The thing is, I know how I should respond, I know I need to keep a level head and that stress just makes the whole issue worse and clouds my judgement etc etc. I understand the logic of it, until something goes amiss and suddenly logic goes out the window and panic and stress take its place...
Until the other day when we found ourselves in a very alarming situation and I'm still trying to understand how I was so at peace during the scene because I feel more scared and panicked looking back on it than I did at the time!
We decided to take a road trip up to Northern Bali in search of some waterfalls and temples. Leaving most of our belongings at a hostel in Ubud we packed all we would need for the night into my camera bag plus some snacks for the road and climbed aboard the motorcycle. It was about 1 and half hours to our first destination: a vast lake with a temple situated on one of it's banks. We'd left most of the tourists behind us already and it was so peaceful and untouched.
From here we began to climb into the mountains, pausing at the top for some lunch with a stunning view of the lake beneath us. Then we descended a steep rough road to some marvellous waterfalls:
We climbed back up the rough road and then continued our journey north towards Lovina Beach. To reach it we had to scale more mountains, then about 50 minutes off our target we began our very steep descent down the mountains. It was a very economical drive, there was no need at all for the accelerator, but the brakes were being squeezed, under constant pressure all the way. About half way down, and still a very long way from the bottom, we were sailing down a particularly steep stretch of road, when very suddenly the brakes gave out...
Yes, we were riding down a mountain squeezing the brakes as hard as possible, when out of nowhere they stopped working! This is the stuff of nightmares.
Miraculously Zak, who was driving, calmly managed to bring the bike to stop on the flattened entrance to someone's driveway. And that's where we were: stranded on the side of a very steep mountain in a foreign country, no phone service and well out of reach of the AA, with a motorcycle who's brakes had failed and two of us who had no comprehension as to why!
This is the moment to freak out right? If you can't panic now, when can you? And the weird thing is if I was back home I almost certainly would have stressed out. But something about the complete helplessness of it all was almost comical and that bought us enough time for us to remember logic and knowing that stress wasn't going to help, instead we thought of the quote: "The key is to believe in your ability to figure it out". We were helpless but we didn't feel desperate, and in fact help was on the way, though not in the way we were used to.
Not long after we'd dismounted and done a check around the bike, pretending we knew what we were looking for, an Indonesian man drove by and clearly recognised the perplexed looks on the tourists faces. He told us, in English, that the brakes were too hot and that we should wait. Neither of us knowing much about motorbikes, we weren't entirely convinced by this information. But, we'd also started to attract the attention of the people who lived nearby. One man spoke excitedly to us describing the problem - in Indonesian... He then waved his friend over, naively we thought this meant his friend spoke English; Nope, he just wanted to the share in the dramatic and increasingly comedic event. Have you ever thought "you've got to laugh about it otherwise you'll cry about it." This was certainly one of those moments, and we chose to laugh, it was really all we could do!
A little girl who had been playing nearby and seen the whole thing, reappeared again with her mother who amazingly spoke a little english, she pointed to the front wheel and said water too hot. Having learnt a lot more about automobiles in the last year, I understood this to mean that the brake fluid has got too hot. So we had a diagnosis. She then echoed the first man's advice to wait, for about 30 minutes. They let us use their bathroom and we settled down with our snacks for a mini picnic by the side of the road. Many more Indonesians came by, some merely beeped their horns, the normal greeting here, others stopped to say hello to the tourists, some tried to help but it's not easy when you don't share a common language.
Finally we started to gingerly make our way down the mountain again, going as slow as we could, but also being as gentle with the brakes as we dared and stopping for periods of time when we didn't feel safe. Eventually we made it to sea level, phew!
Although apparently that wasn't enough adrenaline for us, because the next day we found ourselves at Aling Aling natural water park for a spot of cliff jumping. A bit hooked on adventure!
I'm not sure what that X factor was that kept the stress at bay, but I do know that it changed what could have been a desperate nightmare, into an adventurous afternoon, a shared experience with some really kind people and a story we will always remember, proof that whenever we feel out of control, free-falling down the mountain. Its not desperate, we can figure it out, with some help, patience and remembering the lessons we've already learnt.
"It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to."
-J.R.R Tolkien
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