When the motivation became impossible to ignore, Sarah Cook bought a tourist bicycle and “all puree, all the dance four-season tent” and packed her things in 68-liter bicycle bags.
She was 60 years old, and, having handed over her apartment in Cambria, England went alone to pedal on the Pacific West Coast of the United States. While she went on a bicycle from Vancouver Airport, “I was like“ I will see you in six months! “, – says Cook. “The lack of bricks, the solution and property was so released.” By the time she arrived in La -Pos, Bolivia, 111 days later, she knew: “This is how I want to live my life.” Now is 67 years old, she has been wandering since then and traveled 24,000 miles on a bicycle.
Cook wanted to know what happened, what happened: “When your life was on the road. I thought that something should switch in your head or your emotions … This is the final life at the moment. ” Every day, when she begins to turn the pedals, she says: “I feel amused – as if I were flying.”
The main points of the Cook include a bicycle of almost 3,000 miles throughout Europe, from the Black Sea to the Atlantic Ocean; Camping under the giant trees of Sequoia in California; Wild camping in Colombian Paramo; And the pedals 2000 miles from the coast of Patagonia to Ushuayu in Argentina to fulfill a children's dream.
Having grown in the village of Surrey, Cook traced the routes of researchers on sheet paper from the world atlas of her parents. The eldest of six, she leads her brothers and sisters in the garden with tea ingredients, lifted a piece of the lawn with her knife and made a bon.
She studied medical sciences at the university and worked for some time in a hospital laboratory of hematology, but stopped at the home school of her three daughters and son.
But when she entered her 40s, the “negative committee” in her head asked her: “What did you do with your life except raising children?” I was a bright girl with a degree. When her children went to the university: “I was like“ what should I do now? Who recognizes children who form home education as personal development? “
She studied for the qualification of a mountain leader, and the other to teach English as a foreign language, and then worked in a part-time working day on foot, expeditions with adolescents and taught English. She had to be financially independent, separating from her husband.
Although Cook regularly returns to England to see the family, it does not have a fixed base, and switches between rent or campsites. Between tenants, she set up a camp in her sleeping bag on the carpet of her apartment. “Now it’s not my house,” she says. “Although the house is where I am.”
She feels reasonable, even if she remains only one night. “Everything that happens in my tent has an order for how I unpack it, and the place where I put it. And I am amazed every time. How does this piece of fabric feel at home when I do this? “
The bicycle and life in an namelessly gave Cook “Knowing that I can survive practically, no matter what happens.” She has two mantra. “One:“ It will work. ” Another: “Just do the following.” When everything seems terrible, and you do not think that you can handle it, just do the following.
Cook has osteoarthritis in one thigh, and cycling has its own problems. She had to push her bike uphill for five hours in Colombia. “My body is aging and needs more rest and restoration,” she says.
But she has no plans to stop. In the UK, where she attends her family, she toured the south of England and pedals from the Shetland islands to the southern peak of Cornwall.
In Scotland, it was gray and grizzly, and everything was damp when she packed and attached light to the bicycle. The cloud was low, the seagulls screeching. “And I have a vivid memory of how to think:“ Why do I feel so enthusiastic happy, I am on a bicycle in this gray, jumping morning? “The truth is that she says:” I sit on a bicycle and begin to turn the pedals, and it looks like how my spirit takes off. “
