After making our flight by mere seconds, two nights in a dingy hostel room, one collision with a car, and one shower apiece in four days, the trip is in full swing. On a whim, we decided to assemble our bikes in the Vancouver airport and ride out the front door. Starting the trip without the need to call a taxi and squeeze our fully loaded bikes on a bus felt exhilarating.

Vancouver is ripe with natural beauty and the downtown area has a very European feel. We spent most of our day off exploring nearby parks. Stanley Park, just north of downtown, has replicas of totem poles of indigineous tribes. I learned that totem poles are actually native to British Columbia. The poles were often main posts of the cedar homes built by the tribes. They would decorate the posts to memorialize their genealogy, celebrating the skills and stories of their parents and grandparents.

Jason had some trouble with his contact lens yesterday afternoon, and as he headed back to the hostel for a replacement, I rode to and sit on the seawall underneath the Lion’s Gate Bridge, watching patches of sun traverse the mountains on the north side of the city. That meditative half hour has been my favorite part of the trip thus far. Once Jason returned with sufficient vision, we ventured to the Capilano Brridge, a suspension bridge originally built in 1889 over a gorge in North Vancouver. It hangs 70 meters above the rocky river below. All I could think about as we crossed was the psychological study that people who crossed an unsturdy. fear-inducing suspension bridge were found to be more attracted to an interviewer when they were interviewed in their high-adrenaline state.

I’ve been thinking a lot these first few days about who I hope and expect to be upon my return from this trip. Part of me desperately wants to hold on to all the magic of the past year, not ready to forge a new identity. I’m struggling with how to move forward without losing a sense who I’ve become in the past few months.

During a tour of the forests in North Vancouver, our guide pointed out some magnificent Douglas Firs. The trees are quite large and live for hundreds of years. The park was covered in them. But because of their dense branches that create a canopy over the forest, less suunlight has been getting through to the forest ground in the last hundred years or so. Without sunlight, new seedlings can’t survive. There are no young Douglas Firs in the park, and the ones that stand strongly now will all die out in the next few huhndred years. At first, I felt sad for this forest, seeing so clearly its impermanence, even in timescales longer than we can observe. But I then inspected the new growth on the forest floor: hemlocks, ferns, and bright green mosses. A new, transformed forest given birth by the old one. Douglas Firs will disappear from the Vancouver forests. But just as the totem poles of the Native British Columbians serve to memorialize the past generations, the new forest will be indebted to the Douglas Firs for its beauty.

Today we cross the US Border - Wish us luck!

Check out Jason’s Guide to Survival in Vancouver.

Posted on August 27th, 2007 by Derrick
Filed under: Thoughts | 5 Comments »

It’s funny the way that dreams become reality. Six months ago a bicycle tour along the west coast was just a tiny spark in Jason and my imaginations; a wishful, romantic concept of how we might celebrate completing a masters degree at

Penn. It was a topic of conversation to keep our spirits up as the workload went up. I’m not sure either of us expected that spark to grow any further back then. But as sparks tend to do when fostered in the right environment, our dream soon became a blazing bonfire.

The right environment for our spark was the MAPP program. Our courses in positive psychology—the newly founded scientific field that seeks to understand and describe what makes for a good and flourishing life—were more than academic. They were opportunities for deep introspection, for clarification of what we really want out of life, and for mapping out pathways to get there. Such opportunities, at least in my experience, are rare. But when they do come, they can dramatically change your life.

Personally those changes came most directly by compelling me to commit to the spark of a bicycling dream that I had been carrying for months. So Jason and I discussed. And committed. And that felt incredible. But something was missing.

If a year in a masters program in positive psychology can be boiled down into a single bullet point—and quite frankly, it cannot—one is best to quote Professor Chris Peterson: “Other people matter.” Jason and I realized that our bike trip would help us cultivate positive emotions and engagement, two of the three pathways to Authentic Happiness. But the trip demanded meaning and purpose. As soon as we sat with this idea, the notion of giving back to the MAPP program was obvious. We wanted to help others experience the dramatic change of a positive psychology education, particularly those who might not be able to handle the financial burden who might also share their knowledge with populations that could benefit from it greatly. So we set out to lead the 2007 MAPP Scholarship fundraising campaign.

But there was still something missing. We wanted to do our part to share the changes that we experienced as students of positive psychology to those who might be interested enough to listen. So with the gracious help of the team at Penn’s

College of

General Studies, we have established www.goodliferide.com to share our journeys—both the journey through MAPP and the journey down the Pacific coast.

We welcome you along as we do our best to wrap our heads around everything we read about this year in the best way we know how: exposed on bicycles. Expect both laughter and tears along the way. We plan to test positive psychology at its limits—a case study in the elements, if you will. The 2,000 miles ahead of us will demand all we have learned of savoring, resilience, gratitude, strength, love, and hope.

Our adventure begins in three days in

Vancouver. We’re looking forward to having you along as we ride towards the good life!

Posted on August 22nd, 2007 by Derrick
Filed under: Thoughts | 3 Comments »