Why
I admit it. The whole "discovering America" thing was a bit of a sham.
Oh, not a real sham...more of a sham sham. In that yes, I did want to go across the country, see the folks in it, see the landscape, get down with the whole American Experience thing.
But, as many of you who've been reading this site for awhile know, it's mostly All About Me, and as most of you who've come to the site since I hit the road are probably figuring out, it's still mostly All About Me. The quest, then, was not for the country, but for my self.
Virginia and Kentucky were big bashes upside the head, states of body and of mind that I won't rehash here. It should suffice to say that it was probably apparent to many readers, long before it was apparent to me, that I wasn't going to be dipping my front wheels in the Pacific to symbolize of the end of my full-on pedaled-the-country experience. What I got instead was the full-on pedaled-myself-into-the-ground experience, which is its own...not reward, precisely, but it certainly had its share of teachable moments. I know what my habits of behavior and of thought are, and the time I spent frying on southern roads was time that I would've spent drinking, alone, in some apartment somewhere, eating bad food and getting fatter, doing some job I didn't care about, heading towards an inexorable breakdown. It's happened before. Too often.
But not this time. What I seem to have done, instead, is strip away everything that would allow me to tread once more down the well-worn paths of drink and entombment. I can't do it out here. Oh, I tried, back in those motels in Charlottesville, Christiansburg, and Berea. But I couldn't, not really...it was too obviously self-defeating, too glaringly stupid, and all the familiar enabling factors were gone. And when I reached the west coast, it became emphatically clear: once denied the opportunity, the desire revealed itself for what it was: a tottering, wrecked mutation of behavior I adopted out of necessity long ago that has grown into a tumorous weight. I am excising that weight with pedal strokes, miles travelled, and elevation gained. My waistline isn't the only thing that's shrinking...I am leaving the unnamed burdens of my distant past by the shores of this ocean.
I won't get into too many of the gooey details. But it is better to be present, looking with sober eyes into the mirrors I find on this road, than it is be in a home, with a warm bed, and a flickering television, and a nearby liquor store. It is better to suffer my undimmed emotions against the backdrop of churning waves than it is to crush them with whatever means presents itself. This...this, right here, and right now, with all of its sweat, and pain, and tremulous states of mind and soul...this is why I am here.
And now: water, birds, and sun.
