too stressed

the past few days have been a discussion of the plan for today. after the driving adventures we have had on this relaxation quest, the fear of the coming trek had begun to leak onto the rest of the trip. we have asked those available, with little luck, and have used wikipedia and google maps to try to gauge the effort ahead. in the end a disconnected wire brought us back to the beginning and reset the course. how the wire got disconnected, is a case that will not be investigated. somethings are better left shrouded in assumption.

we are moved locations again today. leaving the flat shoreline for padi filled hills surrounding an art haven. this last step was a matter of saving the best for last. on previous trips i have never found my way to the little community in the hills, the promised heart of the arts, but i was looking forward to it. i have enjoyed the challenges of the previous moves, finding our way and negotiating the twists and turns. but i had to admit at times to being in full information overload.

the island roads are a mess. they seem to have been laid out with little or no planning. it is as though the entire road system grew organically, at a much earlier time. a time when there were no cars and the locations that people would eventually want to find were just distant places the path was never meant to connect someone to. the lack of a straight line is the most striking feature, it feels like you never go more than a mile without needing to take opposing 45 degree turns a few hundred meters apart. the right-left patterns to wind your way through a haphazard grid of paths between the buildings that surround the unplanned roads.

to add to the complexity of driving here, there are fully three traffic flows sharing the road. the first and heaviest is the motorcycle traffic. it both moves around and among larger vehicles when they are slowed for any reason, or stretches out to take the side of the road forcing the faster moving vehicles to cross the center lines to pass them. those larger and faster vehicles then make up the other two traffic flows.

i say there are two traffic flows, other than the constant swarm of motocycles, because cars and trucks mostly move at two different paces. the trucks being equally overloaded and underpowered, tend to meander only marginally faster than the motorcycles. this makes them the other hazard to be watched and passed by the passenger cars. cars being the most balanced in terms of power of the three types, spend most of their time either tucked into the flow of the trucks are wildly swerving from lane to lane, attempting to slip between the slower traffic to move forward. to get the image of what i am talking about we need to do an exercise.

imagine an ant colony on the move; a long line of insects moving at different paces, some carrying loads of leaves, with some crawling on, over or around others. note that some are stopped or moving backwards for no good reason. it appears to be complete chaos, but the colony appears to somehow be getting somewhere. now add other equally disorganized colonies also on the move, but they are moving across the path of first, a new messy line every few feet on the jungle floor. finally add some streetlights, signs of marginal utility, make the ants humans on economy-focused vehicles of different sizes and you have the picture. this is driving on bali.

now to that final picture add two foreigners with no idea where they are going, a jeep with a sensitive clutch and no music to calm the nerves, a GPS that points to major landmarks but nothing less, and a question on how challenging the roads are on the way to the art community in the hills. you might now understand the discussion on friday night. rather than continue the debate, i suggested a stop for coffee at my favorite grocery/deli on the island. a oasis of solitude i have written or coded in on prior trips; one that requires being frisked and having your bags checked for bombs by a guard with a machine gun. i left out those details, and hoped a good coffee would help calm the nerves.

with the jeep packed and ready for the next leg of our adventure, we found the GPS was not working. the power cord was broken, it had "come apart" overnight. a more suspicious person than i would have openly questioned how this had happened, but i was stopped as we drove towards the airport to replace the device or it's dubiously damaged power-cord. "do you want to see if we can return the car and get a driver? you are too stressed to drive here."

we had found our way. there were no fights, no strained words. there was little in the way of difficult silence. we had only been pulled over once, it was a check for papers not for speeding, and was let go when they saw my IC card. we had really never been totally lost, or without some form of direction, and after fixing the seat and getting full use of my legs the driving was much smoother. so, what was this "too stressed" all about? the explanation, genuine or not, did resonate with some truth. to boil it down, i am a type-A personality and in my self-driven focus on forward motion i was losing the spirit of the relaxed vacation get away.

to make a long story short, we returned the car, got a driver, went to the deli and then relaxed on the way into the hills. the driver knew the way to the resort and delivered us right to the lobby. it was the simple and easy approach. there was no stress over where we were going, there was no questions of direction and the crazy roads and weaving traffic was not an issue. i did feel a pang of regret that i didn't get to try and succeed. this was the easy way, i gave up the freedom of challenge to keep the peace and prove i was not a stressed out type-A. i proved i can take feedback and relax. there was no long discussion, the day was not impacted. this is a positive change once again; another chance to prove i have grown. but to be clear,

i watched as we drove, and know my own way for next time.