Getting There Isn't half the Fun; It's ALL the Fun

For whatever reason the open road has always kept me high on its invite list. While it's not quite the invite the wilderness delivers it is, nevertheless, one I always RSVP in quick fashion. It's Halloween, 2009 (a good day to be whomever you want to, just like any other), and today I find myself blithely situated in a mid-sized rental car en route to sunny Solvang, moving yet again. I rent when traveling long distances not only because my motorcycle would get a tad uncomfortable but also because it would be tricky to cram my life's belongings onto it. The car I now recline in, a Toyota Something or Rather, is filled with many of the things I need to survive. Books primarily, but also the Vasa Trainer, the CompuTrainer, my bicycles, my laptop and other tools of the (coaching) trade.

I'd spent the last four months sucking air at 7,500 feet in Park City, Utah, and will be happy to breathe easy at sea level once more. I am not well-suited for altitude and I now tip the scales fifteen pounds lighter than when I'd arrived there. Of course, the lengthy bouts of exercise (i.e., mountainous mayhem) might have had a lot to do with it too. Still, I theorize that air has calories and the thinner it gets, the thinner you get.

Solvang is an alluring anomaly for California. Its air is sparkling and crisp and each breath is not just satisfying in a caloric sense, but downright refreshing. So too are the environs. The roads are rural and uninhabited (minus the wine crowd on holiday weekends or those wackos camped out in front of Michael Jackson's place). The weather is simply stellar and the townsfolk generally congenial and borderline tolerable (indeed, an anomaly in California). But I'm not there yet and so I keep chipping away atop the chip-sealed backroads. When time permits, I always choose the road less traveled. I think it's important we make it permit.

As I sit here with the cruise control controlling my vacillating right foot (technically known as a pussyfoot), putting distance on Utah, I think. Man, how I think. Not unlike me, my thoughts seem to come and go. In truth they're always there, fading in and out of clarity. I think of how many times I've moved in my life and cannot even begin to put a number on it; hundreds. "Resided Undecided" I call it, this inherent itinerant-ness. I've now lived in thirty different states.

I'm forced to ponder: what am I running from? Or where am I running to? Why is my life so discombobulated? I think of old loves and new hopes. I think of heartbreak, those to which I've been dealt and those I caused. I think of fears and worries and the joy in having fears and worries. As a climbing buddy of mine once said, "It's good be be scared; it means you're still alive." He was right, of course. I thought then, as I do now: it is good to be alive. I like the unknown.

Quite simply, my mind tends to wander when I wander. This same tenet holds true whether I'm running or hiking or cycling or seated inside a climatically-controlled 60mph cell block. Movement, no doubt, is good for the soul. Not only does it engender worry and concern but it also brings alight hopes and dreams and fantasies and other not-to-be-mentioned thoughts. This quest for movement is what led me to the Alps and the Andes and the Pacific Crest Trail and it will assuredly guide me to parallel paths before my expiration date. Alaska is the one state I haven't checked off my list here in the US, while Iceland and Norway still call from afar. I like to think of these as collect calls in that I must collect them before I run out of time. (One can only hope there are no roaming charges.)

No doubt as humans we need to roam and to seek adventure, but as I wrote in one of my trail journals...

Maybe it's not even a journey I'm after. Perhaps it's a pilgrimage. The distinction between the two, I suppose, is that a journey can be defined as going from one point to another point in space. A pilgrimage, in contrast, is going from without to within, from space to no-space…the journey within. Hell if I know, but methinks exploration is an integral of being human (which I am).

And so the exploration of the unknown continues. After all, that's what life is...the unknown.

For now though I best quit trying to drive and type and keep my eyes on the road in front of me.

It's egging me on, as ever.