Sometimes you don't know how you feel until something's over. Before we left for the airport last night, Susan realized she had a few things she wished she had done. Among them was going for a ride on our motorcycle. That was easy enough to fix.
At 8:00 pm – two hours before we were scheduled to leave for the airport – Susan and I grabbed the motorcycle helmets and headed out to the garage.
"I'm not finished packing and I'm starting to really worry that I won't get done in time," she said to Aunt Penny as we walked out of the house.
"Then why are you getting on a motorcycle?!" Aunt Penny said.
Susan just shrugged and smiled through her helmet as she put one foot in front of the other. Some things you just have to do.
"You bring her back in one piece! On the night we're leaving….I don't want us to get stuck here! You be careful!" Aunt Penny said to me in tones as ominous as Aunt Penny gets.
Susan had been on a bike a few times. When they were young, she and Jack had a motorcycle for awhile. On a vacation to Bermuda and Jamaica a few years back, they rented a motor scooter.
To my surprise, she got on the bike comfortably, found her grip on the bar behind her seat and was ready to roll in just a few seconds. Emily made us wait so she could document the moment. Then Emily and Aunt Penny stood at the compound gates watching as Susan and I took off down the bumpy road that leads from the house to the main road.
"I do not like this….I do not like this…." Aunt Penny recited like a spiritual chant.
I had promised to keep it short and safe – so Susan and I just went around the corner and half a mile down the road before I turned around and took us back. The ride was no longer than five minutes. But it was enough for Susan to feel that she had her motorcycle ride in Bali. She returned to the house triumphant.
Despite the worries and the frenzy of bags being packed with purchases and things Emily asked them to take home for us, Susan and Penny were ready to roll 45 minutes early. We packed four people, and six suitcases into the car and headed off to the airport.
All went smoothly and our guests made it to the airport with plenty of time to spare.
Emily and I headed home, moved back into our bedroom and collapsed into sleep. It was a late night and very busy day.
In the aftermath of our guests departure, it turns out that we're really very tired. Although Bali isn't exactly a fast-paced environment and we weren't running around the great sights of Paris, or even the tourist trail of Los Angeles, there was a lot of activity and going here and there – all of it fun.
Still, we need a little respite before Monday when our next set of guests – my cousin Jacob and his wife Diana – arrive for ten days. The three days between guests works out well.
Today, Emily and I tried to work and did a poor job of it. When this happens, there's only one thing to do – go get two-hour massages for $15 a person. Looking at art work and grocery shopping helped round out the accomplishments of the day. Now the world seems a lot better.
Luckily, we have a lot of flexibility in our work. We'll work this weekend to make up for our slacking today. Some days, we just roll with it and enjoy the freedom.
I've lived in Thailand, Taiwan, Singapore and Bali (Indonesia). Amazingly, even though it's the furthest and least accessible of these places, I had by far the most visitors here in Bali. A lot of them.
I'm always interested in what they see and how the view Bali. Sometimes they love exactly what I expect them to, and sometimes it's things that are quite different. In all of the places I've lived, visitors vary in how quickly and much they slip into the flow of things and how much of the environment they absorb.
After a month of being here, Emily has joined me in feeling like we live here. She has an excellent grasp on how things work and what they're about. She's joined the flow of Bali. We've had this experience a few times in our travels. It's one of the reasons we like to stay each place at least two weeks – we get to really know it and start to crawl inside it.
It certainly happened when we spent a month on Patmos. We surprisingly felt in Istanbul – which we didn't expect to like so much. Kathmandu was already a place that felt like home to Emily and which I had been – so we had a good if not excellent understanding of it.
There's something wonderful about getting the nuances of a culture and way of life. When the differences fade away and the way things work start to become second nature, you start to escape being a tourist and enter the world of at least a traveler, and in some cases a resident.
Throughout this trip, I've been struck by how many of the places we've gone have started to feel normal and cool to us. I also think how many of them are places that have lifestyles that are so interesting and viable.
When I'm here in Bali, things seem normal. While it's so different from home, in so many ways it feels just as normal and understandable to me. Visitors remind me through their curiosity and reactions just how different it is. That's because unlike tourists, I no longer revel in, or even really consider the differences between here and home – I just revel in what I love about here. I celebrate Bali.
In Patmos, Emily and I did the same. We came to just fall in love with Patmos and celebrate it. When I look back, I can see what a different world it is from here and from home. But it wasn't the differences that captured our interest the way they did in Udaipur or Istanbul. We just loved Patmos for being Patmos – the way you love your family and friends for who they are.
The ability to step into another culture, another place, and another way of life and wholly embrace it is once of the great joys of this adventure and time. It's coming to understand how locals think, what their systems are and how they view the world that makes it so rich to both of us.
Our visitors were new to this part of the world. They came with open eyes and minds. In 10 days, they saw a lot but only scratched the surface of what Bali's about. It's hard to get inside it, in that short a time.
As we sit and review all our favorite moments of the visit and savor our new memories, I realize just how valuable this year has been. Our ability to linger and to spend time without an agenda affords us an opportunity our visitors didn't get.
The fact that we work has been a blessing far beyond enabling us to travel with an income – it forces us to slow down and be part of the ordinary and boring parts of a place. It shoves us into the fabric of local life to a larger extent than we would otherwise experience. It's been in the cafes, on the average streets, and in our attempts to live our lives in the midst of a journey that we've come to learn the most.
We have the special and extraordinary experience of making wherever we are our home. It's more than I had expected and it has made all the difference. More than anything we buy or any activity we do – when it's all over, this is what we'll take home and enjoy for the rest of our lives.
Sent from my iPad
