Back Home And Changed By Travel

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Be back home again. Sometimes it so far feels like a long lost friend. Yes, it's good be back home again.

Ron 0:33

That was John Denver, of course, and it is good to be back home to Colorado again. Returning from 15 days of travels overseas with my wife this past week, I got on my motorcycle and headed up into the mountains. Yeah, it was good to be back because out there, especially out on the old, very remote dirt roads, I feel so much at home. But our trip, oh, that trip was amazing. My first trip to Europe. And I think, no, I know I learned some things out there. Many things, but especially about the pace of life. Some of the prettiest sights we've ever seen, and some of the nicest people. What we observed is a very different way of life, and in many ways, yeah, a different way of thinking. I think Karen and I both are forever changed. And in this episode, I'd like to share with you what we saw, the impact that it had, and maybe a new view that I have on the joy of going to visit beautiful places, going to visit our mom, Mother Nature, and having conversations with strangers, which is a wonderful, wonderful experience. Hey, thank you for joining me today. Stay tuned. Recorded in beautiful, loveliness, Colorado, welcome to Peace Love Moto, the podcast for motorcyclists seeking that peaceful, easy feeling as we cruise through this life together. Are you ready? Let's go.

Choosing Locals Over Tourist Crowds

Ron 2:42

When my wife and I set out on our journey across Norway a couple of weeks ago, with additional days in Sweden, we made a conscious choice before we left home. We were going to step out of the tourist flow as best we could. We didn't want to be in the crowds of other foreigners. We just wanted to blend in with the locals and listen to what they had to say, what they wanted to share with us about themselves and their countries and their villages. I'm so glad that we did that. Our destination on this trip allowed us to visit some wonderful friends, too. We had a high school exchange student to live with us back around 2011. And this past week, after 15 years, in Oslo, Norway, we saw Maria once again. Now a grown woman with a family of her own. Also, my wife's distant cousin Annette and her family live in Sweden, south of Stockholm. So after our Norway tour, we took a high-speed train to her home and stayed there, visiting with the extended family and her now grown children. Best of all, we got the locals tour of the old historic villages, the old, old churches and museums. Oh, it was just amazing. And as for planning this trip, just a shout out, we used a little travel agency called Nordic Visitor that crafted a plan that was just perfect for us. For this trip, we weren't traveling by motorcycle, which I'd like to do sometime, but instead, we explored the country mostly by train and small coastal ships and small boats along the Norwegian Sea. We avoided the larger seaports, instead, visiting the quiet corners of Norway, small villages tucked beneath these sheer high rock walls with many of the mountains having waterfalls. It's amazing. Oh, we took lots of pictures, lots of video. What we experienced there were places, I think, where life hasn't traded its soul for tourism. I think that that's real easy to do. We see that around here sometime. But I think that that's the best way to describe it. They didn't make us feel like tourists. They just made us feel like they made us feel welcome. Two episodes ago, I made a live recording as I walked one rainy evening by myself along a boardwalk in From Norway, this tiny little coastal village. Wow, what a beautiful little place. Throughout the trip, we stayed mostly in locally owned small motels in port villages like Fromm. We wanted to see how the people actually live out there in that really rugged part of the country. We wanted to talk with the locals, as I mentioned, share a cup of coffee or even a meal. We got a chance to do that. So that we could get a better understanding of the rhythm of life that they experience that almost feels forgotten in our noisy modern world. We also enjoyed sharing conversations with other travelers that we saw from time to time. Super nice people from all around the world, just as you expect. We met folks from England, Australia, and Ireland, just great folks. What we found in that Scandinavian country has stayed with me, obviously. It's followed me all the way back across 4,000 miles back here home to Colorado, right into the dirt roads I was on yesterday on my motorcycle. I was out there in the Rocky Mountains, yeah, yesterday, and I went to places where just like what we observed in Norway, there is no hurry. And frankly, there is no need to stress over anything. I need that sometimes. Maybe you do too. So, yeah, today we're taking a little vacation trip together, you and me. Not to talk necessarily about travel, but to explore what happens to our mind and our spirit when we finally choose to take our time to look up from our phones and to see what kind of beautiful world is all around us.

Craftsmanship Food And Quiet Villages

Ron 7:16

The first thing that hits you when you step into one of these small Norwegian coastal villages is the absence of clutter. At least that's what I noticed. You don't see massive neon signs or chain stores at all. The spotlessly clean streets, for the most part, belong to locals walking and riding bikes. Old sturdy bikes with baskets on the handlebars, ridden by folks going to and from work or school or going to pick up bread or a bottle of wine or cheese. Yeah, it's just like just like you see in the movies sometimes. In one village, we walked into a small shop that sold exclusively wooden things. No plastic to be found anywhere around here. No barcodes for that matter. Just shelves filled with hand-carved spoons and sturdy hardwood forks and wooden butter knives. Every piece shaped with local wood. They even had bracelets and clothing and textiles made of wood fibers. And standing behind the counter wasn't like this hourly employee scanning barcodes. Not at all. It was the woman, the young woman, who had carved every piece in the shop by hand. This was her shop and her Norwegian accent, which was so cool, she welcomed us in to look around and ask her any questions that we had. We didn't just buy utensils and walk it away. We could have done that. But like so many shops we visited, we stood there and talked with her, and she was welcoming us to do that. She spoke to us in her best English with this calm tone that seemed to match the old building that she was working in. There was no line behind us and no sense that she had anything else that she needed to do right then. Her work was right in front of her, and her attention was entirely on us, which was so nice. We have her picture on a three by five card that she gave us advertising her little shops, all written in Norwegian. What a nice young lady. And we also visited an old print shop, a print shop museum with an older woman working there who showed us around of the this old printing press that they have, even describing how this heavy, heavy piece of steel was brought to that village 150 years ago by boat. She had a printing there of two motorcycles racing, which was so cool. It was printed on the old printing press. And of course, I bought that print to take home, and I'm looking at it right now. Pure ingredients, candy cooked slowly in the back of the shop and with no artificial colors, no preservatives, and no rush to mass produce. When we ate the food in these villages, whether it was fresh fish, warm bread, or garden salads, the flavor, oh, it was just striking, I guess. I don't know how to describe it. It wasn't drowned in heavy sauces, and it certainly wasn't masked with chemicals to keep them preserved. It tasted alive simply because it was fresh from the earth nearby, or it was fish from the fjord that afternoon, even. But what I think most resonated with Karen and I wasn't just the craftsmanship or the food, it was the people.

Singing With Swedes And Noticing Presence

Ron 11:18

And we had the most amazing locals experience while we were in Sweden with Karen's cousin. We attended a public sing-along where some 200 locals stood in sections of bass, tenor, soprano, alto, and we were led by a wonderfully enthusiastic professional singer up on the stage as we stood down below. Separated from my wife Ann Annette in the bass section, I had the help of my friend Tony, who told me what everyone was laughing about when the music leader uh said something funny, or when she was giving specific uh guidance to us in the bass section. Man, I had no clue what was being said. I was completely lost, and I'm not much of a singer anyway. But yeah, laughter, I get that. I get that. So you may be wondering then, what song were we guided to sing? Well, fortunately for me, it was a song sung in English by a group and a song that I already knew. That's right, that was the Swedish group ABBA. I got really lucky on that one. That one I could sing. But in the nine days of traveling through these small communities, we rarely saw a soul looking down on their mobile phone. Maybe it was just the villages that we were at, but I just didn't notice that at all. We didn't see people walking down the street with their heads tilted down to a screen, doom scrolling headlines or checking social feeds. Nobody seemed frazzled, also. Maybe nobody seemed rushed to get down the sidewalk like their life depended on shaving 30 seconds off their walk. No, it was just an observation again, but it seemed like everybody was present. They seemed to be living inside the hour that they were actually in. And that was cool.

Why Motorcycling Feels Like Simplicity

Ron 13:59

When I got home, I realized that motorcycling is the pursuit of exactly the same thing. Simplicity. Now, don't get me wrong, like most riders, I enjoy riding fast occasionally, carving through the turns. And like you, I enjoy the feeling of power that's underneath me, of a well-tuned engine, of you know, hitting those corners just perfectly to come out screaming out of the corners. Yeah, I love that too. But let's be honest with ourselves, we seldom ride fast in the corners or anywhere else because we're trying to get somewhere in a hurry. We're not trying to beat the clock, really. Instead, our pace is based on entirely on the joy of that experience. Fast or slow for that matter. Like yesterday, when I took another long ride out in the country, I kept the bike off the highways as much as I could and stayed mainly on the old dirt roads. The old forest roads that were once wagon paths from the 1800s, and even before that, they were trails used by the Native Americans. So many of them are original. Yeah. Out there, there's mostly no cell phone service. I couldn't be on my phone to see the latest headlines or check Instagram or answer the phone. I couldn't do that if I wanted to. And standing on the pegs from time to time, feeling the suspension work beneath me over the bumps on that big GS, and smelling the distant rains, some of them which I rode through, I realized that I was experiencing the same simplicity I felt in that wood carver shop 4,000 miles away. In the mountains here in Colorado, on the back roads, we don't have an ocean-fed fjord. But as for pace, if you're intentional about it, it's as slow, deliberate, and pure as you want it to be. And that for me leads directly to mindfulness, a mindful experience. For me, it creates a space to breathe and know that I'm breathing, as they say. A time to reflect on the joys of life. So I guess you don't have to necessarily travel 4,000 miles across the Atlantic to find an unhurried life. Maybe it's just all in our head. And that's good. All of us can experience that, I think, right on a motorcycle, no matter where you are. And at least for me, it's usually the moment the cell phone signal drops out. I can't reach anybody and they can't reach me. And all is good with the world.

Take The Slower Pace With You

Ron 17:06

So, my friends, when you head back into your day today, take that Scandinavian village pace with you. Pay attention to details and just know that sometimes you have to slow down to allow those details in nature and craftsmanship and great food to soak in. Whether you find yourself in a good mood or a bad mood, and especially if you're feeling down and out, go for a ride. Just get on your machine, fast or slow, and mindfully know that life is good because you have a motorcycle and you can ride it. I'll see you out there, my friends. Peace.