That's All, Folks!

Total number of miles: 921
Total number of hours: 81

Oh, right, I'm still maintaining a blag. Funny how quickly the mind moves on.

During my final few days in Tum Tum, I kept a constant eye on the weather forecast, which prophesized endless weeks of rain, all across the dreary state of Washington. It was an easy decision to make: I'd ridden my bicycle, I'd gone the places and seen the people I wanted to; I had nothing to prove to myself about my abilities as a cyclist, and no particular "completist" mentality. And, perhaps most importantly, I had myself a free ride to Seattle, since Katherine would be returning from one home to another soon. I tossed my bike in her car, blew a kiss to the land, and trundled across the state, tracing the sodden path that I would've otherwise pedaled.

I spent a luxurious few days in Seattle hunkered down at a friend's house, avoiding most any sort of notion of responsibility before my inevitable return to the innumerable loose ends that comprise the tapestry of my life. By a rather uninteresting set of circumstances, my car was waiting for me in Seattle, and it was thus a quick and easy jaunt back to Eugene, save for a stopover in Portland for some birthday bowling with the nephews (happy birthday, Eamon!).

And here I am, back to life as usual. Kind of. If there's one thing I've noticed, it's that I don't seem to excel at holding any kind of "usual" pattern to my life; the stream of ideas, passions, inspirations and adventures flow as steadily as time, guiding me ever onward to new horizons and new places. When I first started this trip, I said that it couldn't've come at a better time for me, and in retrospect, it's easy for me to say that it couldn't've served me better; these short few weeks have provided me with no less than two major epiphanies about the course of my life, and I'm returning to the fray with a sense of clarity that has escaped me for months. Perhaps a river would be a more apt metaphor than the simile of time: as Heraclitus said, you can never step into the same river twice; indeed, the life I return to now, the life that is before me, feels ever different than the life I left behind just a short month ago. If I've been carried away in the current of the last half-year, this month I learned how to swim again. This, as much as anything, is what makes it all worthwhile.

Thanks for reading, everyone. You can probably expect another trip sometime later this summer, if you care to check back in. In the meantime, let's all try and be conscious of the long-term consequences of our actions, however small or insignificant they may seem, and think good thoughts about the ocean; it needs some serious lovin' right now, just like the rest of us.

Love,
Scott


View Portland to Missoula in a larger map