Oh so familiar...

I've been in the States for 11 days now. I leave in five more. The first couple days back felt awfully surreal. Riding the L through Chicago, hearing the CTA announcements on the speakers, seeing the city bounce past me on the less-than-perfect red and brown line rails... it almost felt like watching a movie I knew well but hadn't seen in a long time. It didn't quite feel I was actually there. The most instantly obvious difference was the ambiance of being surrounded by native English speakers and the signage and advertising aimed at them (us). It all normalized quickly after meeting with more and more friends and seeing the familiar places of my not-so-distant past.

I got to visit a truly wonderful number of people, and will visit a couple more still.

Last night we went to Goshen to see a performance by Garrison Keillor. It was everything you'd hope it would be. The show started with the audience, well accustomed to his styling of Lake Wobegon, waiting breathlessly for the cue that he had begun being funny. The first few laughs were hopeful more than earnest. Normally the performer needs to warm up and relax for the show to be enjoyable. This time, it wasn't until the audience relaxed a few minutes in that we found a more natural cadence at which to laugh. You could almost hear the expectation in the pre-laugh silence - "The next line will be a good one, I'm sure of it!" His mammoth reputation preceded him, and it took a short time for the audience to get over their giddiness to truly enjoy the show. Keillor closed by saying that what our country/the world needs now is gratitude. "Gratitude is the cure." And to choose to be cheerful. Not happy (because who really knows what that means), but cheerful.

I don't know what to try to process next. So many different strains of thought have positively flown through my head during the intermittent quiet moments of this trip - thoughts of the future, the past, Midwestern sensibility and humor, motivation, biking, sickness and death... everything really. I can only hope that some portion of the ideas I'd like to mull around come back so I can spend some proper time with them and get them down on paper.

A summary... (oh, and a little on New York)

The Finger Lakes region is pretty. It's not too dissimilar to eastern TN/southeastern IN, except it has a few really long, skinny, glacier-carved lakes. The riding was mostly fairly relaxed, or would have been if I hadn't pushed hard to get up hills to keep up with all the 50+ year old people (well really to keep ahead of them when possible, if only slightly, just to make it look like I had learned a little something about biking after doing 1400 miles of it before joining them, who have been cross-country multiple times and have been biking for longer than I've been alive). A couple days, due to hills of the previous days, I was more sore than I'd been all summer. But anyways, the food was great, the weather was pleasant, the company was fun, and the scenery was beautiful. And it was finished after a mere 5 days (one of which I might have taken off to sit and read...).

This summer, starting on the morning of June 2, when I left Archbold, up through August 7th at 5:00am when I arrived back in Archbold from the Finger Lakes ride, I...

...traveled a total of 7,811 miles:
1655 by bike
2090 by car
4035 by train or bus
and ~31 on foot, hiking

...consumed:
8 gallons of gatorade
maybe 25 - 30 candy bars (most of them king size, and usually two at a time)
nearly a full box of maple and brown sugar-flavored Malt-O-Meal
at least 1 - 1 1/2 lbs. of peanut butter
50 - 60 tortillas (almost always for lunch, but only for lunch)
2 large jars of peanuts (that was all before Utah)

...pedaled as many as 800,000 pedal strokes

...cursed at my bike and any convenient hill, pothole, or particularly smug-looking bird/small animal more times than I care to count

...traveled for two months and one week, spending 28 of those days on the bike (for about 125 hours of total riding time), drinking perhaps 40 - 50 gallons of water in those 28 days (in addition to the gatorade), and having only one of those biking days in the rain

...slept in my tent for almost exactly half of the trip, usually waking up (though not necessarily getting up) between 4:30 and 5:30am

...spent no more than 4 nights *not* using my sleeping bag since leaving Hesston (which is also almost as many nights as I've had air conditioning since then, as well)

...went for as many as 4 days without a shower and as many as 8 without wearing underwear (between bike shorts and lined pajama shorts, it's just not necessary...)

...got more tan lines than I could have dreamed of

..."slept" 3 nights on Amtrak and stayed awake 1 night in the car

...spent a lot of really amazing time with a lot of really amazing people - both old friends and the random acquaintences that come with traveling. So, to everyone who was a part of my summer - thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. It has been incredible.