Rick Gunn's battered, mud-covered bike is shown sporting a ripped bag, broken frame, cracked rim and bald tires, with a thrift-store handbag on top to replace a spent drybag. Rick Gunn / Special to the Tribune
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Rick Gunn / Special to the Tribune May 2, 2008 PrintEmail Editor's note: This is one in a series of journal entries from Rick Gunn, a South Lake Tahoe photographer, detailing his two-year bicycle journey around the world. Along the way, he is soliciting donations for the Make-A-Wish Foundation. To donate, go to wish.org. To read his complete "Wish Tour" journal, go to rickgunnphotography.com.
When my plane finally touched down in North America, the memories came in a flood. Staring out the window at a wet runway in Vancouver, British Columbia, those memories gathered into a single thought, that of a conversation. One that had ebbed and flowed within my head since its origin some six years earlier.
"I feel unlovable," I recalled telling the woman who sat across from me. "I have trouble in relationships, too." The woman encouraged me to continue. "I also have problems setting boundaries," I added, "problems expressing anger, troubles dealing with setbacks - difficulties saying no."
I often had shared these things with others, but this woman was different. She seemed to be listening with the entirety of her being, without expectations, agendas or judgments.
And as she took in my words and validated my perceived wounds, it felt as though I were bathing them in cool, clear water.
And so it was that I continued that conversation, meeting with this woman for an hour a week, month after month, year after year, digging deeply into the depths of my own personal history book.
Unflinchingly, I recounted the pinnacles of my joy and the depths of my failures, bravely shining the light upon the most painful internal landscapes, upturning the darkest earth unto light.
Journal 55: The End
Dates: March 20-May 3, 2008
Mileage log: 24,285-25,760
Elevation: Sea level-2,500 feet
Locations: Canada: Vancouver, British Columbia; Washington state: Birch Bay, Anacortes, Port Townsend, Silverdale, Seattle, Crescent Lake, Forks, Kalaloch Beach, Cosmopolis; Oregon: Astoria, Oswald West State Park, Cape Lookout State Park, Devil's Lake State Park (Lincoln City), Florence, Brookings; California: Crescent City, Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, Eureka, Humboldt Redwoods State Park, McKerriker State Park, Russian Gulch State Park, Van Damme State Park, Gualala, Jenner, Bodega Bay, Freestone, Petaluma, Point Reyes Station, Olema, Mill Valley, San Francisco (Golden Gate Bridge)
Then, one day, I came clean with it.
"Viola," I said, "I'm think I'm crazy."
A smile broadened across her face, her eyes aglow with warmth and confidence.
"Rick," she replied, "the ones that are crazy in this world are the ones that insist they're not."
Three years passed before the bulk of my fears transformed into an incredible lightness of being. As they did, I utilized the extra energy I had gained into the actualization of a dream - my dream to ride a bicycle around the planet.
Three days before I left, I met with Viola one last time. With tears of love and respect streaming from my eyes, I thanked her from the depths of my heart, then wrapped my arms around her in a warm hug.
"Well," I said in a quivering voice, "I guess we'll pick up where we left off when I get back."
She looked at me for a moment, staring intently with those deep mirrors of insight and wisdom.
"Who knows, Rick," she smiled, "you may not feel the need."
"Sir ..." a stewardess' voice interrupted, snapping me from my daydream. "Sir, we've arrived in Vancouver. It's time to disembark."
A certified exhaust technician welds a break in Gunn's bicycle frame after it broke five miles into the last leg of his 25,000-mile journey around the world. The break and subsequent repair took place on the outskirts of Vancouver, British Columbia. Rick Gunn / Special to the Tribune
An hour later, after I had built my bike from a box among the empty chairs of the arrival terminal, I reluctantly rolled to the mouth of two immense glass doors and stared out for a moment at the steel-gray skies as a shuffle of passengers intermittently ushered in bone-chilling blasts of frigid air.
Then, with only $20 to my name, wearing holey clothes and a secondhand pair of gloves, I climbed atop my rig and set out one last time.
Merging into traffic with four torn bike bags, two bald tires and a cracked rear rim, I negotiated my way south of the city's center. Then, five miles into a thousand-mile journey, my bike began wobbling treacherously.
Pulling to the curb, I looked down to discover that my third bicycle frame had snapped clean through at the rear triangle. Stranded amid the whir of Canadian traffic, I gazed at my bike's gaping wound.
I could have very well cried. Instead, I let loose with an uncontrollable belly laugh.
How ironic was it, that I had battered this bike over 15,000 miles, over the most brutal, rock-strewn stretches on the planet - across Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tibet and Indonesia - only to have it snap on one of the smoothest roads in the Western Hemisphere?
I bent down near the break and leaned in tight. "You did all right," I whispered to the bike like some dying horse.
I pushed it for a mile until I came to a muffler shop. Wheeling it through a large, roll-up door, I negotiated a price, then watched as a certified exhaust technician welded the repair.
"Do you think it'll hold for a thousand miles?" I asked after he returned it to me.
"It either will or it won't," he offered apathetically, then turned and walked away.
Though I didn't realize it at the time, the muffler man's words were Zen. They reminded me of one of the most important lessons I had learned during my journey, such as the lesson of impermanence.
After three years cycling 25,000 miles through 33 countries, I had worn out approximately three bicycle frames, five rear rims, 15 sets of tires, three drive trains, four seats, five pairs of cycling shoes, six pairs of cycling shorts, five iPods, six cyclo-computers, 20 sets of headphones, two laptops, two cameras and five lenses.
Fog-covered old-growth trees along Highway 101 in Oregon show Rick Gunn's path through Cape Perpetua en route down the Pacific coast to the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. Rick Gunn / Special to the Tribune
But more important than the equipment, it came to me, was the impermanence itself.
It encompassed everyone and everything: the weather, my moods, the people and the landscapes, the moon, the sky, the religions, the politics, the food, the dress- the pleasure and the pain.
If there was one thing I could count on during the course of this journey, it was change. Once I made peace with that, nothing could stop me.
This latest setback was no exception.
Rolling my reincarnated rig from that muffler shop on the outskirts of Vancouver, I hopped back on it and began charging south from the dormant patchwork of farmlands in southernmost British Columbia through to America and the endless stands of pines in northern Washington state. On little more than peanut butter and jelly, and a budget of $5 per day, I continued pedaling south, alongside a 300-mile-long spread of water along the majestic beaches of the Olympic Peninsula and the rocky coastal capes of the Oregon coast.
Then I finally crossed the border into Northern California.
"I'm home," I whispered as I entered the churchlike silence of Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park. The organic high rise seemed to respond in kind, showering my arrival with gossamer rays of silvery light.
I finished the bulk of my ride down Highway 1, through Fort Bragg, Mendocino, Gualala and Bodega Bay.
In just a few days' time, I would complete my journey in the loving arms of friends and family at my final destination on San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge.
But before I did, I had one last thing I had to do.
Picking up a parcel my father had sent by mail, I backtracked to the north, to the tiny hamlet of Jenner. Turning off where the Russian River met the sea, I pedaled upstream.
Along the way, I began picking at the mad blooms of springtime flowers along the road, stuffing them copiously into a plastic bag. I collected wild rose, honeysuckle, iris, moon-flowers, mustard flower, wisteria, daffodils, daisies and poppies.
I attached the bag to my bike, then rolled to a small, quiet alcove along the river.
Tearing open the package, I came upon its contents: a jar full of dirt. Because I never had the chance to scatter my mother's ashes, I had requested that my father send me some of the earth over which he had spread them 26 years ago.
I sat for some time with that jar and those flowers. Then, slowly, I opened the bag and floated the flowers equally upon the slow-moving waters.
Watching them float in a swirl of color, another flood of memories came to me. In one of those memories, I envisioned the same river before me: a man and a woman smiling within a kayak; their two children, splashing and squealing jubilantly upon their laps.
It was the last memory I had of my family intact. Then my mind stretched back further, back to a memory that may well have been my first.
In that memory, I was little more than an infant: naked, wriggling in my mother's arms. I recalled how, holding my tiny body ever so cautiously, she slowly, gently, lovingly introduced me to the water.
Now, that task had come full circle. Taking one last moment to peer out over those moving waters, I opened the jar. As tears began to flow, my lips moved in a whisper.
"Well, Mom, I finally did it. I cycled around the world.
"I know your eyes were not able to see that same world, but I hoped to make you proud knowing that my eyes did.
"The truth was that I was a boy when you left and not quite ready for your departure. Now that I am a man, it is time for me to say goodbye."
With that, I cast the earth from the jar with a sweeping arch, its powdery remnants drifting toward the sky.
When I was done, I stripped off my clothes, then slipped beneath a glimmer of emerald water.
I knew at that moment that this journey had reached its end.
I long since had looked to this moment, as if all the experiences of my journey would align and all the answers to my questions would coalesce into some neat order, revealing their deeper meanings.
What came instead was the acceptance of the mystery - how beautifully unexplainable it all was. This and a deep appreciation for what simply was.
And in that, I had seen God. Not the culturally myopic God of one region, culture or religion, but the vast god who resides within the vast man. The one who danced between the synapses, illuminating the atomic spaces; the god who sung in the shimmering leaves on the edge of the forest; the one who spoke unquestionably in the eyes of a young child.
The god whose real name is love.
As I crawled from the water and stared back over the river, I pondered what the legacy of my life would be. Soon, in perhaps 50 years or less, the river that was my life also would return to the sea.
I thought of the words of the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., giving his description of how he wanted to be remembered after he was gone:
"I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity ... that I was a drum major for justice ... a drum major for peace ... a drum major for righteousness. I just want to leave behind a committed life."
Eclipsed by the magnitude of King's vision, I smiled upon the realization that I, too, would leave behind something permanent, however small in comparison.
Not fame, fortune, glory or accomplishments - just small acts of kindness and the precious acts of love.
I would like to end this journey by deeply thanking all those who believed in me, those who contributed in one way or another, as well as recognize three of my greatest heroes: my father, Richard Gunn; Viola Nungary, MFCC; and the late Dr. Leo Buscaglia, a tireless proponent of the power of love.
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