the score

Sept. 27, 2009

One month, three weeks and five days on the road. Seven states. Seventeen flats. Nineteen couchsurfs. Six State Parks. One West Texas bus ride. Five crucial hitchhikes. Two thousand two hundred and forty-nine point two pedaled miles.

Our metallic silver dresses whipped and flitted in the intense Columbia Gorge wind. We wound up to a lookout point on Old Hwy 30. Turning up the final hill, we stopped pedaling; the wind at our backs, stronger than gravity, pushed us uphill. The Columbia River spanned in both directions, Washington State sitting across its bank. Back on I-84, we made a final pit-stop at Multnomah Falls, before the last push to Portland and steaming Mexican lasagna at Dana’s apartment. During those final seventy miles of the last day of the most incredible adventure of my life, I compiled the following list:

Ten lessons learned--
1. Most dogs are more bark than bite.
2. “America is alive and well if you approach it on foot.”
3. If your bungies seem to loose, they are.
4. Strangers should usually be trusted.
5. Texas has hills.
6. When traveling with one person for two months, love is pretty much the right answer.
7. Butt chafe is unavoidable.
8. If it’s 3-o’clock and Bree is checking her bike for “the resistance,” it just means she’s tired.
9. Family isn’t just those who share DNA.
10. Even the greatest adventures of your life come to an end. And that’s okay.

We pulled up to the brick apartment building in SE Portland. Dana greeted us on the sidewalk with fat hugs. We put the bikes on the elevator, then Bree and I passed out on her fluffy bed, wondering how you follow up an experience such as this.


Thank you for reading!