A Long Ride Home

It wouldn’t be me if I didn’t post something bicycle related. It is an addiction after all. And don’t worry there will be posts about Diddy and E Coli and the dumbass we call President and surfing and I will put up photos I’ve taken and talk about playing music in sports bars during football season but now it’s about Peter Gostelow and his unbelievable bicycle journey.

Peter is a Brit that was living in Japan in 2005. He started ‘a long ride home’ at that time and has been pedaling ever since, and thankfully for me/us, he has kept an online journal and has been faithful to it. He has traveled 33,014 km (20,514 miles) in 760 days from August 1, 2005 until August 20, 2007 (his last post). Amazingly, he is still out there. I recommend that you visit his journal, and at the very least, click through the photos. Most of us will never see any of what he has seen in person and he has done an incredible job capturing it on film.
Click here for Peter's Journal


Here are some of Peter's photos to entice you:
Apparently, if you have a Mac (as I do at home, but not at work) you can’t see the pics I put up. Even more reason to visit Peter’s site.

Some friends...

have a blog that i recommend looking at:
The Battlefield Where the Girls Say I Love You
not only is it funny (I think so anyway) but it had got me thinking about posting on my own blog. This was going to be for 'the trip' only and that sort of didn't work. More on that later. Ok, maybe now.
The trip:
I’ve been trying to figure out what went wrong. I’m still not entirely sure or maybe I’m not ready to admit it. I do know that I was lonely, but in retrospect, I think that could have changed or I would have gotten use to it. At least I keep telling myself that, and that I gave up too soon.

Another thing was that physically or mentally, I don’t think I was prepared, or I just set mileage goals too high at the start and that took its toll on me mentally and physically. Especially the mental. Why didn’t I just stop somewhere for a few days and adjust? I got depressed and that sounds insane to say, but I did. Who gets depressed when they have nothing to do but explore the world for 2 years? And when my bike computer broke, it completely f*cked with me and I don’t know why. And when I got back to US I started thinking about all of this got even more depressed.

Also, I think I spend too much time worrying about making it to here and there instead of relaxing and realizing that it didn’t matter if I didn’t reach X-town by X-day. When you live on schedules (work and school) for X number of years, it is a hard thing, for me at least, to get rid of that idea of being somewhere and a specific time. Is that cultural? Personal?

So there is some of what I've figured out. And for the record, I am doing much better these days. And if I ever (I'm thinking I might, but not for some time) decided to try it again, I won't throw it out there for the world to know; I'll just pedal away quietly and maybe post on this blog wherever it is I end up. But for now, I might try my hand at blogging about really important things like Sean Diddy Puffy Combs' You Tube search for a personal assistant who can read, write AND count! Gah...I can do 2 out of 3, just my luck!