowing none of my plans or desires to control me, living selflessly, and as the man prayed, honoring God in everything I do, are perhaps the only thing one needs to live an exciting, thankful, surrendered life.

Au revoir mon amis!

The Land Before Time

One thing I've noticed since near the beginning of my trip and continue to think about occasionally is how I am doing something that is not normal. Cities are set up for cars, not bikes. Highways I am a rare duck that cars feel uneasy being around. And don't get me started on elderly folk renting RVs for the first time... I remember pulling into Regina and it had lots of different roads merging onto the highway so I was constantly bombarded on both sides by high speed traffic. I don't know if I would have felt more out of place if I was driving a horse and buggy on the shoulder into town!
Then there is camping! Until I reached Ontario, I could count on one hand the number of tents I saw at campsites. Everyone else had their portable homes with their big trucks and a motorcycle in the back. So weird. But I guess random towns in Saskatchewan isn't where I would set up a tent either if I had the weekend off... the tenters are probably just all in the forest. Anyways, still made me stand out.
Then basically as soon as I reached Quebec I felt like Little Foot from the Land Before Time! You know at the end where he is reunited with a bunch of other longnecks??? Thats me in Quebec! There are cyclists everywhere! Like, everywhere. There was this group of islands just outside Quebec that they joined together with a series of bridges to make this beautiful 11km parkway with bike lanes. Then as soon as you get into Quebec there is La Route Verte, which is essentially paved bike lanes beside the road in a significant portion of south Quebec. Then you get into Montreal and half of the main streets have dedicated bike lanes.
Then theres the cyclists. You've got the hipster bikers on their fixies, no helmets, listening to Arcade Fire and generally ignoring most street rules except for "don't get hit". Then theres grandpa on his old ten speed, who is just as cool as the hipsters but stops for red lights. You've got the spandex rockets who pass you and don't even glance your way.
I'm not even an unusual sight here! I rarely get second glances because everyone is on a bike. Although I have had two people come up to me and start chattering in French until they realize I'm some ignorant fool from somewhere else and speak English to me.

I leave Montreal tomorrow and head towards Quebec City. I realized that I actually have to boogie if I want to make it to New Brunswick in time for when my sister arrives! I love Montreal and hope to visit again someday. Transit, old montreal, bike paths, Mont Royal, restaurants... there is too much to take in. Every block I see a cafe or restaurant I would love to eat at, but there are only 3 meals in a day.

Further on into French-land I go. I still need to have a poutine somewhere.

"Turns out I'm normal"

"I told the doctor I was overtired, anxiety-ridden, compulsively active, constantly depressed, with recurring fits of paranoia. Turns out I'm normal." Jules Feiffer

I've been having a down past few days. I wanted to share because while social media excels at letting us portray ourselves as we would love to be, I think we lose alot of humanity in only portraying the more extraorindary parts of ourselves or our days. The truth is, anxiety is as real as the wonderful lunches or sunsets I post pictures of, and depression is sometimes as much a part of my life as smiling selfies. I think we do each other a disservice in our perfect presentations because it makes us feel less than normal if we cannot live in this bubbly state of doing well.

The truth is there were moments today I didn't really feel like existing. A friend of mine once mentioned that he liked it when it was raining outside because he felt as if that was a better reflection of how he felt than the summer sun. It was like the world was a foreign experience to him until the clouds rolled in, because living in that shadow is what he knew more often than not. I don't think thats a good place to live in, but I can understand it.

I have good friends and family. I have wonderful people I can talk to. I have a loving God who shows me grace when I satisfy my anxieties in unhealthy ways. This isn't a plea for help. Just acknowledgement that I feel this way sometimes, and its normal if you do too.

So, to anyone who struggles to find hope some days save the hope that one day they can hope again, it passes.