Hitting 40: On Bag Ladies and Flamenco

The unsubtle art of strategic fuck-giving

Just a few months ago – in October, to be more precise – I experienced a very unpleasant situation right here in my backyard. It was a bit like getting annoying flu that just wouldn’t go away; it wasn’t that bad – we’re not talking high fever-induced hallucinations, just a sore throat and the general feeling of malaise and impending doom; still, I felt it quite acutely, and I was not amused.

I’m talking about a sneaky, chihuahua-sized Midlife Crisis as my 39-year-old-self grappled with the fact that forty was just around the corner.

Well, forty, shmorty, right? Who cares. Yeah, that was my first thought, too. But it didn’t get rid of the Midlife Crisis. In fact, the Crisis grew to a yappy Yorkshire terrier size, and the little shit wasn’t backing down.

How nauseatingly boring, I know. Woman hits forty; woman freaks out. As predictable as a hangover after too much tequila or a bumpy ride when you know your suspension needs service but you choose to ignore it because maybe it’ll be fine, just this time.

It won’t.

And the fact that a Yorkie-sized Midlife Crisis as you near the big 40 is nauseatingly boring doesn’t change the reality of facing the bastard. I wasn’t exactly freaking out, as such, it was more of a slow, gradual descent into grey and gooey October blues charged with “What The Fuck Am I Doing Here In The First Place” and highlighted by a shopping incident during the flash floods in Southern Spain.

I got stuck here for a week, you see; cut off from the main roads by muddy water and debris where my driveway used to be, I couldn’t leave my house. I had no electricity or running water for the first few days as the torrential rain poured down in sheets and the storms raged; later, though electricity returned, I couldn’t drive or ride out, and besides the emptying fridge and dwindling water supplies, what bothered me most was acute cabin fever.

Put it this way, it wasn’t a great week, especially when the Incident occurred.

See, one day, my neighbor Carmen said her buddy from the local firefighters’ service offered to give us a lift into town to get some groceries. To get to him and his car, we had to suit up (think Wellingtons and layers of ill-fitting, semi-waterproof clothing) and wade through the muddy river that had us cut off from the main road. We got to the grocery store covered in mud, bought some food and water, and the guy gave us a lift back (I’m forever in your debt, Carlos!); as he let us out, he asked if it was OK to shoot a little video of us crossing the mud river – he’d upload it to the local Facebook group for a quick update for the community. Sure thing, right?

Later in the evening, I saw that video.

You know what was in it?

My neighbor Carmen (an epitome of Andalusian grace and flair at 65 years of age)… and a clumsy, short-haired woman wearing what looked like a Michelin Man suit of layers and puffy parkas wading through a muddy river holding three overspilling grocery shopping bags and trying to balance on slick rocks in fake $8 Wellingtons from the Chinese store.

She looked… tired, middle-aged, a little spooked, and seemingly deeply concerned about her grocery haul as she crossed the stream of mud, nearly slipping and landing on her behind with the grace of a penguin on melting ice.

That’s when it all hit me like a sledgehammer: that lady was me.

My brain refused to compute; hello, my name is Egle, I travel around the world on a motorcycle, I’m thirtysomething, I make bad decisions and end up in strange places while attempting to race a rally, lead a tour, or write the Novel of The Twenty-First Century, a whirlwind of blonde dreadlocks and inspiration trailing behind me.

But in that damned video, there was this overdressed bag lady with a buzzcut and a very serious concern for the safety of her fucking cucumbers, coffee, and croissants.

What in the name of all that is holy and motorized?!

Anyway, I began spiraling from there; as the local community around me reeled from the damage and destruction of the floods, I was reeling from the headbutt with reality. Armed with chicken wire and a sense that I didn’t know who I was anymore, I did what I could with what I had. I fixed my fences, I called my friends to bitch and moan about my Midlife Crisis (multiple times and for prolonged periods; I’m not sure why they put up with me, but I’m grateful); I went down the rabbit hole of, Hey, Let’s Just Go Back And Make Egle Great Again By Leaving for Another Motorcycle Adventure and the slightly darker hole of, All Is Lost, I Am A Bag Lady Now; I thrashed about like an idiot trying to catch all sorts of ideas by the tail – “Change Everything, Right Now”; “Just Chill and Write”; “Ship Bike to Uruguay, Fuck It”; “Start a Dog Shelter”, “Fake Own Death, Escape to Borneo And Live Among Orangutans” – but each and every one of them slipped away like an eel.

November passed by in a blur of doom and gloom, more rain, more messy ideas, more thrashing about, and more uncertainty. By the time December rolled around, my Midlife Crisis had grown from a yappy Yorkie to a snarling Doberman, and I felt it had me cornered.

But then, I left for Patagonia with my dad.

We rented a shitty Chinese SUV in Puerto Montt and fucked off along the Carretera Austral, over the Andes, and across the Argentinean pampas heading for the Perito Moreno glacier. Putting in almost 4,000 kilometers in ten days, we reveled in the wide open spaces, traveling at breakneck speed in a car that had no business being on gravel roads and yet got us through every damn mile and then some; we played music at the glacier to say farewell to a dead composer, drank Fernet under the starry Patagonian skies, made friends with ferry crew over Lago General Carrera, watched the condors soar over the towering peaks, and learned a thing or two about Chilean hospitality, cordero asado, and each other.

That trip was meant for my dad, who is turning 75 this February.

But when I got back, I realized I needed it just as much as he did; perhaps even more.

Because short hair or long, on a bike or in a Chinese cardboard car, in Andalusia or Patagonia, alone or with people I love, armed with grocery bags or a map, thirtysomething or Over Forty – I was still around.

And I thought to myself: what if I went all-in this time?

What if I went after things with everything I’ve got, instead of always having one foot out the door already?

For all my twenties and thirties, whatever I did, even when I did it with the excitement of a five-year-old and the appetite of a ravenous squirrel, I never committed to anything fully. I mean, I got shit done, don’t get me wrong; I had cool jobs in newsrooms, I ran a rescue horse shelter, I traveled halfway around the world on a motorcycle solo, I wrote books, I created things, I started Big Little Rides with my best friend Jurga, I survived a few rally races, I built a freelance writing career from scratch and an overland truck from an ancient fire engine; I kept my bike and my soul alive by ways of adventures and creative projects; I had a good run.

But, overcome by the sense that I didn’t really belong anywhere, that any semblance of success was probably just luck, that in some weird and messed-up way, I owed this world something to justify my existence and that, frankly, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be here in the first place, I never went all-in on anything.

Because nothing ever mattered enough. The world wasn’t enough. I wasn’t enough.

So I half-assed most of it, even on my manic energy periods of Let’s Fucking Do This.

But as my 40^th birthday drew nearer, I thought to myself: girlie, you’ve got nothing to lose now. Either you’re all in, or you will become the bag lady carrying your mediocrity in a grocery haul. What if forty was the decade where you find out what the full, unfiltered version of Egle looks like, and what you’re really capable of?

Before, I felt I had nothing to lose out of desperation.

Now? I’ve got nothing to lose because I went through that desperation.

And so, when January 25 graced me with its presence, I looked it dead in the eyes and said, let’s dance, motherfucker.

I celebrated my birthday watching a flamenco show with Jurga – yes, she’s the kind of a rockstar friend who will fly down to Malaga for you, get your ass out of sweatpants and into the Old Town flamenco theater, and then talk shit till 2 am while harassing local bartenders to make a killer virgin mojito (we’re facing this shit stone-cold sober; I’m done with hangovers for good).

And when I got back to my hideout in the mountains, it’s like my eyesight had changed.

Everything is in sharp focus now; the world, for the first time, is in full-blown technicolor, and I know, in my bones, exactly what to do (the “how” will unveil itself along the way). I know that I just don’t have time for half-assery. I don’t have time for my own bullshit, and I sure as hell don’t have time for settling.

So I’m all in. Whether it’s writing or riding, accountability or grocery shopping, designing a tour or cleaning the floor, interactions with people or weird new ideas, I’m done with half-baked effort (and tequila. And croissants. And trying to learn how to fold a fitted sheet, or to be someone I’m not).

And, yes, I got the dreads back. Plus my self-respect and a newly awoken obsession for creating things that truly matter to me.

Because here’s the thing: people say that when you get older, you have less and less fucks to give.

I don’t think that’s the case.

I think that as you get older, you embark on a journey of Strategic Fuck-Giving.

You start giving ALL the fucks.

But only to the right things and people.