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I was glued to the bus window. Each rise in the road, each bend in the path revealed a new vista.
Every mile I would blurt out to my fellow athletes, “Wow dudes, check that thing out. That’s unreal.” I was seeing a foreign country’s culture for the first time, and I was blown away.
It was Japan in the early ’80s. A couple of triathletes and I were the invited guests (read: They paid for us to come) of a race director looking to bring the fledging sport to the Land of the
Rising Sun. I was treated to the culture shock that comes with instant immersion into a place very
different from what I’m used to.
We were on a long bus ride from the Tokyo Airport to the city of Nagasaki, and I couldn’t peel my mug away from the clear panes as the real-world movie played outside my window. Sitting two rows
behind me was my competition, a younger, stronger, and faster kid who much to my disappointment
traded the rolling tour for an old magazine and Walkman clamped down on his ears like a traveling
chastity belt for the culturally myopic. “Bro’,” I called out, “You got to check out these statues.” The only response I could milk from him was, “Wake me when you find an eight-lane 50 meter pool.”
Almost 20 years later, my sleepy friend is selling energy bars, I’m banging away at the computer keys, but I can remember the bus trip like it was yesterday. It wasn’t the sights so much as the profound irony. A handful of triathletes, kids really, thrown into a time and place that came and went, baptized in a culture that I grew to know quite well after my 18 trips to Japan.
But that bus ride was All Wide Open. Forty years earlier, my government had committed genocide on
this town by splitting an atom inside a half-ton metal container. Three days after our arrival, we
raced $2,000 bicycles over the same streets that Uncle Sam and Enola Gay’s younger sister
obliterated. One of us sensed the opportunity for exploration. The other, a victim of early
Nintendo-itis, chose to be an idiot-savant athlete. The gods care not what vessel they pour genius
into.
What I take from that long-ago scene is that the traveling athlete, born with a need to compete
far from the comforts of his or her home, is blessed indeed. And truly chosen are those who, while
they caress the untrammeled veldt, take it for what it is: enlightenment in a bottle. But sorry
are the ones who fail to seize the opportunities of global travel on someone else’s meal
ticket.
Guilty I am, of both. The times when I took a chance, jumped on a plane to South America, stayed
an extra day in Guam, stopped over in Switzerland, all in the name of exploration, are the
memories I take to bed with me, not the races.
But travel is a production. No, I take that back. It is an endeavor, a blank chalkboard that
either gets filled with unfamiliar words, or ignored so that you can study for the test. Traveling
to compete is slanted toward the latter. To compete well, we need those elements that make us feel
like we never left home. Indeed, many times I sat in my hotel room, resting, stretching, fiddling
with my guitar, thinking about the upcoming race, the task at hand. Not thinking about checking
out the new city or which restaurant to go to, I was locked in the preflight checklist, counting
down until the gun. And given the same circumstances, I bet I would act no different. We do what
we do at the time for reasons that matter at the time.
Athletes are modern-day gypsies. They travel from town to town, contesting the locals on their
home turf, and then they get back on the bus, the plane, the camel, whatever, to migrate to the
next match. And once you are set in this pattern, with the road as your new best friend, it
becomes acceptable, even comfortable. Home seems a distant thought.
I have a friend who competes on the Association of Surfing Professionals Tour. He will visit a
dozen countries within the seven-month season. And even if his hometown of San Diego is a
potential three-day stopover on the way from A to B, he will stay in motion to maintain the
momentum. If he stops to go home for a day, he gets confused. I feel sorry for this. I would at
least drive past, and grab a sack full of clean underwear from loved ones at a freeway off-ramp.
The best trips though, are the ones you can return to, fond memories not forgotten but shelved for many
years and occasionally dusted off like old trophies. If I travel on the pretense of competing,
prematurely accepting that victory will be mine if I finish the race in grace and style, and am
able to hoist a few frosties at the pub with my old pals—all the
better.
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