5/29 After re-reading the past few entries, I decided I didn't like them. One of my favorite things about our last tour was thinking about what I was going to write as we rode. I could attribute this difference to a number of factors, but I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that my life is so much different now than it was three years ago.
Five months prior to our last tour, I moved back to my parents' house to work some part-time jobs, save money, and plan the trip. In the three years before the tour, I had moved from Madison to Iowa City to Philadelphia to Martinsville, IN, with a summer in Alaska and a lot of other travels in between. My life was very much temporary and focused on what the next adventure would be. As we rode from Portland to Milwaukee, my mind was filled with thoughts about what I wanted to do with my life. I decided to stay in Milwaukee after the trip, and though my life has taken different forms in that time, it is much more permanent than it was three years ago. While the end of grad school is going to bring about another new chapter in my life, now it's more about what I "need" to do rather than what I "want" to do, as I'm facing a small mountain of student loan debt. In my past few years in Milwaukee, I've built friendships and other ties that I value, but which make it harder for my mind to break away from the responsibilities I have at home. I'm not sure how, or if, I can shake this feeling, but I plan on trying to be more in the moment in the coming days. Today we had strong tailwinds and flat roads, making our 65-mile journey to Napoleon, OH easy and fast, but not necessarily helping in my quest to free my mind, since it tended to focus more on the miles ticking away on the odometer and less on the more simple pleasures of the day.
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