DAY 33 HOME

Left Flagstaff about 7:30 with a stop on the way, home by 10. That's really all there was to today but not really a good recap of the last 33 days.

I could fill pages and pages with things that create lasting memories about this trip, but aren't they all like that?

Everything from the towering mountains, a Moose with her baby, a large black wolf staring from the roadside, glaciers, roads built years ago with a purpose that go from paved to gravel instantly. The list goes on and on and I haven't even started on the people.

People like Sean and Bill who we shared a few meals with on Ducati  motorcycles who made it to the arctic circle. Steve on his Triumph Tiger on month 36 of an around the world solo trip, humbling. The lone rider who told us about the railroad tunnel to Whittier, thanks. The photographer who was riding solo up the Cassair Highway on her Harley, and not for the first time, who reminded me of a Neil Young song:

Somewhere on a desert highway
She rides a Harley-Davidson
Her long blonde hair
flyin' in the wind
She's been runnin' half her life
The chrome and steel she rides
Collidin' with
the very air she breathes
The air she breathes.

Would I do it again? That I can't answer because my wife reads this. For now I'm content to just keep it going in my mind.

DAY 32 KANAB TO FLAGSTAFF

Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends, but is played out over and over again in the quietest chambers. The mind can never break off from the journey

Pat Conroy

Yes we are in Flagstaff, yes we got here early, yes we could just ride home but we aren't.

We need this night to recap, reminisce, raise a glass, and mentally prepare to be home. My wife will tell you the quote above fits. I will be home tomorrow but my mind will take a long time to catch up.

I never wanted to be
A man of mystery
My life's an open book
by James Joyce and Agatha Christie

Sometimes I get confused
Somewhere around page two
I live the perfect crime
And crime pays more than it used to

They're checkin' the evidence
May be come charges pressed
The only one they got me on
is some misdemeanor craziness

If It All Falls Down falls down falls down
If they solve my life if they find me out
Never thought to keep all I have found
I have had my fun If It All Falls Down

Jimmy Buffett

I've definitly had my fun, don't want it to end but if it does I've had my fun.Another couple of hours tomorrow and this gets filed in the memory bank.