GORILLA ZEN
Finding the Zen on two wheels
12/6/2017 0 Comments gorilla zen - the beggining
My name is Tiago and I'm from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. I came to the UK in 2014 to do a PhD in Biological Science at Queen Mary University of London. My research tries to explain how turning a big forest into small islands of forest changes foodwebs. I've spent the greater part of the last two years travelling back and forth to Brazil. This has been the site of my research fieldwork where I have been sampling bats in the Atlantic forest. During my last fieldwork season, I spent lots of time daydreaming of what I would do after finishing my PhD. For some reason one of the most recurring images was of me going to Japan & travelling the country by bike.
In Rio I used my bike to go everywhere. It was always the best transport option and a great tool to control my Type 1 diabetes which I was diagnosed with at the age of 12. It was also a great escape, a moment where all worries disappear and you enter in that zen, meditative space, where all the solutions just seem to appear in front of you. I always enjoyed this state, and the fact that on a bike I didn't need to move myself really fast, but I could still be quick. When I moved to London I wanted to get a bike right away. I borrowed one from a friend and on the first ride I crossed a red line, was stopped by the police and got fined. I ended up not using a bike for most of my time in London thereafter. As I was always going back to Brazil, it didn't appeal much to me the idea of buying a bike that I'd need to sell after just a few months. Since I got back to London, the PhD has been very demanding, and if you don't push yourself to go out and move, you end up reading papers and working on the computer the whole time. I've gained back all the weight I had lost on fieldwork, I was becoming increasingly moody, restless, experiencing sleeping disturbances and my sugars were riding a rollercoaster. I needed to control my sugars again and channel all that energy into something positive. The solution was clear: it was time to get back on two wheels. I bought a second hand road bike and started riding my bike to university. It took only two rides to ignite my love for cycling again. Suddenly I was making all these plans of going for longer rides, travelling to new cities, across to other countries all by bike. Did I tell you about my dream of going to Japan and getting a bike? Well, I'm doing it. But first things first: I will finish my PhD, I will train and I will learn how to maintain & repair my bike.
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