Pedaling into the Unknown: One woman’s epic expedition, mountain biking 5000 km off-road for her honeymoon!

By Sally Fenner

Grief was gnawing at me, trapping my body in a cycle of pain with no offer of relief, making me restless and not letting me go. I desired liberosis, to care less about things. I desperately sought inner and outer liberation. I was having sleepless nights. My soul knew the solution, but my body was not listening until the moment came when I just longed to leave. I wished to free myself from this situation, wipe it from my being, and surround myself with the wilderness.

The wilderness was my church, where I went to heal my hurt. It understood me. Bathed in nature, I rid my mind of unpleasant thoughts and eased myself of the injustices that had incapacitated me, depriving me of peace. The only energy I had left in me, I used to leave, just go and be free. The wilderness enabled me to breathe once more, to really breathe, and when you own your own breath, no one can steal your peace!

And so the adventure began, mountain biking from Canada to Mexico off-road, climbing a total elevation higher than Mt. Everest and escaping predators – for my honeymoon!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Mar 3, 2023
• ISBN: 9781647507510

Sally Fenner

Sally Fenner is an adventuress, a tom boy, and an intrepid traveler. She always has been, and she probably always will be. Perhaps she was just born that way. From starting to ride horses at two years old, to sky diving, bungy jumping, diving with sharks in South Africa, scuba diving and surfing all around the world, competing in snowboarding and endurance horse racing, representing her country abroad, she has experienced many varied adventures. She has lived in Australia, New Zealand, France, and England and, always up for her next adventure, she did not hesitate to conjure up the best one yet, riding her mountain bike across the Rocky Mountains, off-road for her honeymoon! Which is how this book came about.

Book preview

Chapter One

Cougar Dinner!

Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.

– Helen Keller

Vancouver Island, Canada 2000 – The Training Ride

Get on your bike and RIDE! Mark yelled at me. Sal, move, NOW! Mark’s voice became more desperate. He hardly had time to inhale and refill his lungs before a sound more like a teenage boy whose voice was breaking screamed at me. RIDE! QUICK! Mark emptied his lungs completely with one more effort to make me respond, MOOOOOOVE!

The mountain lion leapt toward me. Then, in one swift and almighty bound, took to a tree above me, revealing its full size. There it crouched, wriggling and swishing its tail in preparation for pouncing right on top of me, carefully selecting the perfect moment to do so.

Unaware of the presence of the mountain lion, I was barely able to stand upright, wobbling around feebly, my head hanging low with my chin practically on my chest, dribbling and in a complete world of my own. Disorientated and arguing in my head as to whether my mind was failing me or my body, or both, I questioned what was happening to me? I must have presented as the easiest prey that mountain lion had ever encountered in its entire life. I was, in fact, having a hypoglycemic episode. Having ‘hit the wall,’ I had withdrawn inward, and I was in my own world, attempting to deal with my ‘bonking’ state and completely oblivious to the imminent danger I was in.

Prior to the departure of our 5000km, honeymoon, mountain bike ride, whilst Mark and I had been studying the possible dangers that we might encounter on the trail, Mark had tried to make light of a mountain lion being any threat to us.

Oh, they’re just pussycats, Sal. If we encounter one, I’ll just grab it by the tail and swing it around above my head. Just you wait, love, they won’t hurt us! This conjured up an image in my head that manifested in a half-hearted and somewhat doubtful smile.

The local Indians we had chatted to before we set off on this training ride begged to differ with Mark’s theory, not surprisingly.

She is perfect cougar dinner size, stated one pointing straight at me.

Mountain lions are no pussycats and hungry mountain lions are very dangerous! stated another, as a few more nodded in agreement.

Trying to reassure me, Mark whispered, Pussycats, Sal, you’ll see,

‘See,’ I did not though, and I must have appeared as drunk as a skunk, in my badly timed ‘bonking’ state. Mark was probably eating his words right now, as I vaguely became aware that he was bellowing at me to get back on my bike and RIDE! After his third command, of which each one had become progressively louder and higher pitched, I detected the urgency in his voice and looked up to see a tree right in front of me swaying and appearing to fall toward me. I swore to myself profusely – I thought we must have entered a tree logging area, and that the tree was being felled and was about to fall right on top of me.

Cougars, I have been told, operate in a very swift manner. Firstly, stalking you, then taking to a tree in preparation for leaping on you and snapping your spine at the neck, making for a relatively clean and quick death. Perhaps I would appreciate such a sleek killing method. It’s a shame that after such a resourceful killing, they are such wasteful and fussy eaters. They pick out the blood-rich organs only, namely the liver and heart, leaving the rest of the carcass for scavengers. I didn’t think I wished to be left for scavengers to pick at my body, but I had the debilitating disadvantage of having no idea what was going on at all!

Mark watched in desperation a hundred meters down the steep trail from me, abruptly and acutely aware there was no way that he could get to me in time to help. I was still unaware that a cougar played any part in this scenario, but, terrified that I was about to be squashed by a gigantic logged, Canadian tree, I was suddenly injected with a shot of adrenaline, pumping my body with the infusion of energy I needed to get moving. It forced me to jump on my bike involuntarily, as if in a spasm, and ride speedily down the slippery, rocky, technical trail faster than the world champion downhill mountain bike racer, Missy Giove. Mark watched me flash past him, trailer bouncing erratically behind me, its weight pushing me even faster down the incredibly steep hill. I was flying down that mountain at speeds I’m sure I will never experience again, completely out of control. Mark, happy that I had finally reacted but terrified the mountain lion was just about to make its fatal leap on him, jumped on his trusty metal Kona steed and thrashed his pedals round in a ballistic manner in an effort to escape the teeth of the ‘pussycat.’

As we rounded the next corner, we had surpassed 40 mph and were suddenly faced with Nitinat Lake.

Oh shit! Mark heard me yell, as I slammed on my wet brakes. I heard my cry echo back to me from across the lake.

Oh shit! Mark yelled, as he too slammed on his wet brakes. Mark, as out of control as myself, slid into me, our brakes fully locked up and as metal entangled with metal, like two swans’ necks entwined, we both glided, as if in slow motion, gracefully and headfirst, straight into Nitinat Lake!

As we both surfaced from the depths of the freezing cold water, we saw the cougar screech to a halt behind us, his muscles tense and taut as they fought to save him from following our lead and taking a dunking in the lake. Once he had braked himself to a halt, his mannerisms suggested a serious intention to pursue us into the water after all. Water obviously did not repel him as much as we had hoped. He must be hungry. This was my first view of the cougar, and although in total shock, I now realized why Mark had been so scared for my life. It was clear we had not merely been trying to get away from a falling tree. I fancied my chances against this mountain lion slightly more in the water than on land but was still terrified as I stared into its eyes.

This cat had one thing on its mind – food – and we were it. I doubted anything would prevent it from continuing its chase for dinner. Mark began shouting and splashing aggressively, kicking water into the face of the threatening wild cat. Almost frozen from either fear or cold, I am not sure which, I realized I had to try to help, as a commando-like yell bellowed from Mark, ordering me to get my butt into gear and kick and scream. I jumped into action. Thankfully, this was enough to ensure the cougar was sent well and truly on its way. He would have to find dinner elsewhere tonight. Plunging into Nitinat Lake combined with Mark’s quick reactions had saved us from that cougar. For the moment at least!

Chapter Two

Fred’s Dead

Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.

– Helen Keller

Rumilly, France 1998 – The Funeral

Pain. I am experiencing pain. Excruciating pain, like a fire raging through my body and burning my soul. Yet this pain does not feel normal or familiar. It is as if there are no physical manifestations from this pain. These virgin feelings do not make sense to me. How can I experience pain and yet believe it not to be physical in nature? Nothing is making sense to me right now. I know that to try to describe this pain is impossible, futile; I cannot describe it. But still I continue to try, for surely someone must understand? Someone must have experienced this type of agony before. And yet I seriously doubted it. To believe anyone else could have lived through such pain diminished the importance of it, rendering my pain as meaningless. I cannot allow it to be worthless and empty, so I continue to believe I am alone in this pain.

This pain is born of a deep, gut-wrenching emotion, an emotion the likes of which I have never felt before. All consuming; an emotion so strong it attacks my thoughts and twists my mind. It strikes me down, forcing me to believe life is pointless, brainwashing me. I concede to its instruction, Yes, I want to die! I scream inside my contorted head. Yet, suicide is not my wish. Surely if I choose to die, this would not be suicide, this would be an intellectual decision born of an informed judgement. This was not a decision to want to die but a decision to need to die, to have to die. I convinced myself there was a difference. I could not continue to live now, not unless I was to be a living zombie, no use to myself or any other living soul. Justification of my feelings had no place here. I did not need to justify my emotions and thoughts to anyone. Emotions cannot be justified, they just are. It did not matter what anyone else thought.

Fred was dead!

The love of my life had gone. Now there was no other option than to join him. It could not be simpler. This was the correct option, my choice and the intellectual decision.

I cannot live this living hell anymore. I cry in my sleep, I dream misery; there is nothing of value left in me or in life. I am a single live nerve end waiting to self-destruct. I need to end it all before I destroy all that is around me along with me.

Pain ambushes my grief. The pain stabs through me. Only this time it is immensely physical in nature, and I double over in reaction to it, clutching my stomach. I do not know why I clutch my stomach, as I simply cannot fathom from where this pain is born. Perhaps it is from my very core, my solar plexus, my soul itself. Beyond this pain I experience a hollowness in my stomach; a hollowness that no food can fill.

Fred is dead; my love has gone.

The pain oozes outward from the center of my being like a carcinogen, spreading and slowly consuming my body, my soul, slowly killing me.

I hear laughing, loud, hysterical laughing, and am slammed back into the reality of my situation, distraught to perceive I am still alive. I am unaware of exactly where this laughing is coming from. In my own cold, death-like state, I feel too numb to turn and search for its source. The laughing annoys me, maddens me. I shake as an overwhelming, imperceptibly strong emotion washes through me like a wave of evil, staining my vision with red. Anger.

For a few, pleasurable minutes, the anger whips me into a rage; pleasurable because the anger overpowers my pain and I enjoy the release, welcoming a few minutes of being pain-free. Then the anger is gone. Just as quickly and dramatically as the rage has transformed me, I am left wilted. All I know once more is the pain, numb to everything and everyone else around me. I hear that laughter once more and then the anger bursts into me, boils up through me and explodes out of me again, catching me off guard. I want to react, to shout and scream at this idiotic person laughing. They had got it all wrong. WRONG! I thought. The anger controls me, taking me hostage and I shout out in my mind, NO! I am deafened by the intensity of the sound reverberating around my head, a sound silent to all around me. The word continues relentlessly to bounce and echo around my confused mind. NO! I scream out in my head, "Don’t you get it? Fred is dead! We are not supposed to laugh. This is the wrong reaction. SHUT UP!" Yet, deep in my subconscious I’m aware death makes for strange reactions in people. There is no right or wrong here. Nothing makes sense here. Laughing, crying, it’s all the same. And anyway, nothing matters now.

I know exactly how Fred would have wanted us to react, with a celebration for his life and a belief that his soul was ready to move on. This should not be a sad occasion. But I was to let Fred down, and I was not alone. Everyone at this funeral let Fred down, it was the saddest occasion we had all known, how could we make it a happy one? You are asking too much of us, Fred, I whispered in my head. How could anyone feel joy whilst suffering such loss? I felt such desolation and shock. I was so alone. I sought relief from my life. God, let me die.

Fred was dead and I could not, would not, allow myself to feel anything other than this pain. If I blocked this pain out, then it wasn’t real. I had to make it real, keep it real, accept that it was real. I had to face this reality. I allowed this pain, this malevolent force, to run rampant through my body. I had no energy to fight it anyway.

Fred was dead and in that sense my love for him had been rejected. I was, therefore, utterly without value or worth.

Fred was dead and I wished to go where he had gone. Perhaps then the pain would stop. I could not accept that pain and grief was the price I was going to have to pay for love. Lost love.

Fred was dead and I could not survive on the memory of him alone. I welcomed blessed oblivion, but I knew it would not come.

Fred was dead and I wished to be with him. Was that so wrong? I asked myself. Without Fred, nothing but wretchedness and gloom was emerging from my mind.

I could not live with this overriding anger and bitterness I felt, I was totally and wholly and downright unreservedly empty. My life had been entirely distorted. I felt like the sense of loss would remain forever, strengthening as opposed to weakening as time passed. I understood no one emotion was a permanent condition in life, but that was before I had experienced the death of a lover. Terrible, damning emotions were all I could look forward to, a prisoner for evermore. Now I knew there would be no moments of happiness in my life, it was no longer possible to be happy, well at least not human and happy. Perhaps I could exist. Exist on some level, the un-dead going through the motions of life maybe but not ever truly feeling alive, truly living again. Moping around in a lifeless, will-less, mute trance. Dejected. No. Fred was dead and I preferred to be dead too. Death had to be better than existing now.

Fred was larger than life. Fred, I was convinced, knew something about life, or death, that many of us didn’t understand or at least weren’t open to learning about. It seems to me that millions of souls are banging on their humanoid casket’s closed doors, doors belonging to people too caught up in the hecticness of social correctness to listen. Prisoners. All the time concerned with ‘having’ and ‘possessing’ rather than ‘experiencing’ and ‘doing,’ or even just ‘being.’ Never following their gut feelings, their only chance of leading them to their true destiny, in fear that society will think it the wrong choice, incorrect or improper. We are sheep, following one another around, worrying constantly what actions or possessions will gain us society’s respect. Ignorant. Not hearing our soul’s screams to guide us on the correct course and learn the true lessons meant for our life on Earth. Not Fred. Fred was different.

To be truly rich is to have something that cannot be lost, unlike money, beauty, youth, or material possessions. Fred was rich, rich in love, happiness and fun. He knew to follow his soul’s lead. He listened. His soul had taught him all that he needed to know in this life because he never deviated from following his true self and he knew this path would make him happy. Being creative is a greater means of self-expression than being possessive or having possessions. It is through creating, not owning material items, that life is revealed. Fred, through expressing his love of life, revealed how life should be lived to all those who met him, no matter how briefly. Fred did not covet possessions the way most people do. He was content just being. He lived the way I desired, yearned to live. Not just for a fleeting moment whilst working in France snowboarding for the winter season, but forever.

In that sense, Fred had achieved all that he could; more than most people achieve in a lifetime. He had offered the world a happy person, spreading happiness to others, creating a wave of it through everyone he met. This was more than so many people can offer the world. Some people saw Fred as selfish because it appeared that he put his own happiness first. I knew different. Being truly content and happy put him in a position to be strong and happy for others. Essentially, because he followed his dreams and was content with his life, he was able to give happiness and pure unadulterated love to others, thus making him one of the world’s biggest beneficiaries.

But all that love, that joy, was gone.

Still numb, I forced a movement, movement enough to turn my head slightly. I instantly regretted doing so as I witnessed pure grief in its most raw form. A man on his knees, clawing at his stomach and sides. A man alone, no longer fitting the title of father. Fatherhood having been stripped from him in one swift moment in the middle of the night in October. A beautiful man, destroyed, distraught. A man shedding tears of grief, desperately trying to come to terms with the godawful news that no father ever wishes to hear. A man appearing suddenly old beyond his years, robbed of ever having the ability to feel true happiness again. A man that has just had to bury his own son.

He moaned, barely able to move his lips to form the words, but I heard them, as clear as if he were whispering them in my ear, "Ça aurait dû être moi."

It should have been me, he moaned repeatedly, It should have been me; it should have been me; it should have been me! How can I live when my son is dead?

God, what sort of hell was I in here.

This felt so wrong, I frowned.

My own grief drowned for a split second in time as I engulfed Fred’s father’s grief in one breath. I blinked, turned away and sighed out a long, slow, forceful breath of air, attempting to purge myself of what I had just witnessed. I prayed Fred knew no such suffering where his soul had gone, that he knew nothing of his family’s pain, or of mine.

Apart from his rather mechanical, external bodily movements and haunting sounds emanating from his mouth, this man, Dé dé, Fred’s father, appeared as dead as his son. His face was gaunt; his skin gray and lifeless, melancholy cloaked his entire body as it slumped, heavy and hunchbacked on the ground. He barely kept himself in a vertical position. He wanted the ground to eat him up, I could tell. I prayed Fred could not see his father now. It would have killed him a second time over to see his father contorted with such grief. His father wished to be dead. I knew he did. I knew what he wanted like no one else knew. And I wanted it for myself too.

Dé Dé’s wish was granted. He was so grief-stricken, grief killed him. He could not accept he had to bury his son. What father could? Unlike his son’s quick death, it took three long, painful years for Fred’s father to die, of a broken heart.

Death, such a difficult reality to grasp, so feared, so much mystery and lack of understanding surrounding it, yet so inevitable. We begin to die the day we are born. This is not hidden information that only a few are privy to. We all know it to be true yet are so unprepared for it when it strikes. So many beliefs surround death, sparking followings of so many weird, wonderful and misunderstood religions, designed to facilitate understanding of death and perhaps soften the blow. They all fail miserably. The one sure thing in life IS death. It does not discriminate. No matter your religion, color, creed, class, intelligence, kindness, honesty or integrity. Why, then, such global difficulty accepting it when it strikes?

My never-experienced-before emotions, unknown to exist until that moment in time, hit me hard and I felt like my legs were going to give way beneath me. I craved empathy but how can any other being empathize with such emotions unless they themselves had experienced the death of a lover. I loved Fred; I loved him unconditionally. He was unique and incredibly special to me. He had asked me to marry him, and I wanted nothing more than to spend my life with him. Fred lived in a different world to the norm and a different existence; an existence and world I adored being a part of. Without Fred’s world, I had no desire to live. I could not live in society’s normal world.

I had a premonition a few years before Fred’s death. I allowed myself to believe it was a premonition at the time, but I did not really know for sure. I felt that Fred didn’t have long to live. That he was going to die, and I dreamt it would be in a car crash.

Back at the Funeral

The room was ice cold or did I just feel freezing cold in a warm room. Who cared? Bland and boring, the room resembled a square cement box, much like an oversized coffin itself, room enough for visitors. An attempt at ‘appropriateness’ for the occasion stood in the corner, a bundle of flowers, but no attempt had been made to arrange them into a beautiful display. Who cared? What did it matter? Why try to mask the real emotions in the room and pitiful death with living beauty and pleasant smells? The pointlessness, stupidity even, of dressing in black and killing flowers for the occasion hit me. Celebrating death as other countries did seemed more appropriate to me, but I knew I was not capable of celebrating anything right now. The intensity of my emotions was overbearing, suffocating. I did not know how to change them, stop them, I didn’t want to and did not care to. Right now, nothing mattered; I saw no future for me here, I just wanted to be where Fred had gone. I could not cope.

How long I stood there, immobilized, I will never know. Knowing was irrelevant, I didn’t need to know. Classically, I reacted to this event by questioning what the purpose of life was? I found no answers. Even if I had answers, I doubted they would have offered any comfort or relief from this damming grief. There is only one happiness in life, love. To love and to be loved. I had been robbed of both. I doubted I would find any other purpose in life attractive enough to keep me alive.

Despondent, motivation lost, I felt like a living, sleepwalking machine, an android. I truly believed I was better off dead myself; I would be no use to anyone in this state, least of all myself.

If one positive emotion had developed from this experience, it was that I no longer feared death. I was, in fact, now very curious about it. I wanted to be with Fred, wherever that was. I was not worried what journey of hell that meant I had to follow to get there or what hell was at the end of it. Nothing could be worse than the hell I was experiencing now. More than anything, I wanted to feel the way I did when I was with Fred. That was predominantly a feeling of total freedom, pure and unadulterated. I felt invincible and I was prepared for any exciting unknown that Fred took me to. I loved this ‘living life on the edge’ existence in the mountains in France, it was a fabulous feeling, and I was on a wild ride that I didn’t want to get off.

Fred was non-human like to me. Most humans crave praise and recognition from others, feeding their hungry egos. These human traits appear to be what drive people to achieve; regardless of the consequences or who they crush to get approval. Power and greed are many people’s priority. Fred needed no one’s approval. He lived for his own pleasures and needs, not society’s. He was incredibly successful in all that he did. Or perhaps it seemed that way because he only ever did what he enjoyed, wasting no time focusing on anything that was not purposeful in his mind’s eye or helpful to his soul’s journey and lessons in life. Having won practically every go-kart race he had ever entered from a very young age, he could have progressed to formula one racing with ease, following in the footsteps of his hero, Ayrton Senna, who also began his motor racing career in go-kart racing as a boy. Fred was offered the chance but declined. He turned his hands to carpentry, shying away from the glitz, glory and falseness that fame from being a racing driver would bring, preferring to create instead. How sad that avoiding the racing scene did not prevent him sharing the same fate as his hero Ayrton Senna? I remember the day Ayrton Senna died. We were in Biarritz and Fred, crying, walked slowly and purposefully into the depths of the sea as if he never intended to return.

Fred became an incredibly gifted, skilled and talented carpenter. He once again shied away from the praise and attention and offers of more money and success that developed through his creative and beautifully crafted furniture, instead retreating to the mountains, where he found incredible joy, solitude and adrenaline in his newfound sport, snowboarding.

Fred quickly became renowned in the French Alps as one