Today was, in many ways, not an especially unique or meaningful day of riding. We spent the entire day on Highway 101. We stopped at some interesting tourist sites, like the Tree of Life, which is a tree that is growing suspended over a giant gap in the rocks. I rode with Kaylyn for a while and talked to her about her upcoming wedding and how expensive they can be. When we got to camp, someone had brought us extra pizzas. I rode down to a local lake and took a bit of an open water swim in lake Quinlaut. But for all its seeming normality, it is the sort of day that I will always treasure. Surrounded by like-minded friends, engaging the social part of my brain that I so rarely get to engage in my daily life. At one point I was riding through some greenery in the middle of nowhere and I suddenly thought to myself “this is enough. I am enough”. In that moment I didn’t feel left out or confused or old. The moment passed of course, and later I felt all of those things, but for a brief shining moment I knew where I was, and where I belonged, and that was enough.
Later, I picked an entire basket of blackberries from some bushes near our campsite, and there were so many, I offered them to anyone who wanted them. Abundance, in all things, is such a satisfying feeling.
Anyway - a good day.
https://www.biketheusforms.org/olympic-peninsula-bike-tour/
