Athleta Tuscany Tour: Day 7
Ashley, Team Athleta • Aug 6th, 2008 • Category: Adventure Travel, Cycling
I woke up to beating rain. Went to yoga and had breakfast. I opted out of the walk into town in the rain, since I didn’t think it would help my little head cold much. When the rest of the ladies returned for lunch, we sat at one end and Colleen told us about the dolphins she’s been swimming with in Hawaii for twenty years.
Afterwards, we went out to the beach to do our Ceremony of the Heart’s Desire. Colleen gave us each a genestra flower, one of the yellow flowers we’d been riding by all week, and a stone to throw. Together we held our flowers up to the four different directions (north, south, east, west) and then to the earth and to the sky. We were sent to think alone about something we each wanted to accomplish or let go of, perhaps something we’d been holding onto that was no longer serving us. And we were to cast the stone when we were ready to let it go.
I stepped a few hundred meters down the beach. It was an overcast sky. Dramatic. Not raining, but the sun cutting through in sharp lines and slicing into the Mediterranean. I walked around and around in a circle, repeating one of my Sanskrit mantras from yoga, until I had two concentric circular troughs in the sand where my feet were. I was dizzy from spiraling. I told myself that when the sun shone through the clouds, I would step inside the circle and let it symbolize the walls I erect around myself. And then I would throw the stone to symbolize my intention and as soon as the stone was gone, I would step outside the circle to liberate myself.
And I won’t tell you my intention, because that just wouldn’t be any fun. But it was good.
I was struck by the power of intention in a group. How the collective effort is able to raise the efforts of the solitary individual to a greater level, buoying each other like helium balloons (and of course I can’t help thinking about Lawnchair Larry, the guy who flew some 1300 miles in a lawn chair attached to a bunch of helium balloons, and this thought drives me into hysterics just as all the women are serenely meeting back up following the casting of their stones).
At night, we went to Chicca’s house to have a cooking lesson and a wild party. Which definitely turned wild. I was dancing with a guy in drag, leading some kind of Jazzercise experiment of women line dancing together, Riccardo bellowing next to me, kids running around, food everywhere. The whole thing was surreal. And very very funny.
At the end of this awesome week, the thing that stays with me most prominently is all the laughter. The power laughter has as therapy, as life force, as a reminder that life is here to be enjoyed if you’re going to bother to live it at all. All the days stacked up in my mind. Colleen’s infectious belly laugh and her face going red. Everyone screaming in laughter at dinner. Doubling over on our bikes and nearly crashing off the side of the road from howling. Debbie in the ditch and all of us stomping on the ground we’re laughing so hard. Laughing makes you forget the sub-prime mortgage crisis for a minute. It makes you forget your divorce. It makes you forget the shackles of daily life, and all the responsibility. It is the thing that brought us back to the basic functioning of life. The old world basics. In the same way the food is so good because it’s been returned to a simpler form.
Laughter opened us all up to each other and connected us, from wherever we came from all over the country. It opened us up to receiving the wisdom of the universe, like the living meditation.
Every night, Colleen asked us to go around the table and say our word of the day – something that encapsulated our feeling about the day. My word for the whole trip is: laughter. Mind-bending, side-splitting, hysterical laughter. It’s something I know every one of us on that trip brought back to our real lives at the end.
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Ashley,
I loved reading your journal of our trip. It was great to get to know you and experience Italy with you. You have a great sense of humor and adventure. Women’s Quest was a fantastic experience. I loved every minute and constantly think now that I’m back in the real world I need to remind myself that the life I lead is my choice.
“Today I will be well in mind, body and spirit is my morning mantra. Also I can hear Ricardo in my head saying Janet-”tranquilla”. I need that constant reminder.
If you come to NC look me up so we can continue the laughter and fun. I promise to take you on an epic ride. Janet Johnson
My heart aches as I read this wonderful recount of La Dolce Vita. All my fabulous memories are flooding back in. Colleen rocks. She is such a great person - truly one of a kind - and the kind that helps you view the world a little differently after knowing her and viewing life for 7 days through her perspecitve.
A favorite memory was when 3 of us (Kathy, Karen and I) got off the plane in Pisa and Jackie said she knew we were Women Questers because we all had huge grins on our faces, excited for our adventure to begin. I knew I would fit right in. Women’s Quest rocks, too : )
It was really great to read your diary! Thanks for being so open. It totally took me back to my La Dolce Vita trip 4 or 5 years ago. I’m glad that ‘Chicca’s parties are still wild! Our’s certainly was!
Every day was heaven on that trip. It was my 1st time road biking and you described it perfectly! I ended up buying the bike that I rented which had belonged to Riccardo’s mom who used to (still does?) run the bike store) Anyway, everyone still “admires,” my lovely Italian bike!
It did shock me to read that Howard is 50! It makes me realize how much time as gone by. Well, I can’t wait to do another trip but I’ll have to wait for the 2 girls I gave birth to since, grow up abit more! I am planning a closer Women’s Quest trip for my 40th B-day next year though!