Rest Day

During the last 14 days, we've ridden a little more than 800 miles, riding across Oregon and a kind of narrow part of Idaho into Montana. We're taking a day off in Missoula on Monday and are now staying at a hostel where dad spent part of the evening sitting on the porch, eating ice cream. On Monday, we plan to visit the Adventure Cycling office and dad wants to get a haircut, among other things.

Two weeks in, I feel like I'm into the trip. It has been demanding at times, with steep mountain passes providing keen physical and mental challenges. When it gets tough, the only thing to really do is think, "Well, this is just how things are for a while." Eventually, the really hard part ends.

It has been fun to try to recreate some of the old photos, even though I feel like I'm posing where an entirely different person was 25 years ago. It doesn't so much make me remember what it was like to be 12 years old and on a big bike trip with my family as It does make me wonder about it, and about myself at that age.

This has been a main family memory for so long that it is just odd to see all the places again; not in the gauzy view of a memory, but in reality.

There have been a few times when the earlier experience really came back for me -- like starting from Newport and climbing Tombstone Pass -- but for the most part it has just been a dull, déjà vu.