We did it! I want to thank you for taking this ride with me. I know you will need to catch your breath and collect your thoughts. There is life after the ride, but it will always be there, resurfacing whenever it feels like it. We took on this challenge and you did a hell of a job. You could have gotten off the bike after Hell on Highway 1, but you didn’t and I admire your courage.
Our last day began with a run on the road above Russian River. Finally, I gave myself permission to embrace the end of this journey and a ride to San Francisco was all that remained. Yes, I screwed up again and somehow thought 80E was really 80W. I was on my way to Sacramento before I realized that is not how you spell San Francisco. It took a couple of phone calls to get me back on track.
The moment I pulled in to drop the bike, no, not that “drop the bike”, I felt completely unburdened, light and at ease. It is how I feel tonight, even though I am in a depressing, little cubicle for a room. Now is not the time to tell you how stressful much of the ride was. I was lucky to get away with most of my time on the road because I was over my head technically, way over my head.
You know what? I am going to put this down and just enjoy the balance of the evening.
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Good Morning. I hope you had a good night’s sleep. While we have to pack yet again, we get to pack the bungees and not figure out what do with one that is too long and one that is too short. I don’t know about you, but I feel like an astronaut, who has just returned from his mission and now what? Our days have been spent rolling on winding roads, attempting to maintain a sense of grace, trying not to become undone by the challenges. At the same time, we have been witnessing the glory of nature and her many faces. Oops, crying again. My God, what we have seen on this mission will be with us forever.
We return to our home planet, whose inhabitants have likely had a routine couple of weeks, while we have been orbiting. We will look exactly the same as when we left, but we are not. We return to a world ruled by gravity, but we owe it to ourselves to keep the memories fresh of flying through landscapes we have never seen before. We woke up everyday, virgin voyagers with the eyes and heart of a child, in a brand new world.
Right after touch down in San Francisco, gravity grabbed us by the throat with the news about Umpqua College in Oregon. You will remember the road sign for it as we rode passed. We are certainly just as impotent to deal with these events now that we are back. The perversion of an outdated idea regarding the RIGHT to bear arms is only part of the problem. This kind of lunatic behavior is the luxury of a society that has too much, a breeding ground for those who feel disenfranchised. It is tragic and shocking and far too frequent.
We haven’t changed the world with our ride; all we have done is taken a break, gotten away from all that is familiar. What we choose to do with this experience is up to each of us. There is more up ahead and while our ride has come to a close, the journey continues and I hope we get to spend some of it together. Thank you.