There is no right or wrong answer. Nor is there a right or wrong choice. It’s the consequences that we have to be ok with. If choose to hurt or make someone happy, it’s our choice and that’s ok. As long as we are ok with it. And as long as we are true to ourselves.

Can I be a partner with someone who wasn’t my biggest fan? I am not sure.

“Do you need anything else?” he asked right before departing.

“Look!” I exclaimed and gestured to my blog post on my screen. “It’s you! There and there”

He glanced over my shoulder to the photo on my screen where he was laughing at the camera.

“I seemed more happier back then.”

Then he turned away as the sorrow descended over his face.

In face of disrespect, I complained.

He listened and responded, “You just get used to it.”

Of course, my complaint was about something minor—my misplaced things and disruption of my usual household routine. What infuriated me and still infuriates me months later was the complacency to an imbalance. The complacency is born out of one’s own personal priorities—the perspective of values.

Will I get value of the action that I perform? If not, it’s easier to do nothing.

Ideas like:

I worry sometimes that I will suffer from the pedestrian effect and instead of giving a helping hand, I keep walking and walking back home.

Several years ago as he dropped me off at my door, I hesitated. Others would find a clumsy excuse: “Want to see my painting?” “Want to see my TV?” “Want to listen to a record?”

Instead, I asked, “Want to have orange juice?”

“YAH!” he pulled his car into a spot and clamored up the stairs like a little kid.

I stared out of the bus, trapped. Knowingly trapped around fellow passengers—these other Asian immigrants…these other people who chose to take public transit rather than drive a car.

Once the automatic voice announced “North Fraser Way”, I pulled down to flag my stop. As I climbed down the stairs, I asked the driver, “How do I get back to the station?”

Nonplussed by all my questions, he said, “On the other side of the street.”

Intimidated, I nodded and mumbled, “Thanks.”

I hesitated at the corner of the intersection, watching the bus take a right turn and rush into the distance. This is it. I have to run. I checked traffic on the road and ran across the road…into dirt path with a sign that said “Dead end.” I had looked at my map multiple times and this was the only path. The dairy farm was on North Fraser Road.

The pain from stumbling off the sidewalk already had faded. The embarrassment was gone. Nobody was around me. I made it there. Walking fast. Chatted with a customer. Quizzed the employees. Then I took my cone and went back to the bus stop. Where to my surprise, I found wi-fi and to my surprise, the bus arrived in a few minutes. In less than an hour later, I was on the train. On time. Not late, not lost. On my way to Vancouver.

The bus finally moved away from its corner to the appointed stop area. I followed other passengers, slowing down my pace so that I would be the last to get on the bus. I acted like I didn’t fall and nobody showed any response.

“Is this the way to North Fraser [Way]?” I asked as I put in my all-day pass into the reader.

The driver, an Indian…Canadian…, spoke without an accent, “This bus takes the long way to North Fraser. You should take the 106.”

“Thanks.”

I hurried off the bus and headed to the adjacent bus. This one had been arriving every 10 minutes rather than the 30 minutes it took for the 116. I got on and asked the driver (an Asian this time), “Does this go to North Fraser?”

“No, you should take the 116,” he pointed back to the bus that I had just clambered off.

I went back to the 116 and said with an expression of I am just following instructions, “I was told to take this bus.”

“Well, ok,” he said and started the bus.

I sat down in the middle…and realized…that I had about 2 hours left. I could easily just stay on the bus and head back to skytrain. And yet? Would I make it back to my train? Would I get to the dairy farm, quiz some of the customers, eat an ice cream scoop, and walk back in time to catch the next bus? It was unclear. What I knew that was that my ankle wasn’t smarting as much as I anticipated. Maybe I could still walk…or run. Maybe I could hitchhike. I look very innocent, right?

I hope so, I thought…as I stared out the window passing strip malls, empty sidewalks, cars all reminiscent of a suburb that did not use public transit.

Walking around the turnabout, I teetered between returning to the Skytrain and waiting around the bus. Safety aka conservatism vs. adventure aka risk.

Memories of missing my flight in Berlin struck me. I really did not know Vancouver. I really shouldn’t be seeking adventure a few hours before my train departed. But then my goals was undeterred. I came all this way…to Vancouver…to another country…and never made it to the dairy farm. That was unthinkable.

I had to go. The 105 bus arrived…not once, not twice, but thrice. Panic starting rising in my throat. Where was the 116? I checked my device—no wireless present in this space. When the 116 did arrive, I started walking toward it despite clear signs indicating that it was not going to pick up passengers except at indicated signs. With my sunglasses, I started walking to where it was taking a break in the corner of the lot.

Then, I lost my balance and toppled in a heap on the ground. With my focus so intent on the bus, the presence of a sidewalk escaped me. I immediately got up and brushed myself off. Hoping that nobody noticed.

…so I decided to travel outside Vancouver to the dairy farm that I had looked up a month prior.

I looked at my time. It was 2 pm and I was standing in downtown near the Waterfront. My train was scheduled to depart from Vancouver at 5:45 pm and the ticket indicated that I must arrive at least 30 minutes before departure. Additionally, I needed to pick up my things from Vivian’s house.

Quickly, I walked around the glass towers to find the common chains: Starbucks, Tim Hortons. Once located, I leaned against the wall, hiding, stealing the wifi. Throngs of people dressed in business attire swarmed around me—I looked like a student with my running shoes and casual backpacks. I connected with my iPod touch and looked up the dairy farm address. Google maps indicated that by public transit, it would take 90 minutes.

Within seconds, I was walking to the Skytrain station. By that time, I already lost a wifi connection. It crossed my mind that I only knew how to get to the destination, but no idea how I would return to Vivian’s house.

As I sat on the Millennium line out toward Burnaby, it dawned on me the level of stupidity. This was certainly like the time that I missed my flight to London from Berlin because I dawdled at the cafe slowly sipping ginger tea, because I went shopping for clothes in Mitte, because I really didn’t know how long it would take to get to the airport via public transit.

But the desire…the reason why I came this far…I could not let it go. I had to go to the dairy farm—this was the famed dairy farm akin to Straus Dairy in the San Francisco Bay Area. Surrounded by school children and Chinese grandparents, I rationalized my fears of missing the train. After all, Amtrak isn’t as vicious as airlines and wouldn’t charge me a hefty fee. And Vivian wouldn’t mind an extra night and Joe wouldn’t mind that I came a day later. It would be all ok.

So I was on the Skytrain for over 10 stops passing through numerous neighborhoods—I stared out the window as the buildings changed from large glass condos to smaller residences to trees…to strip malls…and areas that seemed only accessible by car. In a nervous moment, I tapped on something in the maps app and instantaneously lost the transit directions due to a lack of data connection. Even with my real phone, I could not look up directions on the Lumia so there was nothing that I could do.

Fortunately, my memory was annoyingly remarkable. I recalled the 116 bus and spotted the stop around the turnabout…

It wasn’t the climb from the shore to Pointe Reyes. It wasn’t the increasing grade that dug at me. It wasn’t the exhaustion from cycling for the third day in a row.

It was the nature, the Pacific ocean water lapping at the coast, and the sound of the my wheels spinning that suddenly held me in a melancholic moment. The silence and the loneliness of the stillness that gripped me in a vice.

I followed the figure in front of me—moving steadily ahead. Unexplainable feelings made me want to stop. I could feel the usual place of tension…tighten. As the climb appeared, I wavered. There was a moment where I thought that I would fall onto the pine leaves, almost falling onto the edge of the asphalt. I could slow down right there and fall with me clipped in.

Instead, I cried out in surprise almost to call out to my riding partner when I did lose my balance. Magically, I didn’t fall out and unclipped to hold myself and stood on the road.

“What happened?” he asked turning his bike around to meet me.

I mumbled something about the chain and the gears. Then I took a deep breath in an effort to soothe myself. I put one hand on my forehead, as if there was smarting wound there that I was rubbing.

He noticed and asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing…I don’t want to talk about it,” I said and faced away—a move that I almost never take as confrontations are my style.

I gulped down water, staring at the road watching the cars wind north and south. No attention paid to the figures on the side of the road. We were in some sense…alone.

“Do you want to go back?” he asked.

“No…let’s continue.” I said.

Then I said as we started climbing, “Tell me a story.”