Loose Ends

I have to confess that I have been working on this post in my head for longer than you would guess. I am not a morbid thinker, far from it, but, in this case, no matter how much I tried, I could not help thinking of what the end would be like from time to time. Anyway, these are some of my thoughts about the end of the trip and what it means to me now that it is over. I apologize if these thoughts seems scattered, but perhaps my previous explanation of this blog’s origins will earn me some leniency.


So I am sitting in a hotel room, approximately 5 days from the finish of the trip. This is a surreal feeling, but it does remind me of a poignant fable. Most of you have heard either the statement or perhaps the fable behind the statement. To paraphrase, simply an ancient monarch once asked his wise men to bring him a statement that was an ultimate truth. The wise men deliberated a long time, and when they were called in front of the monarch to produce this undeniable truth, they said simply "This too shall pass." We are never good at accepting this truth. The reality is, that we hope that the good moments will never end, and we believe that the bad ones will never go away. We grip onto our joys like so much sand, squeezing harder, all the while forcing more sand out, and we wear ours scars like badges of honor - scars we think shall never heal. We are wrong though, and the wise men were right, this too shall pass.

It is this thought that has followed me for the last few days, probably since the beginning of the trip, but the specter has loomed ever closer with time. I am not sure what it will be like for the others on the trip to move on beyond this experience. I would be a fool to think that I could imagine what it is like to walk a mile in another's shoes. For my part, I figure life is like following a thin thread through a dark room. You are never really sure where you are going until you have gotten there, and once you have finished there, you move on, grabbing another thread and blindly following it in hopes that it is the "right" way. So I feel like two months ago, I dropped the thread I was following in that dark room, following another for a time, and now, for better and for worse, I will have to search around for that lost thread from two months ago blindly in the dark…this too shall pass.

I am sitting in the airport in San Francisco now, three days from the end of the trip. I am still checking the helmet mirror I am no longer wearing, thinking of getting coffee for Tara when I wake up, of assuring Bridget that today’s ride will not be too bad (even though she knows she could do it regardless), of watching Liza say she’s tired and then watching her fly up the hill in front of me, and countless other moments that are part of the ether of memory now…this too shall pass. And that is the point right? Otherwise we wouldn’t call them moments, but even epochs, eras, ages, and eons end – we just measure time in smaller increments, but fleeting, though a relative term, is still fleeting.

I was somewhat surprised that I haven’t shed tears yet over all of this. I suppose that I had steeled myself against this inevitability. That is not to say that I am not sad that this moment has passed, but I am glad that I had the foresight to know that it would end, to prepare for it by drinking in every moment as if it were the last of the trip, taking the time to look up at every vista, to eat every single calorie I could, to laugh as often as I could, to share with everyone as much as I could, to just be as much as was possible. For those of you in the “outside” world, I imagine time passed much as it always does, second after second, minute after minute, hour after hour, until the two months had passed, just like the two before, and like the two after. For me, I was fortunate enough to be pulled out of that spinning, even if for just a little while, such that minutes, hours, and days fell into a singularity and time was compressed, squeezed down so tightly that it stopped – and for that both brief and agonizingly long moment, I was exactly where I wanted to be, exactly where I should be. It is not often in one’s life that he can say something like that, it’s a shame. This trip has taught me that if you squeeze time down small enough, split the atoms of moments, life will seem so much more full, as if those moments never ended, just merged. This idea does not fly in the face of the fable that I talked about earlier, in fact it distills the most poignant aspect of it – if time is fleeting, then make the most of it while you can…this too shall pass.



Now, as we scatter to the four winds, all fumbling in the dark for the lost or new threads we must follow, I cannot help but think about where we will all be. I don’t lose much sleep over this though. I can hardly tell where I will be in ten minutes, let alone in years, and if I cannot tell where I will be, then how on earth will I ever figure that out for anyone else? Have no fear fellow riders – I have a promise for you: if you exert one iota of the effort that you showed on this trip in your “real” life, you will be wildly successful at all you do. Go forth with eyes open to the beauty around you in everyday objects and scenes, go forth with the belief that you can change the world, even if it’s for just one person, go forth with the knowledge that you were part of something massive, much larger than the sum of its parts, go forth with the strength, both mental and physical, that you have harnessed here in this moment, go forth and never fear a hill, literal or figurative, there is always a lower gear, there is always the time, and there are always the friends to help you tackle it…this too shall pass.

I cannot thank you all enough for making this an amazing, life-changing experience – a moment that I will squirrel away and protect viciously through time. I will miss so many parts of this trip, but what I will miss most are my friends.



I tried to find some literature to add to the end of this final post, something that would tie together all my scattered thoughts…I failed at finding one thing, but I succeeded at finding more than one. I hope these end up meaning as much to you as they do to me:

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night by Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.



Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they

Do not go gentle into that good night.



Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.



Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

Do not go gentle into that good night.



Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.



And you, my father, there on that sad height,

Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light


Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.

His house is in the village, though;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near

Between the woods and frozen lake

The darkest evening of the year.



He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there is some mistake.

The only other sound's the sweep

Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep



I Taught Myself To Live Simply by Anna Akhmatova

I taught myself to live simply and wisely,

to look at the sky and pray to God,

and to wander long before evening

to tire my superfluous worries.

When the burdocks rustle in the ravine

and the yellow-red rowanberry cluster droops

I compose happy verses

about life's decay, decay and beauty.

I come back. The fluffy cat

licks my palm, purrs so sweetly

and the fire flares bright

on the saw-mill turret by the lake.

Only the cry of a stork landing on the roof

occasionally breaks the silence.

If you knock on my door

I may not even hear.