Untamed Spirit

Untamed Spirit Around the World on a Motorcycle—Living a Dream I cannot tell you where the dream came from or when it began, but it seems it has been with me forever. In 1989, at the age of forty-one I learned how to ride a motorcycle and that was the beginning of my travels in North America. Each summer from 1990 onward I did a two to four week trip on my bike. By the end of year 2000 I had travelled in forty-one States of America and all ten Provinces in Canada. North America is a wonderful place to travel with landscapes so diverse and spectacular one can never tire of its beauty. I just could not seem to get enough. Everywhere I went people were wonderful and I felt perfectly safe. Up to this point most of my travelling was with other people—sometimes one friend, other times a group of friends, and many times family members who ride motorcycle. The more places I discovered the more my thoughts about travelling around the world grew. Every time I thought seriously about doing it, old anxieties would surface—I can’t do this alone, I don’t have enough money, what if I have trouble with my bike, I’ll miss my children and grandchildren … the excuses kept rolling through my mind. To make matters worse, many well meaning friends and family members tried to discourage me. They expressed their fears of going out into the unknown world alone. They repeated horror stories they had heard somewhere. I am sure they were genuinely concerned about me, but as I listened to their tales, my own anxieties grew. Then one day I realized that most of their stories were from second hand information and not their own experiences. I could not, and would not allow them to impose their fears on me. In the summer of year 2000 I travelled across Canada and the United States from coast to coast with two other motorcycling enthusiasts. We travelled for seven weeks crossing the United States from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic, then back across Canada from the Atlantic to the Pacific. I enjoyed the adventure so much I hated to see it come to an end. I began to wonder what it would be like to travel without a time frame, without a schedule, and ride around the globe. “Thoughts are seeds that, if fed and watered, grow into realities.” I fed and watered my seeds daily. I laminated a map of the world and put it in the centre of my kitchen table. Every time I sat down to eat, it would be right there in front of me. I drew potential routes with a washable pen enjoying the dream. I am sure I changed parts of it every day as I read about places I wanted to see. With each new day my dream became more of a reality. I believe we create our own destiny—that God, the Divine Spirit of the Universe, has given us the tools to make our life whatever we desire it to be. It happened one day towards the end of year 2000; I made the decision to just do it! All the fears I had—I can’t travel alone, the world is too dangerous, I don’t have enough money—came flooding in. Then it hit me! These fears will always be there. I am fifty-two years old and if I wait for everything to be perfect I’ll soon be too old to go. At that moment I asked myself a critical question. Doris, what would be your biggest regret if you knew you were to die tomorrow? The answer came without hesitation and without doubt. “My biggest regret would be that I never embraced the chance to see the rest of the world.” In that instant my decision was made! A miraculous thing happens when one ‘decides’. I remember only parts of a verse I had taped to my refrigerator door. It goes like this: “The moment one is committed, Providence moves too. Doors open where there were no doors before. All sorts of things occur to help one that would otherwise never have occurred.” There is more, but these are the words that spring from my memory.