Cycling Lisbon to Tallinn: A Look Back and Thank Yous

Eyebrows done: check

The route I took to cycle across Europe from its southwestern to its northeastern point.

Hair cut: check

Perfume on: check

New change of clothes: FINALLY

Clothes washed: check

Tent laid out to dry: check

Bikes still disassembled in their boxes and tidily placed in the garage: check

Camping gear placed in its special bag in garage: check

Watch Come Dine With Me, the Jeremy Kyle Show, and Big Brother (in other words, all the crap British TV there is to watch): check

My husband and I stepped onto a RyanAir plane in Estonia to head back to our home in the UK last Monday afternoon. We had just spent a very lazy and relaxing two days in Tallinn, much of it sleeping and some of it walking around the enchanting old town and the city port. The highlight for me was the food. Those Estonians really know how to eat! I had a most amazing omelette my first morning in Tallinn. Who says that about an omelette? But that one was special. It had huge chunks of red onion, tomato, and mushrooms in it. I hogged down the special Estonian black bread with almost every meal. I had duck breast one evening and lamb on another. It was a great opportunity for us to recover before heading home.

Since I returned to the UK, I’ve kept myself busy washing, tidying, resting, watching crap TV, and gathering GPS data from the trip. It’s been nice. I was worried that I would have a bit of a culture shock coming back. I had settled into a nice cycling routine while in mainland Europe. I was enjoying having something to be involved in that I was passionate about. But by the time the trip ended I was ready to come home. I have a few things coming up that will keep me occupied over the next few weeks, including the Muslim month of fasting, Ramadan. So I should be all right, at least for awhile.

During the trip, I was incapable of looking back at what I had done or looking forward at what still remained. I found that if I

Lisbon to Monaco

tried, I was overwhelmed with the immensity of both. As a result, I found myself, with no physical or emotional effort on my part, living in the moment. While I was cycling, my focus was on keeping myself safe and getting through the next ten kilometers. When a day was finished, my focus was on getting a shower, eating, writing my daily blog diary, and getting some rest. The following morning, my focus was on understanding the route I would be taking for the next few hours.

On my last day of cycling in Estonia, I thought that the gates to all the memories of the past two months would come rushing at me the moment the trip ended in Tallinn. Instead, I somehow managed to keep those gates closed. I wasn’t ready to deal with the emotions that would come with the collective memory.

I’m still not ready.

Dream Diary: Of Alien Pharaohs and Human Rebels

My dream last night:

A people, who are not of our kind, have arrived to invade Earth. Their origins are unknown to me, but they wear pharaonic garb so I shall refer to them as the Pharaohs. Among the humans, a small revolutionary movement has developed. Their work is made doubly difficult, for in addition to the Pharaohs, Earth is also occupied by undead. The undead eat any creature whose body emits heat. They live in underground tunnels, each inside its own cocoon, emerging from their cocoons at very regular intervals to sense around their general area for body heat. When they sense body heat, they leave the warmth of their cocoon to hunt the nearby creature and eat it. When they do not sense heat, they go back into their cocoon to hibernate until the next food-sensing time arrives; less than an hour away.

Among the human rebels was a female scientist. I partially watched this dream through her eyes. She discovered that the Pharaohs had widely distributed canisters that had the potential to destroy all. She knew that if she could find a way to remove the effect of these canisters that she could possibly spoil their evil plot to take over Earth.

Dreams With Sea Creatures

I’ve had dreams of sea creatures the past two days.

Yesterday, a huge manta ray kept flying into my apartment through a window. It was an air-borne manta ray. The reason it flew into my apartment was that it was attracted to light and I had a light on. It would fly through the window and then cloak itself around the ceiling light fixture I had in the room. It would stay this way for as long as it wished and then it would fly back out. My husband and I watched this happen several times in awe. We then decided to try turning off the light to see what would happen. The manta ray still flew into our room. Apparently, it was so sunny outside that our room was flooded with light. The manta ray was still attracted to our home. Finally, we shut the window. The manta ray still flew towards us and stuck itself to our window on the outside while my husband placed his hands against the inside, pretending to feed it and watching its mouth make cool circular movements of trying to eat. It was all so awesome.

Today I dreamt that we had all gone to Alexandria to go fishing.

Dream: Invading armies

This post is part of a new series of writings I’m trying. I have created an online dream diary and I will post the dreams that are vivid enough for me to remember. I have strange dreams. Always. I think some of them make for quite interesting stories. The first post in this series was Dream: The Cow With the Pink Pearl Ring. Below is my second post.

We were in Egypt. Or was it Iraq? Either way, we were in a city. There were many five to eight storey buildings just behind us. There was a lot of commotion on the streets. Our city had been invaded by an army. Ever since I was a child I’ve had these dreams of invading armies. They are always very vivid dreams.

The invaders were close by. We knew because lots of young men were running by us, attempting to escape the army. Behind us were buildings. Ahead of us were endless fields.  

Dream: The Cow With the Pink Pearl Ring

I have quite interesting dreams. My dreaming subconscious comes up with story lines that my conscious could not imagine in a million years. These dreams can be so interesting (in my opinion, anyway) that they deserve to be written down. I’ve thought this for quite some time but I never really got around to doing it. Today I’ve decided to start an online dream diary. This blog is all about the inner workings of my mind. It doesn’t can’t any inner than these dreams of mine. So here we go.

This dream is the dream I had after praying the dawn prayer on Monday, June 4, 2012. In other words, it’s a  sacred dream.

The Cow With the Pink Pearl Ring

In a parallel universe in the year 2012, I owned a shop. It was an odd sort of shop, full of trinkets and odds and ends. The shop was so large and its contents so diverse that I,

The ring in my dream looked almost EXACTLY like this. I had no idea that there were pink pearls in real non-dream life. I’m going to take this as a sign that I need to point this out to my husband. I need a pink pearl ring to protect me.

the shop owner, did not know everything it contained. Among many other things, I remember seeing baby bottles and lots of candies. My shop was a fun sort of shop.

The Night I Dreamt Mubarak Died

Last night I had the weirdest dream.

In the dream, I was walking along a nice street one evening and happened to bump into Egypt’s President, Hosni Mubarak. He was standing on the side of the street watching his driver pull his car out of a parking space. The car had the ability to pivot on its rear wheels. Very cool. I was so fascinated by the car that I told Mubarak in a nice neighborly way that he had a cool car. Mubarak smiled. As I walked away, he called me back. My coat wasn’t tied well from the back. He tied it for me.

Scene 2: I’m in a plane going somewhere and the Egyptian authorities call it back but don’t say why.

Scene 3: I’m standing in my apartment and we get the announcement: President Hosni Mubarak has died.