Amtrak Across the Country

After spending 15 months rambling across the US on our bicycles, we made the command decision to take Amtrak back across the US to spend the winter in Portland, Oregon. Why Amtrak? For us, trains and bicycles seem like a natural fit.

A train is a much more civilized conveyance than an airplane. A train is slow, leisurely, restful; while an airplane is frenetic, stressful, strict. When you’re on a train, you have hours to simply sit and look out the windows, taking in the scenery around you. While you’re moving much quicker than on a bicycle, it’s a similar experience, because you have the time to meditate on each rolling hill and small town you pass through. On a train, you can meet fellow passengers, and share fascinating conversation over a meal in the dining car. Amtrak treats you like a person, allowing you to walk around, stretch your legs, and bring more than three ounces of liquid aboard. And it’s one of the cheapest ways to travel long-distance with a bicycle, as Amtrak only charges $20 to box and check your bike.

We have long been fans of Amtrak. When we were living in Long Beach, taking the train out of the city was the best way to begin a bike trip. We’ve taken Amtrak up and down the west coast many times, even as a way to kick off this journey last summer. But we have never taken a train for more than one night – and we’ve always been curious what it would be like.

So, a few weeks ago, we boxed up our bikes in Boston, and hopped aboard Amtrak, for a three-day ride across the US to Portland.

From Boston, we rode the Lake Shore Limited into Chicago. The train passes through Western Massachusetts, upstate New York, around the bottom of a few of the great lakes, before pulling into downtown Chicago. It took approximately 25 hours, arriving 2 hours late due to freight traffic. We rode coach, in an attempt to save some money, and because we knew we could tough it out in an uncomfortable sleeping position for one night.

From Chicago, we upgraded to a sleeper car aboard the Empire Builder for the rest of the trip to Portland. This train cuts across the very northern part of the US, through the endless plains of Minnesota, North Dakota, and Montana, before crossing the mountains, and following the Columbia Gorge into Portland. The ride was approximately 44 hours, and was perfectly on time (as we’ve found is our luck whenever we get a sleeper car).

The sleeper car sounds like an over-the-top luxury, but it’s really the best way to spend two nights on a train. Not only do you sleep better, you have your own quiet spot away from the crying children and dozens of bored passengers. In the sleeping cars, the bathrooms tend to be cleaner, you have first dibs on dinner reservations, you may get to join in a wine tasting (depending on the route you take), and there’s a shower, champagne, and a car attendant. (And, here’s a big secret… When you stay in a sleeper car, your fare includes all of your meals!)

The experience of riding on Amtrak may not be the romantic vision we have of the golden age of train travel. You’re not going to meet Cary Grant, your coffee will arrive in a paper cup, and folks will likely sprawl out all over the floor in an attempt to sleep through the day. That said, I’ve always felt like I get better customer service from Amtrak employees than in my combined 20-some-years of flying. When I say they treat you like a person, I’m not joking. The conductors are approachable and (often) jovial. If the train’s late, they’ll tell you (honestly) what you can expect. If the train’s really late, they’ll pass out free snacks and bottled water.

Why do I keep mentioning the train being late? Well, because that’s the plague of Amtrak. For most routes, Amtrak does not own its own tracks. It uses the freight tracks, under agreement with the freight operators, which means that the freight trains have priority. The Coast Starlight is one of the most notoriously-late Amtrak trains. It shares tracks with Union Pacific, which operates a lot of freight traffic along the same route, and can mean a lot of delays. Riding Amtrak can test your patience, if you’re not able to let go of any ideals you may have about what riding a train should be like (i.e. don’t even think about comparing it to the trains in Europe).

Which often makes me wonder what it must be like for Amtrak employees. They must regularly deal with passenger complaints, and they constantly have to apologize for something they have no control over. Honestly, it’s pretty amazing that they would continue to be so helpful and friendly.

But let’s go back to the idea of taking your bicycle with you on the train. Amtrak operates only six trains on which you can simply bring your bike aboard. On all of the other trains, you must box and check your bicycle. This is actually a much simpler project than it sounds. Any staffed Amtrak station that offers baggage service should have bike boxes in stock that you can purchase (but make sure to check ahead). To make your bike fit in the box, all you have to do is remove the pedals and turn the handlebars and roll the bike into the box. Tape it up really well, write your name and phone number on the box, hand over your $20, and you’re good to go. Pretty simple, right? There’s just one more thing… You must make sure that your destination is a baggage stop, or you won’t be able to get your bike off the train. Yes, even though there is a stop in Alpine, Texas, 80 short miles from Big Bend and the perfect jumping-off location for a bike tour, you cannot get your bike off the train there, because Amtrak does not offer baggage service at this stop. Check the schedules carefully.

Or just get a Brompton. We’ve been thinking about this idea a lot lately, especially after riding trains throughout the NorthEast. How simple to have a bike that folds so small and so neatly that you can just carry it aboard and put it in the overhead compartment. Think about all the possibilities this opens up… such as getting off the train, with your bike, in Alpine, Texas, and spending a fantastic week rambling around Big Bend country. The bike touring possibilities expand when you have a folding bike. And it would be an even-more-obvious pairing with train travel.

As we kick around several ideas for our next adventure, we can’t help but consider the possibility of crossing the northern part of the US and Canada – on a multi-modal journey that would combine Brompton and Amtrak.

If you agree with us that bikes and train travel go together really well, consider writing and sending a letter to Amtrak. Amtrak is poised to become an even-more-popular method of travel in coming years, as people get more and more frustrated with flying, and it would be great to see them expand their bike service to each station stop. If nothing else, it would be great for them to know that they serve so many cyclists.

Unique Gifts for the Bicycle Tourist

The holidays are here and if you’re looking for some unique and inspirational gifts for the bike tourist in your family (or yourself!), we’ve got some great ideas.

Traveler’s Creed Poster
We finished up a poster with one of my favorite photos of the entire trip and combined it with one of the most read posts on the site. The Traveler’s Creed Poster is a summation of some of the insights we’ve learned while on the road. It’s a great poster for those who have already gone on a bike tour and those that are gearing up for their first adventure. It is available in 16×20, 20×24 and a 20×24 wrapped canvas showcase piece. Order yours here.

Year Without Keys Calendar
We also have a calendar with 12 great images from our adventure. You can preview the images below. We got our copy a few weeks ago and the printing is great! Order your calendar here.

Panniers & Peanut Butter
We know you already know about and love our gear e-book, but we thought we’d remind you, because it would make a great gift for the bike tourist in your life. Whether they’re just getting into touring or have been touring for years and want some new insights, it’s chock-full of our recommendations, as well as beautiful photos and stories from the road. Read more here and purchase your copy here.

Custom Headbadges
A custom headbadge is a great way to personalize your ride. What’s a headbadge? It’s like a hood ornament for your bicycle. Laura hand-makes headbadges in copper and sterling silver, and is happy to help sketch out a design. More information and a few photos of previously-made headbadges are here and you can email her to order.

Handmade Jewelry Inspired by our Travels
Check out Laura’s Etsy shop for hand-crafted jewelry featuring maps and found objects from our travels and inspired by the places we have been.

Be sure to order gifts early to allow for shipping. Like always, all sales help us fund our next trip. Thank you to everyone that has already purchased our ebook, calendar or have ordered headbadges from Laura. We feel so lucky to have so many great readers and followers that support our trip. Happy holidays all!

Happy Thanksgiving

It’s a very chilly 28 degrees outside in Portland right now. The ground is frozen, the air is electric, and there are still patches of snow from the day before. Yet, this morning, we work up, inside, and turned on the heat. And it’s toasty warm in here, where there’s coffee and hot breakfast and internet. We have a lot to be thankful for this year.

It’s easy to get wrapped up in the craziness of modern life. We have only been in Portland for a short time, but we are already feeling the pull to buy things, stress out, worry, measure up to some invisible standard. The open road feels so far away at times, but we try hard to hold on to its lessons. This morning, when I sat down to think about this holiday of giving thanks, all I had to do was look around me, and I realize that we are surrounded by amazingness.

For starters, there’s the shower here, with its hot water and constant availability. And the kitchen, allowing me to cook to my heart’s desire. There are incredible memories of kind and generous people all over the country. And the hundreds of comments we receive on our blog posts and facebook updates. We’ve made friendships in the unlikeliest of places, and shared commonalities with folks we are very different from. We have clean clothes, a soft bed, and an extensive library of photos to remind us to keep dreaming big. We have dozens of possible next adventures, all waiting at the doorstep, ready to provide their own stories and experiences. And we have each other, which cannot be overstated, because it’s pretty incredible that we could travel so far and so long and still love each other.

Tomorrow, we are headed out of town to spend the holiday weekend with my family. We hope that you all have similarly heart-warming plans. Thank you for continuing to follow our incredible journey and sharing with us a place in your lives.

And, for more things to be thankful for, check out Maria’s delightful post, to which we contributed.

What it Feels Like to Break Down

There are some stories that are impossible to tell until a lot of time has passed. Stories that are too full of emotion, that tell of experiences that shook you to your core. Stories that leave you this kind of vulnerable need to wait until your ego has healed and your subconscious has learned all of its lessons. And then, when they can be told without the tears, they can be gently introduced.

In August, we gave a presentation in Durham, North Carolina. At the end, someone asked if either of us had ever had a moment of wishing we weren’t traveling, of hitting a point where we just wanted to quit. Russ and I looked at each other, and I told my story for the first time. At our presentation in Boston, I told it for only the second time. And, afterwards, someone thanked me for such honesty, and asked why I had never posted it on the blog. The answer is simply because, until just recently, I had been way too close to it, and I couldn’t find the lesson beneath the pile of emotions.

In February, we were in Far West Texas. It’s an amazing place to tour on a bicycle, but the wind can kill you. We had ridden down into Big Bend, battling a headwind the entire way, comforting ourselves that it meant we should have a tailwind when we turned around and headed out of the region. We spent several incredible days in the Big Bend region. And on the day we headed north, the wind shifted. Our ride out of Big Bend was broken into two days, and it was the second day that the wind really decided to howl. 20mph sustained, with gusts that threw you around like you were nothing. 40 miles to the town of Marathon. We thought about just waiting it out at the campground and riding the next day, but we were severely lacking in food, so we decided to just rally as much energy as we could and push for it. The iPods came out, blaring our personal choices of “you-can-do-it” music, and we drafted off each other, trying as hard as we could to ignore the sheer pain and frustration.

At mile 20, my determination ran out. I was moving 6mph down the road, sobbing, screaming in my head, “I’m done, I’ve had enough, I don’t want to be here anymore.” It was that last part that really had me crying. More than just the exhaustion, it killed me to hear those words in my head, to think that I no longer wanted to do this thing that I had so completely longed to do. Tears streamed down my face as I thought about giving up everything that I had worked for, as I thought about how my dream life had become such a nightmare. How could it have come to this?

When I could no longer catch my breath through all the sobbing and the screaming in my head drowned out the sound of the music in my iPod, I stopped pedaling. I pulled off on the side of the road, got off my bike, threw my bike off the road, resisted the impulse to kick my stuff, and screamed bloody-murder at a visibly-shaken Russ. “I don’t want to do this anymore!”

“Do you want to hitch a ride?” Russ quietly suggested. “Yes!” I screamed back. And we spent the next hour trying to flag someone who would drive us the rest of the way into town.

Maybe we just have bad luck with hitching rides, or maybe there was more that I was supposed to learn that day, but we found ourselves on the one road in Texas without a single pick-up truck. Small passenger cars and utility-repair trucks only. Nobody stopped. And we ended up deciding to just try to keep riding. Russ rode in front most of the rest of the way and I felt entirely broken inside. Several hours later, as the sun was setting, we finally got into town, physically and mentally exhausted, and I handed over my debit card for an overpriced hotel room.

It took us several days in Marathon to recover physically from the strain of that day. It’s taken me much longer to recover emotionally.

The glimmer of hope for me and the reason that I found the energy/willpower/desire to keep traveling is that, even as I was screaming at myself in the middle of my breakdown, I knew that it wasn’t the entire trip that I was done with. It was when I asked myself, through all the tears, how I could be done with this entire experience, that I realized that it wasn’t the trip I was done with, but that particular moment. I had had enough of the wind and the exhaustion and the frustration, but not the journey. I lost the battle, but not the war.

I realized, in that moment of thinking about giving everything up and going back to the life that I was living before, that I wanted to keep traveling. I wanted to see more of the world from the seat of my bicycle, I just wanted to do it without the brutal headwind. It’s a weird experience to have a heart-to-heart with yourself in the middle of a complete breakdown, but that’s exactly what happened. I’m sure that only a few minutes actually passed, but time slowed down for me as I had this argument in my head. And the small voice of my true inner me spoke very clearly that I needed to separate this moment from the bigger picture; that I could absolutely give up and not win this part of the experience, but I couldn’t throw in the towel entirely.

The thing that gets us through every harrowing moment is perspective, the ability to compare this struggle with some larger idea. I know that I can climb this hill, because I’ve climbed larger hills. I know that I can finish this project, because I’ve succeeded at other projects. I can get through this, because I’ve gotten through worse. The further we traveled, the more perspective we gained, and the easier it became to tackle the hard times.

That day in Texas, however, I didn’t have any perspective. It was the hardest day I had ever been through, and I didn’t know how to keep pushing. So I had to create perspective. I had to dig deep and find a way to keep that day from over-powering everything else. And now, whenever I have a hard day, I have perspective, because I can’t imagine anything shaking me to my core more than that one afternoon.

Quick Catch Up

Hey there dear readers, the last two weeks have been a blur. We’ve hit the ground running since landing in Portland. About twenty minutes after we got off the train we ran into someone we knew! It was a total small world experience. We had stayed with Logan and Tammy while we were in Sacramento healing up from my burnt hand and Laura’s flu. We became friends with he and his wife Tammy of RowdyKittens fame. It was totally indicative of our trip and how we’ve just managed to meet some amazing people along our journey.

If that wasn’t enough of a surprise, we met our friend Ethan (we camped in his backyard in Portland at the very beginning of our trip), who helped us find a place to stay and got us some furniture so we wouldn’t be sitting on the carpet all winter. We walked in and he had an iPod playing and a bottle of champagne in an ice bucket. It was an utterly amazing welcome and we were nearly moved to tears as we stood there in the middle of the apartment just absolutely stunned at what was going on.

We’ve been spending the last few days getting use to not moving. The whole trip has made us appreciate everything SO much more. It is just bliss to wake up every morning in a bed, to be able to boil water to make coffee, to have refrigeration to store bacon, to use a clean bathroom and to have some quiet personal space once again.

That said, we’re hard at work trying to raise the finances for our next adventure. Laura is making headbadges and Bike Mustaches like crazy for BikeCraft.

I’ve been trying to grow my network in Portland so I can land some freelance jobs, which has been proving to be difficult. I’m starting over from scratch and there is something challenging and exhilarating about that. Yet at the same time, constantly watching pennies is growing frustrating. Hopefully, I’ll meet the right people soon.

In the meantime, I’ve been diving into the bicycle community. I’ve started a series called “Pedal People” which will be a series of multimedia profiles of people involved in bike culture in Portland (there’s a few, I think). They’re being posted on BikePortland, a great site that inspired me many years ago to be an advocate for bicycling.

So we’re working hard and trying to save. We’ve got lots of plans in the incubation stage for our next adventure. We’ll be posting about the readjustment period, the saving and our plans soon. I know that most travel blogs I’ve followed usually end after a trip and there is never any discussion about all the mental goings on of reintegration. I’ve always found that misleading, so we’ll be writing about that. We’ll also be doing lots of short bike tours from Portland to the surrounding parks, we’ll be doing more gear reviews and more other great touring tidbidts so stay tuned!

You’re Doing it Wrong

The single most controversial piece of gear on our bikes is our pedals. Yes, they are flat. No, we are not clipped in. At this point, some cyclists pedal away resolving that we are hopeless beginners. Other cyclists subject us to a lengthy discourse on efficency and speed which boils down to the fact that we’ve been doing it wrong all this time.

Yes, after 15 months and 10,000 miles, we still haven’t gotten it right. We’ve met some people who honestly wonder how it is possible to get up hills without clipping in, as if before the advent of cleated shoes, cyclists resigned themselves to walking up every hill.

Of course, the pedals are just the beginning of a long list of things we didn’t get quite right. Laura doesn’t have drop bars, we’re carrying a paella pan, we don’t have STI shifters, our handlebars are too high, our alcohol stove is too slow and we’re carrying a cribbage board. According to current cycling wisdom, it is a small miracle we were able to pedal out of our neighborhood, much less across the country.

Thankfully, we are not the only ones who have been doing it wrong. We know people who have toured on Bromptons, on hybrid rental bikes, who have carried guitars and surfboards with them. There’s even a popular CrazyGuyOnABike cyclist that has pedaled around the world on a penny farthing. He is definitely doing it wrong.

The prototypical “wrong” cyclist is Arthur, who we met last summer in California. He was a recent grad from Wisconsin who decided to spend his summer touring down the Pacific Coast. He wasn’t wearing any cycling clothes, just gym shorts and black sweats. His bike was the proverbial boat anchor of bicycles – the Schwinn Continental. You know the bike, lovingly welded together from the finest lead pipe money can buy. It is so heavy and dense, it is reported to have its own gravity. Yes, Arthur was doing it completely wrong, but somehow he was blissfully unaware. And because he was unaware, he was also blazing down the coast at a clip that amazed most of the other tourists around him.

Bicycle touring is not immune to fads, trends and know-it-all-isms. There are prescribed “right” ways of doing things and “wrong” ways of doing things. While most of it is really just harmless fun and nothing to get riled about, we’ve also seen where gear self-consciousness has kept people off the bike, and that is just plain wrong, my friends.

We have met couples who are just starting to get into touring. Along the happy progression from newbie to serious cyclist, the decision to go clipless is made. Conventional cycling wisdom tells you that it will make you go faster (and that is the only legitimate thing you can do on a bike, right?). What follows is a tragio-comic drama. One partner takes to it like a fish to water and the other is about as graceful as an emu on skates. The partner who struggles gets frustrated and tries even harder but still can’t get the hang of it. At some point in all the failure and the repeated thinking that clipless is what “real cyclists” ride, the person gives up on the dream and misses out on a whole world of wonderful experiences – all because of the stupid pedals.

This isn’t a tirade against pedals, as it is about the self-imposed obstacles that prevent people from touring. In our journey, we’ve discovered how wonderful bicycle touring is and are constantly encouraging others to hit the road. It truly is a life-changing and life-affirming activity. If you don’t like clipless, don’t ride clipless. If you don’t like drop bars, ride with uprights. If your bike feels too low, raise the stem. It is ultimately your bike and your adventure, so you should pick a configuration that suits your riding style.

A few days ago, I met someone who recently did a bike tour on a carbon fiber bike with low spoke count wheels and a trailer. He was riding with a group of friends and they all had matching jerseys and were riding in a paceline down the coast. 1000 miles in 10 days. Yes, he was clipped in. I was about to tell him that he was doing it wrong, but I saw the big grin on his face and that familiar “far off” look people have when they are in their happy place and I simply smiled in agreement.

Traveling Without Moving

Why is it the case that it is infinitely easier to find deep, profound and life changing meaning when you’re traveling? There is something about being on a train, watching the scenery unfold itself like a continuous roll of film, or peering down at all the sad earnest little cities from 30,000 feet in the air, or biking with all your worldly possessions in tow that predisposes us to finally answer those nagging Questions of the Ages.

What is fascinating is that we often find our answers. What is tragic is that we usually forget them.

I have always been befuddled by this pheonmenon of how we can become so wise when traveling and revert back to our selfish and small selves in a matter of days upon returning. It seems like a few hours of looking at Excel spreadsheets is enough to reduce Confucious to confusion.

I’m writing this while sitting on a train so I don’t forget this time. You know, like Letters from Algernon, but to myself.

When you are moving from place to place, never sleeping in the same bed twice, never seeing the same people for more than a few days, the world begins to feel illusory and transparent. Life is exposed as a peculiar series of situations that evolve and resolve themselves like a four panel comic strip, with our consciousness as the thin newsprint that holds it all together. Travel shakes your world view, it broadens your perspective and lets you step outside yourself so you can peer inside yourself.

Movement and the transitory nature of travel primes our brains. We perceive that we are on an adventure, so we think like adventurers. We open ourselves up to serendpity and chance, and Chance finds us. This is, of course, in direct conflict with when we are at “home.” At home, our minds are a little less free and are a little more concerned with fortification than exploration. The steady cadence of the day, the commute, the morning meetings, the allotted lunch hour and afternoon conferences marshall our thinking into an inexorable march to the weekend, where we are granted 48 hours leave before taking up our stations again on Monday morning.

One notable moment for me on this trip was climbing up into the bowl of the Chisos mountains in Far West Texas. It was steep and brutal in such a way that I can only describe it as trying to ride a bicycle with an angry 300lb gorilla on your back, periodically punching you in the gut and face. Having survived it, only one word can describe those excruciating hours of climbing – bliss.

When we reached the rim of the mountains and peered down into its caldron, I was hit with something like ecstasy. The gorilla disappeared (the bruises were still there) and all the heaviness and unbearable fatigue fell from my body like fractured stalagtites. I felt one with myself. All the conflicting internal voices had stopped bickering and were singing in beautiful unison. Yes. This is what it means to be alive. I was in the middle of the Great Mobile, the point of balance from which all things diverged, but from where all things are delicately connected. I had a divine flash and knew that everything was going to be ok. All the troubles and the worries I had or will have will work themselves out in due course. I had nothing to worry, because in this world-view prince and pauper were the same, joy and suffering were the same. My only responsibility was to live and let it all graciously unfold. I was having what psychologists refer to as a “peak experience.” I had found inner harmony.

Amazing what a steep climb will do to the senses.

So what happens exactly? On this trip we have found that the human psyche is suprisingly adaptable. After a few months into our travels, we had been transformed from homebodies to steely-eyed travelers, who felt comfortable with and even thrived on a healthy amount of daily uncertainty. Where are we going? We’ll ride to where it’s interesting. What are we going to eat? We have a stove, we can find something to cook. Where are we going to sleep? We’ve got a tent, what does it matter. What had begun as questions that used to fundamentally terrify us had turned into trifling details that we didn’t let get in the way of Adventure. When you’re traveling, your thinking adapts and becomes fluid and agile, capable of mental Jujitsu.

Conversely, the mind is also infinitely adaptable in the opposite direction. As free as your thoughts become when traveling, they can be easily trapped again in their old habits. The great lessons you learned on those mountain tops, that you thought for sure were indelibly etched into your being like commandments on stone, more resemble epehmeral sand mandalas. It doesn’t take long. A few days for some, a few hours for others. Your thoughts that once roamed unfettered find themselves penned in. You look up and the blue spotless sky is replaced with a flourescent light buzzing above – the strange soundtrack to your life.

So what is there to be done?

The most alluring option would be to perpetually travel. However, the biggest deceit of the travel industry is that happiness can only be found abroad on white sandy beaches, where drinks come adorned with miniature parasols and meaning rains from the skies. While traveling does afford us space to be contemplative, it does not have a monopoly on Zen. As Pirsig writes in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, “The only Zen you find on tops of mountains is the Zen you bring there.” The search for meaning is an inner exploration. Being away from the familiar facilitates the process, but you are just as likely fo find it on top of Mount Kilamanjaro as you are in between the couch cushions. One of the most peaceful souls we’ve encountered on this trip found his inner harmony while sweeping the floors of his home. He used a gnarled handmade broom that was cut from a serpentine tree branch. The textures were rough and exposed and, as he swept, all the vibrations from the bristles were telegraphed straight to his hand. The sublime in the simple. The tactile process brought him peace. He had turned a mundane task into mindful meditation.

As I write this, we’re sitting on a train on our way to Portland, OR. We’ve just passed Mynot (pronounced like “why not?”), North Dakota. The landscape outside is predominantly brown. Brown trees on brown hills with intermitant patches of pure white snow. By this time tomorrow we should be in Portland, where we will live and work for a few months before we can set off again.

We are still filled with the momentum of our journey. Full of life. Joyous. We can look at things with the calm that you develop when things around you have been in constant flux for 15 months. Inner harmony. We are excited to be living in Portland, but we have challenges ahead of us. We have to work and be dutifiul about saving so we can set off again in the Spring. In our minds we are still travelers, even though we aren’t moving. The challenge is to keep and guard this perspective, even though it will be buffeted from all sides. When the time comes to strike out again, our bikes will be already packed and our hearts would have long ago said “Yes!”

The Traveler’s Creed

The challenge is to remember what the world looks like with your traveler’s eyes; to see things as if you were passing by on some far flung adventure, even though you are at home.

These are the insights that I will try to remember.

The traveler is expectant and open and sees the beauty in things when others do not. A traveler is good natured to strangers, because he understands our fundamental interdependence with each other. The traveler operates in deep karmic debt and repays what he can when he can, joyfully. The traveler eats heartily, because he understands each meal is a gift. The traveler knows that it is the people, and not always the places, that he will remember long after he has stopped moving. The traveler believes in the fundamental kindness of strangers and walks through crowds with a smile. The traveler knows that enough is plenty and the quest for perfection leads to suffering. The traveler knows that no person is better than anyone else, because he has dined and conversed with kings and knaves and has found joy and sadness in both. The traveler relishes in the idea that all he needs to live can fit in a duffle slung over his shoulder. The traveler talks to every person excitedly because he is fascinated in everyone’s unique narrative. The traveler knows that both moments of exhaulted pleasure and suffering will pass in due course and he is richer for both. The traveler knows he will never be in the same place with the same mind ever again. The traveler sees each day as ripe with possibility and chance encounters. The traveler knows that it is because his journey must one day end, that it has meaning. The traveler’s curiosity trumps his fear. The traveler is thankful for every day he is on the road.