🛵The Freedom to Scoot
“I trust my body’s ability to perform when I’m hiking, walking, etc,” I told my new friend—the woman staying next door at the motel where I’d been living for the past few weeks, “it’s the motor, I don’t trust.”
I had been confessing my apprehension of maneuvering a scooter through the sometimes bumpy and unpaved streets of Ometepe. Over the last few weeks, I’d seen an awful lot of gringas with road rash, open wounds, and even stitches. Would I just become another statistic?
“Well, it’s a good thing you have confidence in your body," she said, "because your body is what’s going to be controlling the scooter.”
She was right. I exhaled, feeling my chest soften.
Later, she and her boyfriend gave me a crash course in scooting. While most people I’d talked to had been unconsciously projecting their fears onto me, this happy-go-lucky Canadian couple brought a lightheartedness that helped me feel excited about learning a new (albeit dangerous) skill.
After a few test runs, I got the hang of it. I was ready.
To test my new skills, we set off for Moyogalpa to check out some secondhand stores—a 45-minute ride full of stray dogs, the occasional wandering cow, and pedestrians weaving in and out of the road. I was loving it all. As the wind whipped through my hair, I couldn't stop grinning, so this is what freedom feels like! We pulled over to take a picture of a family of Capuchin monkeys. After one of them hissed at us, we laughed and continued on our journey.
There I was, flying through the streets of a volcanic island—the lake lapping at the shore to my right, towering volcanoes in the distance. I’d already been here a month, which meant I had explored all I could on foot. Now that I could scoot - I felt a new portal open.
Feeling more and more confident with my skills, I decided to take a solo trip to a waterfall the next day, carefully navigating the unpaved roads. Though I kept my focus, I smiled, knowing my late granny Shirley would have been oh so proud of me. She had been my steward into international travel and life abroad. I wondered — if she had been born in my generation, would she have still become a mother of seven? Or would she have, like me, postponed caring for others and prioritized caring for herself — nourishing her body with fruit from foreign lands and volcanic hikes to majestic waterfalls, feeding her mind with insights from conversations with fellow wanderers, and expanding her soul by immersing herself deeply in another culture?
She had loved being a mother. Loved my grandfather. And in her later years, after my grandpa died of cancer, she learned to love her freedom.
We traveled together a few times before she passed away—dancing with all the boys at Oktoberfest in Berlin (after too many beers), on an empty tourist boat cruising down the Rhein River (after too many glasses of Riesling), and on a cruise ship headed to Mexico (after too many piña coladas.) Though she was in her late 70s then, she still had the vitality of a 20-year-old. And she loved to dance.
Yesterday I felt her presence on the back of that scooter. Imagined her curly white hair whipping in the wind, her cackling laughter echoing out every time we hit another bump.
Every day, I’m grateful that she helped me pave a different path.
This journey, I’m realizing, isn’t just mine. It belongs to the women who came before me—those who may never have felt the joy of full alignment, the power of forging their own path, or the exhilaration of gliding through foreign streets, back tall, hair wild, smile wide.
And it belongs to the women who will come after me—the ones who currently doubt their ability to navigate the unknown, question their own strength, and wrestle with limiting beliefs.
My adventures are theirs, too.
