A Perfect Ten – 2015

by Widdershins

Continuing my countdown to my blog’s 10th Anniversary on 27th September this year, I’m revisiting what I posted on or around that date each year.

On September 25th, 2015, I’d planned to do a bit of a postscript of the previous nine posts, which isn’t what happened, but I decided that those nine posts were worthy of their own place on my ‘Perfect Ten’ list.

2015 was many things but one thing stands head and shoulders above all else, our Road Trip.

Have you ever chosen to do something so monumentally beyond anything you’ve ever experienced before that the Universe looks out for you until you get a handle on what you’re doing?

I’ve had these things thrust on me by Life, and the actions of others, but only thrice have I dared to leap off such giant Cliffs of the Unknowable, by choice.

Cliff 1 – buying a motorcycle when I’d never, ever, been on one before. (I didn’t even have my drivers license) The only thing with two wheels I’d ever ridden on before then were bicycles. (and believe me the experience is very different!)  I had a very elegant road bicycle that got me everywhere I needed to go, but not everywhere I wanted to go.

I rode my motorcycle (everywhere) for two years – until a truck on the wrong side of the road took us out … destroyed my bike, put me in hospital for five weeks and one day, (but who’s counting) and left me with one-and-a-half knees for evermore. Had I been in a car I would’ve been killed.

I loved that bike. Like my bicycle before it (which I sent off to a good home) I gained the freedom, the space, to leave the damaged parts of my life behind, and focus on putting the remaining bits back together again – a lifelong project, I might add.

Cliff 2 – Moving from Australia to Canada via an interminably long aeroplane journey. Most of you know the story, but here it is again, briefly. Mrs Widds and I met online and as I had no ties to bind me to Australia off I flew … having only twice ever been in little ‘puddle-jumper’ planes before.

I had no idea what a trans-oceanic sixteen-hour flight, from one side of the world to the other, from one hemisphere to the other, would be like. Needless to say I survived.

Cliff 3 – Mrs Widds and I driving ten thousand kilometers across Canada, and back, towing an 8 meter (25′) travel trailer that we’d only picked up four days previously, having never towed anything before, ever, either of us.

I was the designated planner and map-reader (Mrs Widds was working in Vancouver at the time and commuting from Widder Island – an hour-plus-change in each direction) and I discovered all sorts of fun things for us to do on the way … an amethyst mine, Dinosaur Provincial Park, hyper-tourist-y jaunts in Niagara Falls … but neither of us got the hang of the intricacies of reversing our honking great (as it seemed at the time) RV into camping spaces with millimeters to spare (there was lots of room, really) until we were well on our way home.

Each of these ‘cliffs’ moved my life forward in ways that were wondrous and terrible, challenging (understatement of the millennia!) and satisfying … but, all things considered, I’d rather any cliffs that come my way in the future, be a smidge less … hmm … high.

-oOo-

And now, for all you Swingin’ hepcats out there, here’s Muggsy Spanier’s Ragtime Band, getting smooth in the AM with, ‘Relaxin’ at the Touro’ …

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20 comments on “A Perfect Ten – 2015”

  1. bone&silver says:
    09/08/2020 at 2:40 AM

    Love that you’re a cliff jumper for love ❤️ 🌈❤️

    Liked by 1 person

  2. quiall says:
    09/08/2020 at 4:18 AM

    You are both Warriors in my book! You have actually done what many of us dream we had the courage to do.

    Liked by 1 person

  3. derrickjknight says:
    09/08/2020 at 5:42 AM

    I admire the cliff jumping – not sure about the motor bike, though. Great music.

    Liked by 1 person

  4. TanGental says:
    10/08/2020 at 7:29 AM

    I loved my motorbike and only came off it a couple of times and nothing took a hit beyond my ego. I sold it for cash but that was to go on holiday with the ongoing love of my life both then and now. She was delighted though as I’m incompetent on two wheels. But get you, I’ve bungee jumped But nothing Like your cliff jumping…

    Liked by 1 person

  5. Olga Godim says:
    10/08/2020 at 1:23 PM

    Those were some hard cliffs in your life. After I read your post, I said to myself: I didn’t have any cliffs, my life was smoother. Then I thought back and changed my opinion. I did have life-changing cliffs too. I went through two emigrations: from Russia to Israel, and from Israel to Canada. Then divorce and becoming a single mother. Then cancer. Then becoming a writer. All of those surely affected my life in profound ways.
    Maybe we all have our own cliffs, even though some are higher and scarier than others.

    Liked by 1 person

  6. Suzanne says:
    10/08/2020 at 9:50 PM

    That was quite a year! I hope you get to go adventuring again sometime in the next year or so.

    Liked by 1 person

  7. acflory says:
    13/08/2020 at 6:53 AM

    I’ve done a bit of motorcycle riding and cliff jumping of my own and…somehow they are the points in my life that I remember with the most fondness. I have to say though that my experience with bikes was far kinder than yours. Sorry about the knee. -hugs-

    Liked by 1 person

  8. inese says:
    27/08/2020 at 12:46 PM

    You have done some jumping, all right. Something to remember.

    Liked by 1 person

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