Location: Athens, GA
Yesterday was everything I never wanted. I had toilet fever, or as someone put it more kindly, the "tummy flu." I don't know which cook to shake my finger at, but I think it had more to do with the 830 miles I did in 23 days and the 36,000 calories I replenished with Miller Lite, bananas, and butter-heavy dinners. I feel better after 15 hours in bed, but also a little restless.
So I'm pulling the trigger, and I'm headed to Savannah on Monday.
I love when I tell people where I am going next and get the following reaction: "Why the hell are you going there?" And my answer is "Because I have never been there," which is just another version of "Why not?" That usually ends that discussion.
I thoroughly enjoyed Athens. I laughed a lot. A lot. The riding was perfect, the people were welcoming and friendly, and I rode with a heap of new people during my tenure here. I went on a date. I ate in at least 15 local restaurants. I had the filet at the Branded Butcher 5 times. I rode to the highest point in the state. I championed a house party. I had smores and played beer pong and saw an idiot in a tri-helmet get pushed down a driveway on an ottoman. I partied on a Dawgs game-night until I was drunker than I've been in years or care to be for years to come.
Above all, the most important thing I take from Athens is the new friendships I have made. After all, it's the relationships that I cultivate on these trips that are the treasures I get to keep.
And I have been thinking a lot this week about inspiration, and the many wells I pull mine from. When I was a kid, I used to stare up at the planes flying overhead and I would make up stories for the people inside of them. I kind of went along for the ride, in that way. I wanted to be inside there with them, wherever it was going, because it was going at 600 miles an hour.
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| Ah, a perfect comment on perspective. |
So I stopped my bike the other day and I watched them. One would circle around, survey, then turn away from the wind, swoop around, turn back into the wind, and survey again. I don't know what was so sad about it, nothing really, but it made me feel that way.
I know the simple version is that they are searching for food, but my spiritual side knows something different. They are saying to me that I need a higher perspective, that I need to be reminded to see the larger picture, to be more objective. I think. I can't deny that they are wrong.
So I decide to swoop and survey. I've become an avid indoors-man the last week, despite all the biking, but I'm not getting lost anymore, I'm not exploring. I needed to kick myself in the ass.
And as soon as I decide to move on, as soon as I decide I have had enough of my own inaction, the world takes off, in the form of an out-of-the-blue text:
Friend: "Wanna go to an island with me somewhere?"
Me: "Yes, which island?"
Friend: "Your choice."
Me: "Ok. When?"
Friend: "When can you?"
Me: "Now-Forever"
Friend: "I'm in"
Me: "That was easy"
And it is that easy, when you are feeling inspired, to say "Why not?"
Special thanks to: Philthethrill, Chris, Trae, and the Gaimon family.
