“To be a truly happy person, one must contemplate death five times a day.”

Bhutanese folklore

Although i wasn’t aware of this practice in any of my previous cycle tours, there are at least two things i can confidently say about them:

1. My cycle tours have been the backdrop for the most peaceful and mentally settled periods of my life;
2. No other experience has exposed me so consistently and so vividly to the fragility and inevitable finitude of life.

We’ve all seen roadkill, and i’m sure at least some of you will agree that their various shapes, sizes and states of putrefaction are much better appreciated from a bicycle than from a car — dogs, deer, squirrels, badgers, mice, birds, toads, snakes, snails, or whatever that used to be during its brief, confused life come by the daily dozens on a cycle tour — their individual lives rendered relatively insignificant by the context underlying their impending but still unexpected death

That’s my own fate!

I‘m very glad i’m on a cycle tour.

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Featured photo: a freshly killed dog just outside Drobeta-Turnu Severin (Romania, April ’17) 

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‘Trelograms’ is a wordplay between ‘telegram’ and ‘trélos’ (Greek for ‘mad’)

Trelograms: inspiration; cycle touring; worldwide, Moldova, Romania, Ukraine