Tuesday, July 14, 2015

Home Again



1931 miles, 7 days, and 6 nights complete.  I really wondered how I would feel when we rolled back in to town.  Would I be ready to come home?  Would I get bored being gone?  Would I get homesick?  How would my body hold up to that many days on the back of a bike?  Pulling in our driveway, would I feel that same sense of relief I do when we travel in the car?  The answer is No.  Mostly I just felt dread.  I'm starting to understand why people just take off on their bikes and never return back to that place they call home.

Now obviously I missed mom, our kids and our fur people.  Truthfully, they are the only reason we came back.  When I flipped through the week's worth of mail I seriously thought, "someday there may not be a water bill to worry about. Someday there will be no junk mail.  Someday there will be no address for anyone to send me all this crap".  Someday .......

I really thought I might come home with a better idea of what it's like to just live on the road.  After all, this was our biggest trip.  What I found out is that I'm never really going to know what that's like until it actually happens.  As long as there's an end game that leads back to home I won't be able to fully comprehend.  There's so much we would have done differently with more time.  No complaints though.  For only having 7 days we made the most of it.  Initially the ride was going to be about 1400 miles.  We ended up adding on another 500 after getting ahead of ourselves.  That was mostly me I think.  We'd get up in the mornings and I was ready to be moving back down the road.  One night was almost to long for me to stay anywhere.

After about the third day I noticed that every morning when we'd load up, I'd climb on the back of the bike and feel that sense of "home".  That relief of being back in the place I belong.  That familiar, comfort of being in my own space, even though I was sharing space with the BWG.  That felt like home.  Pulling on my riding boot and jacket, slipping into the seat that my butt has traveled 20,000 miles over the course of a few years, THAT where were I felt "home".  The not knowing of what was to come in the miles ahead of us, that was "home".  Returning to the place I grew up and have lived most of my life felt more like riding back into an extended stay somewhere that really doesn't fit anymore.

I also realized the older I get the more unsettled I become in everyday living.  Things that mattered so much twenty years ago seem more like big steel chains strapping me to things and stuff that have no real meaning in the big picture.  That scares the shit out of me.  Shouldn't I be concerned about retirement, roots, and having a solid life?  What woman decides at nearly 40 years old that she wants to just chuck it all out the window and run?  Me.  I do.  And yet for now, I won't.  Because no matter how much I love the road and the freedom, I love being a mom more.  Yet there's that glimmer that comes with knowing that one day they will be all grown up, families and lives of their own, and my "mom" role will be different.  From looking at where it all stands now, I'm going to need the road to compensate for all that will change once the kids are grown.  I'm going to need the miles to ease the ache of no longer doing the one thing I've spent most of my adult life doing. 

I have lots of pics and stories to share from the last week.  However for today it's playing catch up, reorganizing day to day life, and working my way through a little bit of grief that it all came to an end so quickly.  The miles on a bike are just never long enough.

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