I arrived home with a head full of fresh ideas about mindfulness and curbing impulsive aspects in my character.
On the second night home I grabbed a piece of ginger and began swiftly slicing it on our industrial strength mandolin, the one I have learned through painful experience to treat with industrial strength respect. Had I retained this habit in my time away? I had not.
I could complain about this. I could say that I’m frustrated to be a few millimetres short of index finger and not able to do very much without getting a stab of pain and bleeding all over things.
But taking a pause for mindfulness, I ask myself if I'd like to swap places with some of those millions of people I saw living in squalor. Well, no, I'll stick with the bleeding finger thanks.
And taking another mindful pause I ask myself this: Do I really want to pile into that know-nothing Wellington column-writer, the one who loaded a few more logs onto the bike-hating bonfire the other day?
Or should I consider the possibility that old habits die hard, whether it's finger slicing in the kitchen or defending to the death our 20th century car cult?
I am also being a bit mindful about what goes into this newsletter.
I worry that relentlessly pointing out what’s dreadful about anti-bike invective is becoming — for me, for you — a hamster wheel. And that’s the worst transport option of all.
Old habits die hard. Clearly there are many people who cannot imagine moving on from the world that has been built around the car. Clearly the idea that things could actually be better and nicer for all of us if we make way for people on bikes and on foot and on buses and on trains is one for which they simply cannot find room in their heads.
Instead such a person - if for instance, they are writing a column in their capacity as a rich Wellington business person whose opinion therefore warrants respect and a good tug of the forelock - will be quite prepared to panel beat the data so hard it comes out looking like something else altogether.
And what would that be? Why, that no one in Wellington is riding a bike apart from the kind of elitist who can afford to pay 10k for one.
However in order to reach this assertion, you will have to do a serious amount of panel beating. You will have to misrepresent the price people are actually paying for their bikes. You will have to misrepresent the number of people actually using cycleways. You will need to pretend not to understand that until a network is fully joined up you will not get anything like the volumes you will get when it is possible to go all the way from start to finish in safety and comfort. And you will have to fail to comprehend that cars, and what they cost to run, are one of the main impediments to poor people ever having enough to come and go on.
A tall order, you might think. But a string of words to just this effect appeared in a Wellington newspaper. Riding a bike, it turns out, is a wasteful indulgence for elitists. Also Pandora has been fucked by cycleways. Even though they’re not located on any.
But like I say, I don't want to keep correcting this shit, so let's exit the hamster wheel. Come with me instead to the photo album, as I make my first wobbly effort at accentuating the positive, and eliminating the invective. Yes, I'm aware I may have already sliced my finger, but on we go.
Do you like being fit? Do you like being healthy? You can eat what you like on the EuroVelo, the saying goes and it's absolutely true. Dick and I both finished the ride many kilograms lighter and altogether fitter, and we’re both finding bike riding easier than ever right now. This has left us determined to keep up the mileage to keep things that way. It's a joy.
Could you enjoy the company of friends and family as you enjoy the wonderful outdoors? Across Europe they have created thousands of kilometres for you do that in safety, enjoying the world at 25km/h. This was the speed at which Mary-Margaret rode with us to Vienna. It was magical.
What the hell does European bike tourism have to do with bike lanes in Wellington and the vital business of earning a living? Everything.
As we came near to Vienna we began to see that they had a great many cycle lanes running in a great many directions, all carrying you into that beautiful city under beautiful trees. Everywhere you looked, you could see that if you wished to get about by bike, your wish would be granted. And the lovely thing about a city full of bikes, as this one was, and as so many are across Europe, is that what goes hand in hand with that tends to be more walking, more trams, more comfortable car-free spaces.
And as soon as those proportions change, the whole experience becomes calmer, kinder, warmer, happier. Prosperous, even. I miss it already.