It's been 4 weeks since we pulled into Anchorage and stopped riding our bikes all day, every day. I miss it terribly! I miss it all, from the waiting a few hours for slow starts in the morning, to debating who let the honey drip all over our sleeping gear, to rolling loud and proud into and through towns small and large, and growing our hearts and opening our eyes to the wide world. I miss crying almost every day because something that touching happened every day. I miss my family--I miss them the most.
Last night I saw the last I'll see of Alex Menzies for months, and many others are already gone--frinstance, Shawn and Eric Marlowe are gone back up to New York. And without the constant binding force of the tour-in-progress, I'm sure there are folks I'll never see again even though, right now, they're across town from me. I'll invite the whole family to my going-away party but it's certain some will be busy or out of town or whatever. The family, not dissolving, is still disbanded but never disowned.
I'm happy I'm "in charge" (once Alex M did the hard work!) of distributing photo CD's since I'll at least get to hug a lot of folks goodbye before I move on to the next stop on my road of life--Portland, OR. It's the bike-friendliest big city in America, and I'm looking forward to, as the shirt says, putting the fun between my legs and returning to the life of a never-drivin' bike-ridin' fool. Return to? Well, from the summer of driving a gas-guzzling cargo van which measured at least 25 feet long with the trailer attached, and from the past 2 weeks during which I've been forced back onto the road in a coffin (cars'R'coffins, dontchaknow?) after I pulled the dumbest manoevre of an entire summer of bicycling...
Yeah, I made it 4,390 miles to Anchorage without anything more serious than a sore ass, some razor burn, and a numb pinky. But 3 miles from the place I'm staying, I managed to wipe out on a *bike trail*, slide off the trail into traffic and impale myself on a truck. No worries, I'm on the road to complete recovery, but as my death flashed before my eyes, all I could think was "This is how I'm going to die? Geez." I didn't get my whole life replay, perhaps because I wasn't really scheduled for death, but instead for some pretty positive bike karma--despite the gruesome description of the wreck, my only real injury was a slice in my forearm that just today had its staples removed. I have to wait for the muscles in my arm to knit to do any heavy lifting, but the nurse cleared me to bike as much as "is comfortable" which I suspect will be not-much for awhile and more and more as I build back up to it. It was: my first ever ambulance ride, my favorite-ever interaction with runners on the bike trail (one gave me a towel, one staunched the flow of blood, and another shepherded my bike home in his truck)--they probably saved my life, or at least made it possible for me to walk myself into the ambulance since I didn't pass out from blood loss. I'll recover fully in 9 months, but for now, all my fingers are working and i'm about about 95% sensation on the nerves in my hand.
I was darn lucky, in that not only am I healing, but my bike is fine too. The only permacasualty of this event was my helmet. And my t4k helmet (not the one I rode to Alaska in, but the one I was supposed to get before the trip but finally unearthed in the team storage area as we unpacked the trailers after our return home) gave its life that I might live--it was punctured so severely that I had a hard time pulling myself out from under the truck since it was stuck on some protrusion. But my head? Unharmed.
As you may have noticed from the pictures on the site, I was one of 4 kids not wearing the stock t4k white helmet, because I never got one. It made life easier for me on the road, not having to disambiguate my helmet from a pile of 36 identicals, but I felt a little left out. Not anymore--I broke it in and it performed perfectly admirably.
I got a lot of fabulous support from friends, family, co-workers before and during the trip--from basically everyone I told about the trip. Even though I was always one to downplay it, I get even more incredulous looks and back-slaps from folks now that I'm talking about it from this end, and we're looking at a fundraising total of around $300,000 for the team this year. My personal total is around $7,500 and I hope to add more to that via my own donations in coming years.
People have said countless inspiring and wonderfully encouraging things, but I think the best gift I received on this trip (all joking about showers and smooth pavement aside) is this paragraph written to me by my friend Lindsey after reading some of the writings I've done for this trip:
When I think of you, I feel compelled to go out and change the world. I feel the urge to work on myself on many levels, from the physical to mental and spiritual. I feel the urge to purify and to love, to increase my awareness and compassion. To hug. I feel compelled to make a goal and strive relentlessly to achieve it. I feel like being more of myself and less of what I've been taught to be. I feel the acute brevity of life and ponder ways of making each day as meaningful as possible. I feel compelled to look at myself, take a long, hard look, and worship the good parts while healing and transforming the not-so-good. I feel like giving 100% of myself while honoring my Self's needs.
I hope you'll take a little of your energy and make a difference--it's not about cancer, or even about money. It's about caring for people and doing something to make the world a better place. It's not about being selfless, even--if you think I did all of this because I'm a good person, you're all wrong. My (debatable) goodness aside, I did this because I like intense experiences, and I love riding my bike. I had fun every single day, and only as time wore on did the cause become a larger and larger part of my motivation for what we were doing, and by the end, it had definitely eclipsed the fun-summer-road-trip aspects by quite a lot. But, I made a difference in the world, and not just by fundraising. By doing things I do every day--smile at folks, listen to their stories, existing in the moment, I try to spread joy or at least slow down the march of unhappiness in our society. If, by telling a joke, helping a stranger, or setting a good example, you can make the world a better place...please, do what you can, and we'll all live a better life for it.
Two more things I want to mention and then I'll be done with t4k blogs forever:
1) A huge congratulations to Glenn and Jin, the two unsupported riders heading from Key West, FL to Anchorage, AK, that we met at Lake Tattoga and ran into repeatedly for the rest of our trip. I had the bizarre but wonderful chance to wish them congratulations about 30 miles outside of Anchorage as I spotted them merging onto the highway just outside of Mirror Lake, as my parents and I drove back from Denali national park. They were riding for the same cause as us, but further, longer, and unsupported, and were some of the nicest people we met. How random that we'd meet in the middle of nowhere, Canada, and share a lot of the same feelings about our shared cause. Here's a link to their journey:
http://www.keytoanchorage.com/
2) If you're seriously considering doing this ride, drop all hesitation and sign up immediately. It was worth 100 times as many ounces of blood, sweat, and tears as it cost. It was the best experience of my life. It is not only for people who are in excellent shape, for people who bicycle a lot already (or at all), for students, for rich people--it's for anyone who believes in the cause. Apply early and often (application deadlines are typically early September--almost a year before you'll finish the ride) if this has spoken to you at all.
Thank you for sharing my trip, and hopefully it'll inspire you a little in your travels through life. Have a nice life =)