In the spring of 1995 my friend Robert Bengtson and I rode from San Francisco to Los Angeles and back, taking a week or so to make the trip. I had been hit by a car while riding the previous summer, and this was my longest ride since recovering from the accident. It was a unique chance for the two of us to travel together, and we made the most of it--I have so many great memories from that journey.
I was reminded of this trip a few weeks ago when some friends of Robert asked me to contribute to a book they were making him for his 40th birthday. I dug out the photo above, which we took using a timer as we rested on the side of the road somewhere, scanned it and sent it to them, but the experience stuck in my mind, and I've continued to think about it.
I realized that my trip with Robert in 1995 served 3 key purposes: It was a way of demonstrating my full recovery from the earlier accident; it shifted my perspective and pushed me to grow; and it prepared me for a much longer journey up into Canada and across the American West that I was planning to take later that summer.
And 14 years later, as the memory of this trip is recalled for me by Robert's friends, I find that I've been coping with a surprisingly serious illness, I'm thinking extensively about the process of growth, and I encounter a cryptic message on a telephone pole: Some day you will.
So what do I make of all this? Well, my only-half-joking conclusion is that the universe is encouraging me to do something that will assert my recovery, push me to grow and prepare me to take an even bigger step in the near future. And just what is that something? (I don't think it's a motorcycle trip this time.)
