Mercy or Murder - The Flipside of Paradise

This is not a happy post. 

Reality, nature and life are cruel and while I'm completely at ease with the theoretical notion of this, I'm also a hypocrite. But let me elaborate. If we have met in person, you are likely to have suffered through my "food equality" speech. I am not vegetarian and I think if you do eat meat, you should not discriminate on the base of cuteness, adorableness, personal ick factor or anything else. In my opinion, if you are a carnivore, you owe it to all animals that give their life for food to eat them. The little piglet that ends up on your barbecue has the same desire and right to live as your beloved pet. I will try anything put in front of me, and while not everything is equally easy to eat, so far, I have been able to be true to my convictions, while going out of my way to avoid endangered species (different story all together). However, and here is where my hypocrisy sets in, while I will eat anything, I really really don't want to be involved in the killing process. Of anything. If I accidentally step on a bug or some other creepy crawly, I apologise for taking its life and say a little prayer. Even though I'm not religious, go figure. I feel bad about taking that life, although it belongs to a creature that I find utterly disgusting. If I find insects and spiders in my house, I will not kill them, but catch them, carry them outside and set them free. In my opinion, this helps me keep my karma clean. 

In 2013, I visited Iceland for the first time. I went to a rural place in the north to go riding. Late June and early July mark the breeding season for birds here, so there were adorable little fluffy chicks all over the place and suicidal bird parents threw themselves in the way of our horses to lure us away from their nests. In one instance, I wasn't quick enough to move my horse out of the way and rode over a fluffy little baby bird. Filled with terror, I jumped down from my horse to see if it was ok. It wasn't. I had injured it. In my opinion, the only right thing to do if you have injured a wild creature is to kill it to spare it having to starve to death, wait for a predator to find it and suffer pain. Half-blind with tears and panic, I couldn't think of anything else, so I stomped on it with force. It would have died immediately. 

While people around me confirmed that I had done the right thing, this little bird has haunted me ever since. When I took its little life, it took a part of my soul with it and I have been terribly ashamed of the way I did it. I wished that I hadn't stepped on it, but that I had been calm and strong enough to honour it by taking it into my hands and breaking its neck. Quick, painless, respectful. 

I haven't told this story to many people, because it makes me cry and I don't like to appear vulnerable.

As it's breeding season again and because I have never truly gotten over the story from three years ago, I make sure to inform all my guests to stay on the paths and look out for birds, of course leaving out the details of my personal experience. Yet, three days ago, after four days with great guests, great horses and lots of fun, history repeated itself. Towards the end of the tour, I changed my mind about the way I was going to take and chose the more scenic, yet slower route instead of taking the faster road. My reasons were that on day 1, one of my guests and I had gotten into a conflict based on a misunderstanding on the faster route and I didn't want her to relive that moment by taking her back to the same place, even though this group enjoyed a bit of speed.

So the scenic route we took. Wile we were tölting through the meadows, a little bird baby, too young to fly, hopped into the sheep trail in front of me. I quickly steered my horse out of it and shouted "baby chick" to my guests, but I was too late, so I stopped the group and jumped of my horse, hoping that the little guy had gotten away. It hadn't. It was injured, we had broken its little leg. I felt the same horror I had felt three years ago and wailed in desperation. I am still convinced that it is my duty to end a wild creature's life, if I have injured it. I wanted to honour this little bird more than his little cousin, hoping that it would give me a little more peace. I took it into my bare hands, where it was trying to flutter about and made tiny cheep cheep sounds. It was the softest, fluffiest little thing I have ever touched. I was crying this whole time and apologising to the birdie and I wanted to make it quick and painless, so I took the tiny little neck between my fingers and twisted. In my need and desperation to get this over with, I applied to much force and ended up severing the little head from the chick's body. I had no idea how fragile and delicate bird babies are. I flung both parts of the body in different directions and found myself sobbing in my guest's arms. 

I brought my group home and spent the rest of my day hiding my pain and tears from everyone else. In the evening, I drowned myself in half a bottle of red wine and finally put up the wall tattoos I had purchased a while ago. Two little birds for the two little lives I took plus a big one to take care of them, as they were to young to take care of themselves. I will eventually give them a whole flock to keep them company and I sincerely hope that none of the other stickers I put up will ever have to represent another animal I killed.

I do think that I did the right thing and that killing the little birds was an act of mercy. That doesn't make me feel any less awful. And it doesn't make me feel any better about my hands. My hands remember the fluffy, not quite feathery touch of the wriggling little chick. They remember the snapping of the neck and the tearing of the skin and tissue. While they were simply following orders from my brain, they were acutely aware of the tiny specks of blood on them, the horror with which I looked at them and the utter disbelief I felt when each of them was holding a different part of the little bird. I can no longer use them for many tasks. While they will still hold a fork, dress me and do work, I cannot bring myself to use them for things like applying lip gloss with the tip of my finger or eat anything with my fingers. I can't have them close to my mouth or any other orifice for that matter. I have the feeling that I have baby bird under my fingernails. No amount of washing and cleaning has made this better so far.

I know that I'm being unjust towards them. If you have some tips about how to reconcile them with me, I would greatly appreciate. If not, I hope that time will heal us.

Catching up

It's been a while, hasn't it?

So much has been happening in the past months that I never really got around to writing it all down. Time to catch up and bring you up to speed.

First things first, you might have noticed that we are still in Iceland. We have decided to stay for now, but have moved from rural Hveragerði to metropolitan (cough) Garðabær, a neighbouring municipality of Reykjavik. With geekdom grossly underrepresented in rural Iceland, Frankenspouse wasn't finding enough like-minded people to play with and asked to move to the capital area. Three months' worth of searching, contacting potential landlords, sweating and expecting the worst later, we found our new place in the new neighbourhood Urriðaholt, overlooking a little lake, ridiculously overpriced of course, but very scenic.

For me, that means commuting to work, 45 km over a mountain pass by an active volcano with interesting weather conditions. On a good day, the drive is easy and relaxing through beautiful scenery, moss-covered lava fields, steaming mountains and very little traffic. On days with less than stellar weather, it implies crawling through dense fog with visibility of something like 15 meters. On those poor-visibility days, I'm so pumped with adrenaline by the time I get to work, I'm rather short-fused and need to calm my nerves with sugar before facing the happy, excited masses. None of this is matters right now though. Fríða, my little Honda Civic committed suicide by means of a broken alternator and our other car is in the shop for a broken gearbox. Only the 3rd and 6th gear were working in the end, which made driving over the mountain an interesting experience, to say the least. So now I'm condemned to using public transport, which, outside the capital area, is tedious and takes forever, but at least gives me a chance to catch up on my reading.

Last week, I went on a 4-day tour with one of the Icelandic guides that return each summer for a few tours. It was nothing short of a blast and I had my first shot at being in charge of the horse list. This means it was my job to match horses and riders, as well as to make sure all horses were getting enough rest and riders were neither overmatched or bored. Sounds trivial? You try it. It's basically an enormous puzzle that you solve several times a day, then throw all the pieces in the air and try to put them together in a completely new and different way, so that people don't always end up riding the same horse.

One of the highlights of the last few months was definitely Frankenspouse's Christmas gift to me, a tour into the lava chamber of a volcano. Þrínúkagígur (let's say it all together: Three-nookah-geeyur) is an inactive volcano close to Reykjavík. It is the only (known) crater in the world that didn't collapse with the volcano's last eruption or filled up with lava, allowing people to visit the actual empty lava chamber. We found ourselves in a huge, cathedral-like hall with beautiful, multi-coloured walls. The colours are due to different mineral deposits and evoke the feeling of being inside a ginormous piece of art. It is an incredibly beautiful and raw place, this lava chamber, one that makes you want to lie one your back and stare at the walls for hours, trying to grasp what happened here. You'll be able to follow the path the fire took with your eyes, you'll see where it burned the hottest, you'll see where the volcano's lava chamber was touching another, much older volcano's lava chamber, creating a completely different structure in the rocks. It's one of the places that make you feel small and irrelevant, yet giddy with excitement at how cool this planet is. It was a huge privilege to see this and if it wasn't so expensive, I'd go back every week, staring at the insides of Earth's womb like a kid at a Christmas tree.

Of Pain and Pleasure

Nope, this is not another sequel to 50 Shades of Grey. This is about the bittersweet feeling of calling more than one place "home".

I'm not overly prone to homesickness. Also, every time I walk out the door and see Iceland around me, I do a little happy dance in my head. This is still the case, even though the honeymoon phase is over, as they say.

However, in the beginning of December, homesickness hit me hard. Frankenspouse had already gone south for work and to spend time with friends and family and here I was all by my lonesome for three weeks in the cold cold and dark dark. Without him here, feelings that are always lurking in the dark but never really surface, well, surfaced. I miss home. As in the place where I come from. My mum isn't doing so well and while I'm trying to talk to her as much as I can, I have the feeling that I should be there in person to give actual, physical support. I want to spend time with my sister and see my niece growing up. I want to fall into a bottle of bubbly with my best friend, I want to hang out with my friend, the witch, who seems to understand my twisted insides a lot better than most others or who is simply that much more tolerant. I want to pop over to Luxembourg and see my friend's new baby and reconnect with all the people who touched my life, especially my superwoman Kindle editor colleague, who was the first to actually make it to Iceland to see me, and the rest of my team at Amazon. I want to hang with the in-laws (actually got my first hug by FS' little brother after a mere 9 1/2 years of dating. Historical experience!) and visit my father's grave. But mostly, I want to help my mother and stepfather, who are having a hard time, both individually for different reasons, as well as with each other.

So far, so good, if I want to move back to Germany after my year here is over, what's keeping me? What's keeping me is that this here is the place my heart lives, where my soul is at ease and my mind can let go. Apologies for the soppiness, I don't know how to say it any other way. The minute I left Iceland to go home for Christmas, I couldn't wait to come back, to breathe the fresh air, to see the strange moonscapes, to feel the angry weather on my skin. I prefer the person I am here as compared to the one I used to be. I am less stressed, less perfectionist and more relaxed. I don't care so much about the little things anymore. Don't get me wrong, I am still me and can still get my knickers in a twist about any old thing, but occurrences are much fewer and further between. I can even accept that I'm not always in control and that things will work themselves out eventually. 

I loved my time back home in Germany, I would have liked to stay longer and spend more time with everyone. While I couldn't wait to get one that plane and return to Iceland, I needed more time with my loved ones back home, because they are the one thing Iceland cannot provide. So when I got back to Iceland, I was homesick yet again. And in addition, I had apparently managed to somehow squeeze a supersized portion of Guilt with a capital G into my luggage. I am trying to befriend Guilt, welcome him and accept him as part of my life. On the upside, if I stay in Iceland, I'll never be alone again. On the downside, I'll have to carry this unwieldy fxxxer around with me. Excuse my French.

Unfortunately, my job does not have regular weekends and isn't very flexible about taking time off. It's like being back at the embassy, where I was supposed to take all my annual vacation at once. Being over 3000 km away, this doesn't really make it easier to stay connected with friends and family. Ideally I would want to go to Germany for a long weekend at least 2 or 3 times a year as well as to England at least twice. So this doesn't really work for me in the long run. 

As to staying or going home, the jury is still out on that. I would like to stay, as I can not imagine not being in Iceland. Originally, the decision was between FS and myself, but all of a sudden there is three of us. Guilt has reached adulthood and demands the right to vote.

On a happier note, we had our first Þorrablót yesterday (remember this post?) and it was a lot of fun watching FS eat all the sour stuff. Everyone else was at least one generation older than us, but we had a surprisingly fun time singing, eating and drinking with everyone. I scored some points for knowing the words to a popular Icelandic folk song and eating the infamous shark without pulling a face.

Legends of the Fall

Life sucks. Just not now.

Gabriele Arnoldi, Flúðír, October 2015

Yes, this is a blue iceberg

It's been busy around here. Not only has the number of available guides decreased disproportionately to the number of guests still wanting to go on a tour with us, but also the first wave of friends and family has travelled the Atlantic ocean to visit Frankenspouse and me. I'm still out riding most of the day, the groups have gotten a little smaller while the number of layers of clothing required to stay warm has increased. Getting dressed in the morning is a job in itself, I'm wearing underwear (two layers, because of the bounciness, not because of the cold), thermal underwear, t-shirt, jumper (1-2), winter jacket and rain jacket. On my lower half, I'm wearing underwear, thermal underwear, breeches, rain pants and full-length leather chaps. All these make it kinda awkward to get on a horse, of course, but they do keep me warm and dry (-ish). I also de-prioritised fashion and bought some fabulous boots that look like NASA invented them and that are keeping my feet both warm and dry, while also fitting the stirrups. Such a luxury.

As to the visiting friends and family, we had an absolute blast showing people around. If you live here for a while, you are no longer caught off guard by the landscape's stunning beauty, so seeing it through the wide eyes of a first time visitor to Iceland is heart-warming. We did some magic stuff like hiking up to Reykjadalur to bathe in a hot river (where it hailed upon us, but that's just details) and boil some eggs in a natural hot spring, going whale watching, visiting Thingvellir national park (where among some serious historical sightseeing in breathtaking nature, you'll also find The Wall of A Game of Thrones and can go snorkeling between the  North American and Eurasian tectonic plates in Lake Thingvallavatn), visiting the Geysir and some kick-ass waterfalls, driving to Jökulsárlón to see blue fxxxing icebergs, building a snowman, eating hot dogs, going riding and soaking in the Secret Lagoon, while it's raining softly or not so softly in our faces. We managed to find some northern lights for everyone and while they were not the most spectacular ones ever witnessed, nobody had to go home without having seen them.

The first snow has come and gone and the days are getting noticeably shorter now, so when I get the herd from the field in the morning, I no longer see them. It's an eerie feeling to ride through the dark with silent shadows of horses moving by. During the first riding tour, we ride into the rising winter sun which stays low and casts everything in golden reddish light. If the sky is clear, that is, if not the landscape is hiding in veils of mist and gloomy shades of grey. The horses have fluffed up and look like teddy bears. It's getting easier to tell them apart, especially now that most of them are on winter vacation. By now I also know their individual characters better which means that both I and the horses are getting more out of working together than in the beginning.

The stable in late afternoon glow

The other day, we took a staff ride to a nearby restaurant on horseback through the pitch-black night. We were 20 riders of mixed levels of experience, since not all of the hotel staff members ride on a regular basis. However, we were able to keep good speed, had fantastic food and a great ride home, occasional swigs of the "happy flask" included (it's tradition, don't judge). After 5 months of small talk, telling stories and keeping the group together, it was absolutely amazing to go riding just for the fun of it and not having to entertain guests at the same time.

Do I wonder if this job is the right thing for all eternity? Yes. It comes with perks and disadvantages, like every job, but I have moments when I absolutely cannot wait any longer to get on a horse and go out riding and tell stories about volcanoes and vikings and things like that. I also have incredibly annoying people with me sometimes.

Have I regretted my decision to come here and do what I'm doing? Not once.

Seljalandsfoss

Travelling for work - Blessing or curse?

In my particular case, travelling for work implies multi-day riding tours, during which I get to take people away from civilisation and into the wild, take care of a whole herd of horses and sleep in cosy mountain huts, some of which have neither water nor electricity.

My first "long tour" ended yesterday and my body and spirit are broken. Think 18-hour working days without breaks, 16 people, 47 horses (each of them with four hooves, but we'll get to that later) and a multitude of issues, problems, minor catastrophes and critical situations, all of which need to be dealt with in a friendly, competent, trust-inspiring manner, ideally without anyone actually noticing that there was a crisis.

As this was my first tour of this kind, I did not have much of a clue what to expect, how to prioritise or, since we're at it, how to herd a flock of free-running horses. Other personal challenges included driving a trailer for the first time, telling the approx. 20 more or less identical looking dark bown horses apart and keeping the happy smile when baring my teeth would have been a much more natural reaction.

As to prioritisation and speed, this is something that I will learn as I go on more tours. I like to know what is expected of me, so that I can act rather than react, but I also understand that theoretical knowledge is not much good here. This will come.

Herding is actually quite fun. It's a 2-person job, one in the front and one in the back of the herd. The front rider shows the horses the way and once they have figured out what is expected of them, generally, they will follow in a nice orderly line. Unless they get excited or one of the other myriad exceptions. However, they will behave as horses do and their behaviour can be predicted to a certain extend, which gives you a bit of a head start, at least. The challenge here is to keep the herd behind you and stop them from running past you as, even if they are excited and at full speed. The person in the back collects any horses that have dropped out of the line to wander off on their own, have stopped to graze or are not keeping the general direction. As in the front, as long as the herd keeps in line, this is not a hard thing to do, but, again, as in the front, the problems start when the herd spreads out horizontally and you have to run back and forth to collect horses on both sides. Both jobs really depend on the horse you are riding, some of them will do a great job, understand the situation and will actively make your life easier, others prefer to make it more interesting by adding to the struggle.

Let's not kid ourselves though, even on the nicest, softest and most compliant horse, a whole day on horseback is physically demanding, especially if you also take Icelandic weather into consideration. It took us around 8 hours a day (including breaks) to reach our next location and this would have been plenty. However, as our horses could not always stay in the same place we were, in some cases, the other colleague taking care of the herd and I had another 2+ hours  of pushing the horses towards their destination for the night.

On the last morning, I found myself in the unfortunate situation of having to drive a trailer for the first time, it was a huge 4x4 car with a huge trailer attached. Let's say it did not go so well. I fully expected to end up in a ditch somewhere, and of course, we were already late as it was. I did not end up in a ditch. But I did get lost and had to reverse the bloody thing for 150 meters around a bend. I tried for 15 minutes and gave up when it was waving to me through the driver's window. It truely does behave like a worm. So instead of backing it out, I drove over a field to turn it around and hoped that nobody would come out and yell. Nobody did. But had they, I wonder if I could have claimed denial of assistence, seing that more or less every person in the countryside can drive these things, so instead of yelling, they could have just lent me a hand. Here's to hoping I don't have to do that again anytime soon, at least not before I have had some time to practise.

So, for better illustration of the general craziness, a typical day in the life of a guide might look something like this:

07:00 Wake up, brush teeth (if you can find the toothbrush), get dressed, pack all your stuff

07:30 Eat breakfast standing up while packing saddle backs and solving last minute problems, make sure you have everythng with you that you need for the rest of the day, check you have the horse list, or else hell will break loose

08:00 Start catching horses and hand them out to people, realise that some of them have dropped a shoe and need shoeing before we start. Start cursing the day. Hit your thumb with a hammer and continue shoeing with the blood running down (get extra credits for badass-ness)

08:15 Get yelled at by some cottage responsible because some of your guests forgot to take their shoes off when going to the bathroom

08:30 Help people prepare their horses, make sure the saddle is not on backwards, the girth is tight and in the right place, the noseband allows the horse to breathe and the reins are clipped into the right place. Look up and realise it might rain, recommend rain gear, put on rain gear yourself

09:00 Get people on their horses, introduce them to their particular horse's needs and character

09:03 Realise that you need a horse, too. Quickly throw a saddle on said horse

09:05 Start riding

09:30 Sky has cleared up, there is no rain. instead the sun is coming out. People start complaining about being too hot in their rain gear and blaming you for the inaccurate weather forecast. There is no grass, so it's almost impossible to stop the herd, people will just have to deal

10:15 You shed liters of sweat and are now about as wet as if it had rained, only from the inside. You are slowly stewing in your own juices, painfully aware that last night's hut had no shower

10:45 You stop to let the horses eat. Nobody takes off their rain gear, because a light drizzle has started

11:00 Everyone gets back on their horses, you continue the tour

11:30 The sun is back, people are complaining about being too hot again, you start praying for Hekla, the volcano in sight, to erupt and make everything evaporate in molten lava

12:30 You stop for lunch, shoe some more horses. The fxxxxxx shoes are too big, so you have to bang them smaller. Alas, no hard surfaces around, all grass and soft lava stone. Also, the hammer breaks. You improvise by using the car jack (thankfully the kitchen car has met you for lunch today) and start wishing the ferrier a slow and painful death

13:10 You're already late and you haven't eaten yet, because you have been busy with the shoeing and general craziness, so you shove half a sandwich into your face while catching new horses. The guests sit around and enjoy the sun, they have taken off their rain clothes. You are still wearing yours, no time yet.

13:45 Everyone is back on their horses, you have been riding for 5 minutes, Somebody complains that their horse isn't doing this and that and that they don't like red horses because all red horses are bad. You give them your horse and take theirs

14:00 The apocalypse is upon you and it brings heavy, horizontal rain, so you rush to the nearest grass field to be able to stop the herd long enough for people to get back into rain gear

14:25 Everyone is back on their horses once more

15:30 It's still raining like there is no tomorrow. Your rain gear is waterproof, but the rain gets in around your neck, slowly soaking into your jumper. It also soaks your gloves and from there continues up your sleeves. You did bring extra gloves, but they are in the pocket of your rain gear. Unfortunately, since you are sitting on a horse, the rain has pooled in your lap and has run into the pockets of your rain gear, soaking your extra gloves as well the extra equipemt, almighty horse list and the afternoon snack you had stored there

15:45 Last change of horses for the day while we take a quick break to let them eat. Everything is soaked. People are starting to talk about hot showers. There will be hot water at tonight's place

17:30 You have made it to your destination. The guests and main guide are being picked up to do some sightseeing. The two other guides stay behind with the herd and push them towards the field they will spend the night in. Just another two hours of riding at high speed in torrential rain

20:00 You have made it to the hut and help with the final preparations for dinner. Herd is happily grazing around 15 km away, less that halfway from where you stopped the tour this afternoon. You will have to go pick the horses up early tomorrow, so they'll be here when the guests have finished their breakfast

20:30 Dinner. Friendly guest offers shot of whiskey

21:30 Evening entertainment: singing with the guests, teaching them À Sprengisandi, a traditional Icelandic folk song about riding through the desert between two glaciers

23:00 Guests are settling down for the night. Time to plan the horse list for tomorrow, which rider to match with which horses. Occasional swig of whiskey to help with exhaustion and motivation. Hum À Sprengisandi to yourself

01:00 Shower, Go to bed. Pass out

Everything hurts again, especially my brain from questions like "Can we drive somewhere with people tonight?" when we're about a 2 hours' drive away from electricity and running hot water, not even thinking civilisation. We also had one car with 5 seats for 20 people. Common sense is sadly lacking in some people. 

Why do you book a tour like this, away from everything, if you need some night life? How do you end up on a long riding tour in Iceland if you are not willing to compromise personal comfort and rough it for a few days? It's impossible to bring all the comforts of civilisation to such remote places, at least if they are supposed to remain remote. One of the saddest things I saw on this trip were the phone and electricity lines scarring the surrounding, wonderful nothingness.

All this said and taking into consideration that I'm still in the recovery phase, this was a fantastic trip. Some places were so exceptionally beautiful I felt myself choking up. I love the Icelandic wastelands up in the highlands and experiencing them on horseback was much more intense than on a bus ride with 50 other people.

I actually found myself weeping at some point and thanking the universe (or what-/whomever) for giving me the balls to come here. So this is good.

Was it a ton of work, painful, challenging, difficult and harder than I had anticipated? Yes.

Was it worth it? Hell, yeah!

Flying Too Close To The Sun

So this is how Icarus felt.

Why Iceland, they asked. It's cold and dark and rainy, they said. Won't you miss the sun, they asked. Well, frankly, I think it would do me good if said sun wouldn't do so much overtime. Unlike Icarus, I have actually been listening to my Daedalus, or in my case, my mother, though. With little to no effect. Like my mummy taught me, I have been faithfully covering all areas of skin exposed to daylight with sunscreen, LPF 50+ even, since I belong to the very pale, blue-ish translucent tribe. I have done so every day. And yet, I burn, every day. My forehead and parts of my neck, respectively covered by helmet and buff, have remained their original colour, whereas the rest of my exposed skin goes lobster on a daily basis. I have yet to find a way to avoid this.

The very considerate/concerned Frankenspouse has recommended wearing one of those:

This is a Chinese bathing mask, also known as Facekini. Not sure I'm into that. Also not sure my boss would be into that. However, it is quite apparent that my sunscreen is more of an accelerant than protection.

Any suggestions?

Working hard or hardly working?

Work is certainly eating into my blogging time, I start at 7:30 in the morning (brrr!) and sometimes, I'm not home before 7 in the evening. Next to the tours that I'm guiding, there is also a good amount of stable work as well as preparation and follow-ups of longer tours to take care of. Plus we need to move the herd occasionaly. Now this is a fun and really efficient way to get rid of all potential aggressions. One of us races all the way to the field the horses are supposed to go to and opens or closes all potential gates on the way, so the horses can really only go the right way. Then we get to collect and push a herd at high speed all the while screaming at the top of our lungs to keep them moving, hundreds of horses, sometimes over several kilometers. I have played more cowgirl in the past two months than as a kid with the boys around me.

So what if you lose your voice in the process? So what if you swallow half a pound of dust and are completely soaked when you get home? Riding at full speed while screaming as loud as you can is more therapeutic than anything I have ever tried before. Including yoga.

Photo courtesy of Google