When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Occasionally, people who know about my travels – or even my at-home activities – will exclaim over my bravery. From white water rafting and crawling through cave crevices barely bigger than my body to sleeping in critter-filled ‘bungalows‘ and eating ants, I try things that others deem crazy. Perhaps they think I’m running from something or showing off or trying to set some world record. The reality is much more prosaic: I like trying new things – to prevent boredom and because I get pleasure from them.

And these particular things are not super scary to me, so the bravery label is misleading. What is all too easy to forget when faced with something you would never do is that there is something else you already do that others dare not try. For me, the heights, the water, the new foods, the new languages: they’re interesting, not alarming. But put me near a moving vehicle, and I am prone to perma-heightened adrenaline.

American traffic is fairly rule-abiding and orderly, so a decade of driving has been enough to bring my anxiety below the level of hyper-vigilance. However, sit me on a new type of vehicle, and I am a mess. In most situations, I don’t attempt driving anything more substantial than a shopping cart. Even bicycles can be a challenge: riding around our sleepy part of Oakland was fine, but doing so in San Francisco involved constant looking over my shoulder for rogue SUVs.

Traffic in other parts of the world tends to be even more anxiety-inducing. On the plus side, the locals over-compensate for my stupidity, since running over a foreigner is a bad idea (predicated on the assumption that they can tell I’m a foreigner based on my appearance, of course). On the minus side, some of the rules are different. The rules here in Cambodia are: (1) the vehicle capable of inflicting more damage has the right-of-way, (2) multiple people can go at once/you don’t need that much space, (3) waiting is anathema, and (4) if someone cuts you off, oh well. I like number four, but the others just result in a constant flow of people, bikes, cars, mopeds, people vaguely attached to mopeds or bicycles, push carts, trucks, and any number of dogs or roosters in the street at once. In the US, I can wait for a break in traffic; here, a ‘break in traffic’ is anything about a foot wide.

Some days, this is as hilarious as it sounds. Other days, I inadvertently play chicken with a Ford Explorer, and my adrenaline level hits stun. (Okay, probably still hilarious, but not for me.) I sometimes get back to our room, not just drained, but feeling like a giant failure: what kind of person can’t even ride a bike down the street in a small Cambodian village? Much of the time, I feel like I’m holding B back, since he loves bikes, knows about bikes, and rides them for fun at home. When I go out riding by myself, I am much calmer, because I can wait for fifteen ‘breaks in traffic’ if I want to, until my brain isn’t screaming, ‘ARE YOU SUICIDAL, WOMAN? WHY WOULD YOU CROSS THE STREET NOW?!?!’

Riding around this way has been an exercise in humility, risk-taking, and fear-control. I may not balk at heights/foods/foreign stuff/water, but traffic helps remind me what others feel like when faced with them. Though it’s common here for people to share bikes or mopeds, and I could just ride with B, I won’t. It’s not a pleasant feeling, but this fear gives me something to work on. I’m going to pull off the world’s traffic-beard one day, even if it’s just one hair a day.