Italy

There had been bullying in the workplace.

Don’t let the bastards get you down! Ignore them! Take the high road! Fight back!

But, it doesn’t work like that. None of it works like that.

For reasons about which i can only hypothesise, bullies deliver an insidious and creeping tap, tap, tapping. Day after day and year upon year they chip away with unrestrained relational harassment until there is no remaining sense of self.

The bullies in my case - a handful of cliqued-up, middle-aged women - had needlessly cut down a caring and competent peer. The experience left me broken and struggling to take care of my family. The sum of it all was both a timeless tragedy and a timely reflection of zeitgeist; sometimes the bullies win.

And so it was in the midst of existential crisis and my shattered self-esteem that our second attempt at family bikepacking began…