Almost to the Atlantic (August 22)

Today's ride of 30 miles, or so, will take us to Ocean City, MD ... to the Atlantic Ocean.

Traveling via bikes since late May ... traveling through beautiful days and scenery and sometimes through rain-soaked days and "anywhere USA" urban areas.  Mostly enjoyable; sometimes tedious.

All-in-all, very enjoyable.  Which is why I choose to spend my summers traveling around the U.S. on my Surly.

It has been many a day since I last posted, and will try to catch up with the events of those days in a later post.  But for now, know that the Atlantic is but half a day away ... then it is back to Washington D.C. and a flight home on August 28.

Frank and Roger have completed their rides and are now in Maine.  McKinley and Patrice indicated they would be reaching Yorktown, VA yesterday or today, and Andrew is expecting to arrive in Washington D.C. sometime in the coming week.  So all either have or will soon be completing their individual treks.  For some it is the first complete ride across the country; others of us the second.  Doing this is not easy ... but then it is not hard either. 

For Kim, reaching the Atlantic is the culmination of several years of planning and one summer of new experiences/challenges.  Reaching the Atlantic can be, and in most cases is, a very emotional event.  Riding the last few miles is overwhelming ... but extremely joyous.

The following quote was sent to Kim yesterday by one of her law-firm partners, and accurately summarizes this summer's trek:

“Once a journey is designed, equipped, and put in process, a new factor enters and takes over. A trip, a safari, an exploration, is an entity, different from all other journeys. It has personality, temperament, individuality, uniqueness. A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless.

"We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us. Tour masters, schedules, reservations, brass-bound and inevitable, dash themselves to wreckage on the personality of the trip.

"Only when this is recognized can the blown-in-the glass bum relax and go along with it. Only then do the frustrations fall away. In this a journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.” -- John Steinbeck

One of my favorite quotes which motivates me was sent to me by Bill Burk four summers ago:

 "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you did not do than by the ones you did do.  So throw off the bowlines.  Sail away from the safe harbor.  Catch the trade winds in your sails.

Explore.  Dream.  Discover." 

-- Mark Twain

Time to head to the Atlantic (although we have been heading to the Atlantic since late May!).