My hobby of writing had been placed on hold for a while, and now I’m back – for a bit.  Summer term is winding down with only three days left of class.  Oh yeah, I got a new keyboard after months of despising the stock keyboard that came with my computer.  Spending the last 6 months taking software-programming classes had me longing for the good old days of mechanical keyboards, and their tactile feel (I think I just dated myself here).  Well, I finally broke down and got a new keyboard, and now I’m writing. 

It’s getting to be that time of year again, where I feel the need to break free from the box I live in.  This has really been a year, and I’m finally right where I want to be.  I saw a quote on the inter-webs today, it said, “Sometimes when things are falling apart, they may be falling into place.”   I believe that to true.

I last left this blog on a post about a bicycle trip with a friend, and that bicycling journey ended on a horrific note.  My life, from that point forward, was in all sorts of turmoil.  Life, surely, was not flowing down the path of least resistance, but I can’t complain, for I’m still alive.  Life does have a way of working itself out (if one works hard enough).  So now I’m sitting here feeling very satisfied for the first time in a long while.

I’m set to depart on another bicycle journey in a couple of weeks.  That said, it’s not going to be a month long trek with a guitar, just a short weeklong journey through places I’ve already cycled.  I’ll be joining two different trips taken in the past shortening them both then combining them together to make a good weeks long journey.  Well, that’s the plan anyhow.  With that plan in mind I started digging through my hiking, and bikebacking gear, which eventually found it’s way into my closet.

Digging into my panniers I soon discovered that I never cleaned my gear from last September.  It went from sitting in my garage to being tossed into the closet, forgotten about.  What’s happened since I returned from last September?

Life happened, and for some, it ended.  Through those trials, and tribulations, of a year long journey that found me graveside, bedside, desk-side, drunk, stone cold sober, in and out of doctors offices, while being in school to out of school and to back in school; I’ve found myself learning more this past year about myself, life, and love, than in any other year I’ve been alive.

When things feel like they’re falling apart, they could actually be falling into place.

The one thing I’ve never done well is give up.  I’ve always done things the hard way, but I guess that’s who I am.  When I find a mountain I climb up it on a bike.  I carry too much gear, and I hold on to too much baggage.  Why, because I’m a thinker.  I plan for the worst hoping for the best.  I let my emotions get to me, and I display my feelings on my shoulder.  I’m an open book.  But I don’t quit, and I don’t let go easily.  It’s probably why I like bicycling, because it’s honest.

Certain roads are deceitful, they’re optical illusions where you think you should be going downhill, but your actually gradually ascending, the term is called, false flats.  Life’s that way too, but cycling is honest.  You know you’re working.  There are no secrets to going faster.  If you want to go faster, work harder!  And that’s how I’m learning to live a better life.  After a year of ups, downs, highs, and lows, my life is falling into place just like the best bicycle journeys do.  You can’t know what the best truly feels like, until you’ve experienced the worst.

My alarm sounded at 1:30am on July 3rd, 2014, in New Meadows, Idaho.  The destination for the day was through another area titled Hells Canyon Recreation Area along the Salmon River, aka Rattlesnake River, where I’d plan on stopping for the night, in White Bird, Idaho.  The daytime temperatures were forecasted to be the same as the depths of hell, one hundred plus degrees in the shade, if any shade could be found.  Plus, the road was a windy twisted one-lane road for most of the days ride.  Therefore, an early departure was needed to make the 70-mile ride before the heat melted everything on the roadway, including vulnerable cyclists.  I loaded up the bike the evening before because of the planned 2:00am departure.

I crawled out of bed wanting more sleep, tired and stiff.  I used the lavatory, washed my face, stowed my remaining items securely away in my panniers, and grabbed my bicycle.  Just before leaving the sanctity of my warm, cozy, and minuscule motel room, I pulled back the curtains gazing out the window.  The cars were wet, the ground black, the sky was dark with no stars visible.  I thought to myself, “Oh, a shower must have come through last evening.”  I grabbed my bike, opened the door leaving the door-key behind, and pushed out the door while closing the locked door behind.

Standing under the eve of the motel I secured my helmet over the skullcap warming my head, then slid my cycling gloves on, and zipped up my jacked, finally mounting my steed.  As I pushed against the pedals in slow revolutions slowly warming my body, I began to notice that it was raining.  And then it happened; I heard the loud smack of thunder rumbling in the distance.  30 minutes later after a handful of miles, I found myself riding towards a thunderstorm in the mountains.  I had to stop; I couldn’t ride into a thunder and lightning storm, as that was unsafe and sure way to get struck by lightning, while sitting on steel bike.

So, at 2:30 in the morning I was standing on the side of a road in the middle of nowhere.  No place to go, no motel room to hide in, and it was raining off and on; not to mention the series of thunderstorms passing me by in the direction I needed to go.   Bicycle travel can be quite lonely.  If only I had checked the forecast before leaving, I could’ve been laying in a warm bed sleeping, instead of standing in the pitch black darkness of the night, in the middle of nowhere cold and alone.

This day would wind up being the most memorable, and enjoyable, day of the last years trip to Montana.  Everything always seems to work it’s way out.