"Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn.

- C.S. Lewis



Someone broke my 4-wheeler when I was on break in Nairobi. So I was driving a Honda 125 motorbike quite a bit this past week. I drove it 5 hours south and fell three times on that ride. Shortly after that I drove it through a muddy patch and came to a stop to high-five a kid who'd been cheering me on. When I stopped I put my right foot down, only for it to sink into the mud and I toppled over for a fourth time that day. A few days later I was driving it back North, and here is a diagram to explain that day.


1) I wiped out five minutes after getting on the bike. After that the kick-start wouldn't work so it had to be push-started.
2) My buddy Chris Wulliman picked me up and took me aways until our paths split, then he gave me a push start and off I went.
3) Here there were two roads. I took one and figured it was ok because I was headed into the sun which meant East. It was 3PM. It was going the exact wrong direction and it wasn't til I was practically back to the start that I realized my foolishness.
4) I veered off the road to avoid wiping out in a giant hole. I ended up dropping the bike anyhow trying to get back on the road. The bike decided it was done after that. My German Emergency Doctor friends happened to pass in their truck and we loaded up the bike and they took me home.
5) The last 30 minutes or so I was riding shotgun with a German nurse who is totally insane. Like Pyschiatric Hospital insane. She told me herself, along with a number of other "didn't need to know that" items.

Anyhow, during that ride (between items 4 and 5) I was sitting there cursing myself for wrecking a bike and then I realized something. I'm riding around in the back of a truck with a few Nuba people, holding up my broken bike with my legs, sitting next to a Nuba guy who's not a doctor and has performed 17 emergency C-sections in the last few months. Bouncing around and banging my head on this metal bar like 30 times. Drinking an ice-cold water from their cooler. And I thought, "Wow, my life is awesome right now."