It feels like we've been doing this cross-country journey for weeks now, but it's only been four days.
Indeed, hitting the road has taken an entirely different tone than I originally thought it would. I had page-turning thoughts of Kerouac and Hesse, but instead, there's less anticipation for the future and more of ... just settling into the present moment. (It sounds obvious as an observation to me now, as I write it, but it just wasn't so obvious to me in anticipation of this trip.)
In one of the videos I posted to this blog, I muse that I'm "cool" for a crazy cross-country cyclist like my sweetheart, because I'm like a traveling rest stop.
In our car, I drive the highway for five or 10 miles, and then I wait.
Our white Ford Escape is fully stocked with such foods as bananas, salt, bread, crackers, spaghetti with Nutella, roasted bell peppers and tomato salsa (the latter two made possible by our Gilroy friends.)
This white "bus", as we lovingly call it, also contains bandaids, butt butter and body lotion for all of those emergency body care needs.
So, I'm needed. And it's surprising how much comfort that thought gives me in this big expansive world that we live in.
Perhaps that was the miracle I was supposed to find. (I suspect that even if I do find the miracle, it will somehow elude me as that defining bell rings. But in this moment now, it's kind of nice for me to find some purpose--any purpose--for the right here, right now.)
Ironically, I'm finding my raison d'etre by sitting, in the car, on the shoulder of the highway, in the heat, along a winding ribbon of asphalt.
Indeed, hitting the road has taken an entirely different tone than I originally thought it would. I had page-turning thoughts of Kerouac and Hesse, but instead, there's less anticipation for the future and more of ... just settling into the present moment. (It sounds obvious as an observation to me now, as I write it, but it just wasn't so obvious to me in anticipation of this trip.)
In one of the videos I posted to this blog, I muse that I'm "cool" for a crazy cross-country cyclist like my sweetheart, because I'm like a traveling rest stop.
In our car, I drive the highway for five or 10 miles, and then I wait.
Our white Ford Escape is fully stocked with such foods as bananas, salt, bread, crackers, spaghetti with Nutella, roasted bell peppers and tomato salsa (the latter two made possible by our Gilroy friends.)
This white "bus", as we lovingly call it, also contains bandaids, butt butter and body lotion for all of those emergency body care needs.
So, I'm needed. And it's surprising how much comfort that thought gives me in this big expansive world that we live in.
Perhaps that was the miracle I was supposed to find. (I suspect that even if I do find the miracle, it will somehow elude me as that defining bell rings. But in this moment now, it's kind of nice for me to find some purpose--any purpose--for the right here, right now.)
Ironically, I'm finding my raison d'etre by sitting, in the car, on the shoulder of the highway, in the heat, along a winding ribbon of asphalt.
In short, not "doing" very much at all, but waiting.
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