Reflections from Home
Tonight will be the third consecutive that I will sleep in my own bed. How novel. Tomorrow morning, I depart for the Atlantic Ocean.
After living out of the camper van for seven and a half weeks, what I felt upon entering the house reminded me of when I would come home to Puerto Rico after a semester at college. Back then, I lived in a dorm with a roommate in cold, cinderblock rooms of diminutive dimensions. When I stepped in to the apartment my parents had in San Juan, I was flooded with both a sense of familiarity and space. On Tuesday, as I stepped into our Columbus home, it was, in the words of Yogi Berra, deja vu all over again. For the first few moments, I was awash in the familiar, of how we organized and decorated our place. As I walked around and took in the wooden floors, the paintings on the walls, the plants and the abundance of light in the living room, I thought, “Wow, I live in a really nice house.” And it is so big! Of course, anyone who has been to our house will know that, at 1,827 square feet, our house really isn’t that large. However, when compared to the tight confines of the Class B Motorhome, well, it is a veritable mansion! But even opening the drawer with the silverware — the smoothness of the motion, the neatly stacked piles of forks, knives, and spoons, the visually pleasant wood storage divider — it was so comforting after having to lift and pull out the narrow drawer where the mismatched set of utensils were stored in plastic dividers.
But it is also suitably weird being home, despite its familiarity. Or maybe, because of its familiarity, I have ridden 2,874 miles to return where I started this adventure of July 7 But, In the back of my mind, I know I cannot totally relax and sink into the creature comforts of home as I still have hundreds of miles to go, some of which include many short but extremely steep climbs of the foothills leading to the Allegheny mountain range. Therefore, I am actively delaying gratification.
Not that I’m living an ascetic’s life, mind you. I’ve taken long baths and slept as late as my body allows me to. And metabolically, I am still in bike trek mode. I crave food night and day, and I have to remind myself to keep hydrating.
Tomorrow I begin the solo phase of this adventure. I will not have Joanie as my support and thus will have to carry more gear. But carrying more gear is really besides the point. I won’t have Joanie’s support, period. Meeting up at the end of the day was a luxury, physically and emotionally. I’m grateful that she stepped out of her busy self-employed routine to be with me this summer. But I am ready for this next phase and am actually looking forward to having to be more self-sufficient. And I am also looking forward to the wind on my face, the sun and clouds overhead, and the self-propelled nature of this whole endeavor. I’m also looking forward to riding through eastern deciduous forests in the late summer. And, strangely enough, I’m looking forward to the elevated heartrate, of pushing mind and body, and once again aiming for and slowly accomplishing a singular goal. Time to go, go, go!