Adventurous I ain't.

I have been on vacation recently, (more or less, meaning I work one day out of every two or three,) which has resulted in my sitting around far too much. Which has led me to question "what the fuck am I doing here? Why am I sitting around locked in my house when I could be out having "adventures"?

Which, of course, was the exact same question I used to ask myself at Gouno. Then I would embark upon an expedition, to . . . hmmm . . . hmmm . . . hmmmmmmm. The river! Along the way I would accidentally collect about 47 small boys who would attach themselves to me like burrs to velcro, and would proceed to spend the next 4 hours attempting to climb, swim, wade, fall-down and otherwise stumble painfully about, till I tired of the utter green magnificence, and realized that, while interesting, unless there was something more of interest to be found here, it really was Milo time. It never turned out to be much of an adventure.

So, in a similar fashion, I have recently repeatedly set out from the house, bearing with me a few items, and bravely went to . . . hmmm. A pizzeria!! A cafe!! A bar!! Well, in all honesty, I wander about first, looking for . . . something, until eventually it occurs to me that a beer might be in order. So, although I have made it out of the house, it really hasn't added up to much adventure. Until recently.

My wife and her friends, (OK, they are mine too, I suppose) decided to go to Szczawnica, (yeah, go ahead, try and pronounce it.) I agreed because it was "lovely, and so beautiful." When we got there, it finally came out, (what had been rather indirectly hinted at previously) that there really was nothing there unless we were to take bicycles, and pedal toward the old Red Cloister in the hills, on the Slovakian side of the border. Not willing to be a poor sport, (but knowing that bicycles often sense my unease with them and attack,) I agreed to rent this two-wheeled contraption, and we set off down the trail. It was fun for a while, but eventually the sheer rock cliffs around the river, the rushing brown torrent, the green forest and gently rolling hills began to merge together into a somewhat red-faced, slightly out of breath and lightly bespeckled with mud experience dominated by overtones of extreme hunger. Shortly after this fact had blossomed into full prominence in my mind was the exact moment when people began enquiring cheerfully about my welfare, and making generally pleased noises toward the surrounding plant life.

"Isn't it beautiful?" they would breathlessly enquire, looking off into the distance at something I apparently had not seen. "Look at the trees!" they would say, leading me to wonder if they were referring to something in particular, or just the fact that there were, in fact, a very large number of trees all around us. "Oooh, isn't the river nice?" Which comment led me to wonder exactly what the difference between a nice and not-nice river might be, and if I really wanted to find out.

It wasn't too long after this that a sort of semi-detached hallucinatory rationality set in, and I began to analyse what this scene required to really bring out the beauty, and make it a really pleasant, top-notch experience. And it occurred to me that if we could just knock down some of the trees, and build a really nice art-museum which could have a nice coffee shop/bar with large, plate-glass windows maintained spotlessly clean, through which one might stare at the nice trees,and the rushing river, while drinking a good espresso, and pondering the delicacies that the delicate young thing in the apron was carrying to other patrons every time you glanced up from your book or conversation, then we could REALLY have something here.

Now, it rather deserves mentioning at this point that sometime prior we had crossed the border into Slovakia, and sometime prior to that my bicycle had begun revealing its true nature. Whenever it was necessary to pedal hard, the chain would attempt to slip gears, resulting in your feet flying off the pedals, and your teeth flying toward the handle-bars. But, of course, as long as you changed gears, (which it could kind of, sort of, do) you could avoid this problem, unless you were going up anything much resembling an incline, in which case you were shit out of luck, and might as well get off and push.

As we progressed further and further away from the cluster of houses behind us which I mentally referred to rather wistfully as "civilization," my annoyance at the monotony of nature's majesty increased proportionally with my hunger, till it was difficult to refrain, when asked "How ya' doin, Matt?" from answering "What part of mud-spattered, out of breath, hungry and sore-assed would you care me to comment on?"

Then quite suddenly my self-pitying reverie was interrupted as my bicycle began doing a fair imitation of a drunk man on stilts. I slammed on the brakes, (to much cursing behind me,) and began fiddling with the front wheel, which was flopping back and forth freely, loose enough to be able to rub the brakepads on either side. I immediately could see that this was an emergency of the first order, and would require helicopter evacuation. To calm my sense of rising panic, I immediately ate my share of the lunch, which helped significantly. As my belly slowly filled with sausage and focaccio bread, I nourished myself mentally with thoughts of myself walking, pushing this damned infernal machine, suffering every step of the way, encountering pitying looks from passing hikers as I struggled up, and then down, one gentle incline after another, making my way back to civilization, where there would be beer and over-priced kielbasa.

My loving wife, eventually sensing that something gloomy was missing from her life, came back to find me. Despite all attempts to reason with her, she insisted that giving up was not the logical answer to most of the difficulties life presents one with, and suggested rather that we cast about for some tools with which to fix the problem. I half-heartedly tried the nuts with my fingers, and was delighted to find that they were rock-solid-tight. There would be no fixing it. Eventually the other members of our party returned, and after some debate, in which I felt I was doing well, and moving them steadily toward the idea that I must, for the good of all, begin walking back, Peter suddenly grabbed the bike, turned it back over (I had been enjoying the sight of the damn thing with its wheels in the air, like some sort of helpless beetle on its back) and pronounced he would ride it.

I cannot describe the humiliation of my defeat. After such a fortuitious turn of events, to be robbed of your martyrdom at the last second by someone who casually shrugs and takes your burden of suffering upon themselves and cheerfully soldiers forward was almost more than I could take. I fought back bitter tears of resentment as I watched him ride off, wheel wobbling like a wobbly wheel, while I was left with the better, still functioning bike. I was left with no choice but to follow.

As it turned out, the cloister was only another 10 minutes of muddy riding away, and as they had beer and over-priced kielbasa available there, they did a pretty good imitation of rudimentary civilization. After beer and kielbasa, I could no longer stomach the guilt of allowing someone else, (regardless of how brave,) to continue carrying what by all rights should be MY ticket to feeling sorry for myself, and so insisted that I would ride it back, despite the fact that he claimed to enjoy it, as it made the ride more interesting.

Which, it turns out, it did. The rubbing against the brakepads, the extra-hard peddling to overcome the extra resistance, the constant rythmic screech, and the side-to-side wobble were just the things for taking one's mind off the over-abundance of all things natural currently encroaching aggressively on one's person, among which had to be counted a fine layer of sweat.

The trip back seemed to take much less time than the trip out, which seems always to be the case. When we got back I forgot to dismount a little ways out and push it mournfully in, which meant we had to stand about longer, and stubbornly refuse to pay for some minutes before Rachel, for the benefit and better comprehension of the stubbornly insisting owner, did a fantastic impression of pushing the bike uphill and downhill, and sweating egregiously on the long walk, to the cloister and back. Which finally did the trick, and saved me 3 dollars.

On the busride home, before falling asleep, I pondered the whole concept of adventure, and finally came to the idea that adventure only occurs once one steps out of the zone within one's control, and allows chance and Mr. Murphy to play an unusually large role in determining one's happiness and comfort quotient. My final conclusion (which I suspect most people just grasp intuitively,) was unless one has a specific worthy goal in mind, (ie, we are going to hike through the woods to see an old temple in Cambodia) which will recompense one for the time, discomfort and expense, one really might be better off watching someone else's adventure on the discovery channel. Unless you just get off on mud and trees.

Or, alternatively, you can factor out the time and expense, add in extra pay for the discomfort, and set a price on the experience. At 30 zloty an hour, plus 5 zloty extra for discomfort pay, I have 35 zloty per hour over the course of 6 hours, (that includes time spent waiting for the bus) which is 210 zloty, plus 6.70 times 2 for the bus ride, plus 20 zloty for lunch, brings us to 233.40 zloty. Then, all I have to do is figure out how much satisfaction, monetarily speaking, I derive from telling the story. Roughly, I would say about 7 zloty worth. Maybe 8. Then it is just a matter of telling the story enough times to repay myself in satisfaction for the time and expense the story cost me in getting. Which means I only need to tell it another 28.175 times to break even.