Creative Destruction

The end and the beginning.
Just finished the Otesha Phenomenal Food Tour yesterday and drove home with 3 of the lovely tour members to Niagara, via Toronto.
We left Ottawa and River Glen farm after a final breakfast together as a team and an appreciation circle where one person entered the circle and everyone had a minute to shout out amazing things about the person in the centre.

Superhero Day

Book Love: putting love messages in random books

Bike Love: Putting love messages on random bikes

The wonders of sidewalk chalk

Driving away from the faces that had become so familiar over the past 2 months was bittersweet. These wonderful people are my family. I love them and yet I know that for us to be together much longer in a group like this would impede our ability to branch out into the world and spread our knowledge, our love and our energy to everyone we know. It's much more effective to do that individually or in smaller groups than as a large and somehow intimidating group of amazing, confident, inspiring people. It can be difficult for the uninitiated to feel comfortable right away being stinky, or growing armpit hair (and talking about it every debrief), drying underwear anywhere and everywhere, skinny dipping, having constant lentil farts and performing in front of large audiences. That's understandable. It doesn't happen right away. . .but hopefully we can all strive to create a more judgement free, comfortable and loving atmosphere for everyone we meet, so we can nurture their talents, their inner strength and help them to realize how amazing they are too. We can create our own groups in our respective communities and spread the Otesha jam even further :)

And so it ends.

Finish: Ottawa

Yesterday I picked up my passport from the Indian Visa services. Visa, plane and train ticket. . .that's happening too. I can't believe that in a mere 2 days I will be on a plane to India, to a new experience and a new chapter of my life. It gets pretty overwhelming if I think about it too much.  However, I trust that it will be the experience that I need and whatever happens and comes of the trip, will be extremely worthwhile. Definitely a new test of my 氣 tho.
It's not to say that I'm not conflicted. I want to learn and try to do what I can to help the situation. That being said, I don't currently know the situation I will be working in or trying to help. I think a lot of "international development" (the term itself makes me uneasy. . .what exactly is it we're trying to develop anyway? what does development even mean? etc.) initiatives are seriously flawed in that, they are not well thought out, context based or sustainable much of the time. I know that going to India and volunteering myself is not equal to help, it could in fact, cause more harm than good. So my first priority is to learn as much as possible about the situation, the history, the politics, the language, the religion, the people, everything!! until I can better identify where my presence would be most useful.
Another conflict is the fact that I'm leaving Canada again. There is so much here that I could be doing too! There are so many issues and so many initiatives that are so awesome (as I just found out on the Phenomenal Food Tour!) that would be great to get more involved in. There are some really great people that I met and reconnected with during the tour that are doing really exciting and amazing things. Why leave your own situation when you can make change right here, right now? Not only that, but I DO know the context and I DO speak the language (well, at least one of them :S Still need to work on French) and I actually COULD be effective much sooner!!

I consider this. If I changed my mind and just didn't go to India. . .I would save a lot of money. . .I wouldn't need to be in such a rush or be sad to be leaving my new and old friends, family, life, bicycle, copious amounts of Canadian music shows that I love, winter, maple syrup. I could find work with an environmental organization or fight for the rights of those whose voices are often silenced in Canada. . .I could build a better community in Niagara, grow a garden in my backyard, move to Kensington with my friend who has a spare bedroom in a few months. . .I don't need to go to India at all to do things that I want to do.

But my guiding voice says otherwise.
I'm being pulled, forcefully, magnetically, unavoidably. To cancel my trip seems like the harder choice at this point, even though cancelling would seem to make my life much easier. So I throw myself into the world with few strong connections, few plans, and an extreme amount of energy and curiosity. Come what may.

In an interstellar blast, I'm back to save the universe! :)

Krazy Kingston.

Hello fine folks on my list of fine folks to mail random happenings in my life to!! :)

How are you doing?! I've dropped the ball on updating what's going on on our tour, yet again. . .but I assure you it has been:
jam-packed full of awesomeness, inspiring, informative, FUN, fantastic, super, I could go on.

A Goat in a Boat - Happy Farm

I believe I left off in Drayton? Wow. So much has happened since then that it seems like a number of years ago almost! Since then we've done a number of performances at a number of schools, we've been to a few farms (Vickie's Veggies, Happy Farm, Lunar Rhythms Garden) and intentional communities and have learned a little bit more about the alternative agricultural practices and community initiatives that are happening around Southern Ontario.

Bathroom Sink Laundering and Natural Drying

We also had our mid tour retreat last week in Peterborough which was great. We had some unscheduled (initially!) group time to discuss issues that we hadn't previously had a whole lot of time to get to and were able to tighten the cables and lube the chains. . .so to speak. We also had long-awaited access (and time!) to showers, laundering facilities and internet!!!!; daily luxuries that you take for granted when not on a fantastic Otesha tour across Ontario. Before the tour I remember Katrina, one of our guides mentioning that we may decide to take on challenges as a group, like, not showering for a week to conserve water. Before the tour, I thought that was a little extreme. . .now, however it has become almost common place for the whole team.
We simply don't have access to showers all the time and don't always want to be imposing on our amazing hosts to provide showers for all 15 of us! We do stagger our showers though (turn the water on and off between soaping and rinsing) to make sure that there is as little water waste as possible and occasionally substitute showers with swims in random creeks/lakes/rivers enroute. And of course there are always bathroom sinks.

Right now we are in Kingston. It's really weird to be back in the city I lived in for University. EVEN WEIRDER is that Danielle lives in the same house I lived in when I was here as a student!!!!! WHAT!? We've been staying in my old house for the past couple of nights and will be heading to Battersea tomorrow. I'm excited for the last 2 weeks! They're going to be AMAZING :D

Play practice outside my old house!

We made it to Drayton!

Hello from Drayton!

Start: Hidden Acres Farm

Sorry for the lack of correspondence thus far! Our first 3-ish weeks have been jam-packed (haha Otesha inside-joke) with training, performances, biking, meetings, sharing feelings circles, and not a lot of time. . .especially time combined with internet! Hopefully that trend will not continue for the rest of the tour!
My new Otesha team (family) of 14 and I just rolled in to Ploughshare farms in Drayton yesterday evening. Today we are at Drayton Heights Public School where they are talking about "The Power of Positive Choices" and are trying to fight bullying. We did our Otesha play in the morning and are doing 3 workshops this afternoon. After that we're heading back to the farm for a few days for a workshare (we'll be exchanging farm work for a place to stay) and our next rest day! Hurray!

 The last 3 weeks have been pretty amazing and inspiring but also quite challenging and busy. We met in Kitchener on May 1st and cycled 30k to New Hamburg where we stayed for the first week at Hidden Acres Camp getting to know each other and training with Katrina and Matt from the Otesha Office. We had a full week of wonderful workshops on such wonderful themes as bike maintenance, media kung-fu, safety, consensus decision making and of course the play! We also developed a "food mandate" that we are trying to follow so that we are all more conscious of our food choices and eating in an environmentally sustainable way as well.

The 2011 Otesha Phenomenal Food Tour!

We decided collectively to adopt a vegan diet for our communal cooking with vegetarian options (eggs and milk products) when we are relatively certain that the animal products are being procured by ethical and sustainable methods. So far we've had eggs from Plan B Organic Farm and we're excited to check out Mapleton's Organic Dairy later today for ice cream!! It has been difficult to suddenly switch to a vegan diet for some of the team members and the group has been trying out different things to make the food mandate work for everyone. Everyone is free to buy whatever they want with their own money but we are mainly trying to be more conscious of our decisions with respect to food. We've decided that no one is to be a "judgement jaguar", so everyone has been very accepting, supportive and accommodating to personal needs as well. Another difficulty we have encountered is accepting food from some of the wonderful hosts we've had. Some of our hosts have been planning events for us for months and we only just developed our food mandate 3 weeks ago so it is sometimes hard for us to get the message clearly to hosts that want to provide us with food. We are still working out the details of how we handle food that doesn't fit into our mandate that has been generously donated to us by our hosts. Although, personally, I think it's most important that we have the opportunity to open up discussion about our food choices and why we've chosen the food mandate that we have.
Last week was our first week on the road and we covered about 350km! We went first to Plan B farm, then to Ancaster Highschool for a few performances and to the Boys and Girls club for the night. The next day we had 2 performances at St. Thomas More Catholic Secondary School which went great! Afterwards though, we're still not sure why but a number of team members got sick and were unable to ride the 65km to Acton. We decided to rent a car to transport the 3 of us (Elise, Alyssa and I with Sam driving) to the next location while the rest of the team rode. By the time we all got to the destination another 3 or 4 team members had also become ill. Fortunately though, most of us were better by the next day where we went to Acton Highschool to participate in their water symposium. Then we had a couple of days of riding to Balidifad and then Toronto for a much needed rest day before the Organic Affair!

Outside of the house bus

Inside of Plan B's house bus!

friends forever

The Organic affair was at the Brickworks in Toronto which is an amazing space! We went on a tour where we learned about all of the amazing things they're doing with the old Brick factory and put on a 15 minute of our performance for the first ever time where an Otesha tour has actually been able to attend the Organic Affair (a bi-annual Otesha fund-raising event). The Organic Affair was great with lots of great people, speeches, and delicious brownies!!! We also met up with the Mammalian Diving Reflex, which is an organization very hard to define but are doing really interesting things with art as a tool for social change. One thing they do is called "Social Acupuncture"; they find contradicting ideas in normal society and making them happen (?) like haircuts by children! Check out the link above for more information, they have some super cool ideas!
After leaving Toronto we headed towards Etobicoke to Thistletown Collegiate Institute for a performance and then back in the direction of Waterloo (!?!?! haha). We went through Guelph to Ignatius Farm where we camped on the lawn for the night and had some delicious tea with the interns working there for the season. The next day we headed off to the University of Waterloo for a dry night in the residence and the next day, a 3 hour CanBike training session and another performance and workshop with the amazing Waterloo Unlimited Grade 10 students in the evening. We did 2 performances the next morning at Waterloo Collegiate Institute and then cycled a beautiful 60k to Drayton where we are now!

So I think that sums up our busy schedule so far. We've also had various rotating roles that we've had to fulfil in our group (some examples: meeting facilitator, time wolf, waste management, gratitude giver, etc.) and rotating cooking groups that are responsible for our food during the day.In all, we're getting to know each other a LOT better, getting better and stronger on our bikes, becoming more efficient working as a team and learning a lot through our collective experiences and tour stops about food, sustainability and the power of positive choices! Now all we need is SUN!!

Weeding at Ploughshare

OTESHA!!!

OTESHA OTESHA OTESHA OTESHA

Starts TOMORROW~!!!!!!!!

74日間には

青森県のキャンプ場

 この前の７４日間には
私の普通の生活と大分外れました。
日本を回りました。
出来るだけ、自転車で移動しました。
出来るだけ、地元の野菜や食品を食べました。
どんな肉でも、どんな魚でも、食べませんでした。　（エキス・だし含めている）
コンビニは全く利用してなかったです。

休憩　青森県

岐阜から滋賀へ

道志渓谷キャンプ場　山梨県

自動販売機は全く利用してなかったです。
自転車で付けていた服しか着て無かったです。
道の駅は愛していました。

化粧は全くしてなかったです。
寝たところは殆ど、テントあるいは全然知らない人のお宅でした。
色々な面白い人たちに出会っていました。
７人、そして５人、そして４人、結局３人（の女子！）と一緒に走ったり、毎日のご飯を作ったり、寝たり、ずーと居ました。

全部で：
４２５０キロ（ぐらい）走りました。
７４日間に旅しました。

山梨県

２８県に通りました。
１２回パンクをしました。
７回ゴミ拾いを行いました。（イベントとして。自分達だけで何回も）
６隻のﾌｪﾘｰに乗りました。
６校の学校に訪問しました。
４つのオーガニック農場で働きました。

台風の後の富士山

富士エコパークビレッジ

富士エコパークビレッジ

１回ラジオに出ました！
１回テレビに出ました！
いくつかの山を登りました。

恋人の聖地　香川県

ホッ！とステイまんのう　徳島県

いくつかの道の駅に休憩をしました。
何店もの自転車さんに修理をしに行きました。
何回も朝ごはんにはオートミールを食べました。

しまなみ街道　　広島県

しまなみ街道　　愛媛県

宮島

何回もスーパーの駐車場で昼食を食べました。
何回も食べようとしたら、何かの肉エキスとかが入っていたからやめました。

広島県

阿蘇　熊本県

阿蘇山

明日は７５日目。
明日は終わり。
沖縄の南の公園まで行って、ごみ拾いをして、それから自由な、普通の生活に戻っても良いです。

水俣　熊本県

桜島　　鹿児島県

鹿児島!

でも、ツアーが終わっても、戻るのにあまり急がなくても良いと感じます。　戻らなくても良いぐらいです。　もちろんこの旅はいつまでも続けるわけではないですけど、肉・魚の食べる量を減らすこと、地元のものを買うこと、コンビニや自動販売機を利用しないことなど、地球に優しい生活を続きたいです。　自転車で移動することはカナダに帰っても、続くつもりです。　（冬になると自転車用のスノータイヤを付けなくちゃ！笑）

沖縄途中

このツアーは本当に凄い経験でした。

でも. . .次の問題は日本に出てから何処に行けば良い！？　明日から考えましょう. .

できた!　沖縄の南極

雨の中の京都

hihi!!
本当に長い間ポストを全然書いてなかった！ この前、私達は京都で三日間を過ごしました。　１１日セラムの日本人のご両親の家に出発して、昼ぐらいに京都インターナショナルスクールに着きました。早 くベジタリアンの昼ごはん（私達のスポンサーアリサンからいただいたベガルとピーナッツバター）を食べてから、生徒達にBEE RIDEについてのプレゼンテーションをしました。　人数は少なくて、皆はすごく頭良くて、素晴らしかったです！ それから、一人の先生　（シャーナ）は私達は京都にいる時のホストですので、一緒に帰りました。シャーナ夫婦は三週間前にアメリカから京都に引越ししまし て、京都のめちゃ大きく古いお家に今住んでいます。　荷物は少ないから、帰ってくるといつも寂しいって感じるとシャーナが言われました。　でも、少なくと も私達はシャーナ夫婦と暮らして、いろんな話ができて、一緒に三日間を楽しく過ごすことができました！＾＾ 二日間目は、珍しく雨でした。 二時から立命館大学のサイクリングクラブのメンバーと一緒に走る予定だったけど雨のせいで中止になりました。　その 代わりに私は一人で鞍馬に行って、温泉に入って、帰る途中偶然でロシオに会って、一緒に嵐山まで行ってきました。

鞍馬途中

ずーとザーザーと雨が降ってて、ずぶ濡れ になりました。 でも、私には、晴れ、暑い、込んでる京都より自転車で、雨の中の京都が好きになりました。　京都はあまり好きじゃないと私はいつも言っていますが今回で改 めるかも。 日曜日京エコロジーセンターと大阪のYWCAでプレセンテションを行って、そして、今朝京都に出発しました。 今夜二つのグループに分かれて、私は大阪にいて、他のメンバーは奈良と和歌山の間にいる（らしい）明日和歌山にまた集まって四国の方に行きます。 では、また今度！ おやすみなさい！！

ライディングの九日目、八戸、七人チームは六人になりました

BEEはもう本州の青森県に入りました！ でも稚内から出発してから今までいろいろありましたので報告します！

稚内から１日目「８月３日」：最初の日はものすごくハードだった。皆はパニア・バッグを全部付けて、走ってるのは初めてで、１４０キロを走りました！　しんどかったけど皆は諦めずに最後まで走りました。
私にも去年８０００キロ走ったけど「そうそう！ゴールできました！」皆の中にはライドの前に自転車でそ んなに走っていないメンバーもいる中で１４０キロ走破することができて、感動しました。 ２日目：美深の農哲学院という農場に立ち寄って、美味しい昼ごはんを食べたり、自転車でジョンの住んでるところ下川まで走りました。

美深の農哲学院

美味しい昼ごはん!!

蛙

美深の田んぼ

休憩

３日目: 下川で色々なことを体験しました。　間伐したり、マイ箸とそばを作ったり、ベジタリアン・クッキング・ワークショップを行いました。 ４日目：１０５キロに旭川の近くの東川まで走りまし美味しい昼ごはんた。 ５日目：トビとまいこのストローベイルハウスは建築を手伝いました。 ６日目：岩見沢までまたハードな１３０キロに走りました。 ７日目：朝、札幌市まで走って、嬉楽の石田かおりさんのお宅に荷物を置いて、一緒に円山公園で清掃活動をして、参加者とオーガニックカフェーで夕食食べま した。かおりさんのアパートに泊まらせもらいました。

８日目：８/１０（月）：札幌から苫小牧まで７０キロ走って、ジョンと送別ディナーをしました。ジョンは下川に帰って、ほかの６人は八戸行きのフェリーに 乗りました。 今日！8/11 (火）：八戸に５時に着いて、とても眠かった！睡眠不足でも、なんとなく夜越山に３時頃つきました。今とても美味しいかぼちゃ、ナス、レンズ豆スープを 作って食べたところです。その後、アリサンの野菜カレーとクスクスも作りました。食べ終わったら皆は久々にぐっすりと寝れると思います。 北海道はもう終わったのが信じられない。広ーーーーい青空、気持ちいい気温、大自然の風景は大好きだった。北海道に住みたいなぁと何回も思っちゃった。 でも続きの青森と秋田、それから佐渡島のアース・セレブレーションは楽しみにしています！！ また報告します！