It’s finished now. It’s done.

All that shitty weather, ground down joints and hurt muscles, and lost gear. I kept going.

I feel good, but it’s not what I expected.

No climactic moment, hitting the east coast. I didn’t cry upon seeing the water. No surge of energy, no primal scream. I just coasted down one last street, and onto a beach.

It was a little disorienting. Like driving a car for hours, and feeling like the world is still moving after you stop and get out. Thousands of miles, one place to another, and then one afternoon it just…stops. You’re done. The road ran out. Go home.

I have no idea how to process this as a whole. I step back and consider the pieces, the moments.

The nights spent on floors and in spare bedrooms of kind strangers, under small town pavilions, and hidden away behind some brush off a highway. The awestruck solitude of windless desert. Utterly expose, rolling through hail, sleet, lightning, snowstorms, thunderstorms. The endless chain of diners and buffets and small town joints. The mountains, white sand, crop fields, rivers, all these different scenes so beautiful that my heart grew heavy and ached. And I try to remember that this was a single journey, done with my own two feet, and it begins to feel real.

Now that I’m back home, I’m constantly asked, “How have you changed?”

I think people wonder if I grasped some truth about myself. Or maybe just had time to meditate and think about life. And I have no answer.

I’m no different. Save tanner, twenty pounds lighter, and with gargantuan quadriceps. And replete with treasured memories. Things I cannot and will not forget.

Like the number and ways strangers went out of their way to help me and fellow bikers. I really cannot even begin to list all of them. A specific sort of kindness I’ve never experienced before. It leaves me with an enormous debt to pay forward.

And seeing the donations to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. From family, friends, friends of friends, strangers. I never expected to raise as much as I did. Well over 50¢ per mile I rode.

And the support of my friends and family. The dinners and nights spent with them, and friends old and new, both on the road and now at home. All these I will never forget and will always be grateful for.

Maybe that’s it. Maybe that’s a change. Experiencing how overwhelmingly kind and supportive people can be.

Or maybe deprivation left it’s mark. I do catch myself looking at everyday things with appreciation. I stood in front of an open refrigerator, awed at how nice it is to keep things cold. I stop to watch sunsets now.

It began raining as I was pedaling around Chicago, so me and the bike hopped onto a bus. I watched the rivulets fall down the windows, and I felt joy. Legitimate joy for riding a bus. How wonderful to be sitting, nice and dry, in a box that moves itself. Where everything is a few minutes away, and you can dry out whenever you want. So much to be thankful for. Such strange, broad gratitude.

The blog suffered badly with the loss of my computer. I wanted it to be more. I wanted the time each night to spit out and paint the details of the day, like I tried to in the beginning. I did my best, but in the end, I mostly just recounted what watered down details of the day I could remember.

Those of you in Chicago will occasionally see me spinning around the city. Honk at me. Say hello. If we haven’t seen each other in awhile, drop me a line. Let’s change that.

Those of you I met while away should look me up if you visit. Please stay in touch. I don’t recall meeting a single soul who I wouldn’t want to stay in touch with.

I hope those who followed enjoyed it. And I hope those just reading it do, too. I hope people who I’ve yet to meet and yet to love will one day look over this journal, and taste a fraction of what it was like.

I wish my father could have done it. I wish he could have experienced a great deal more things before he died. But now only I can experience anything new. And so I will.

I will do.

I will travel. I will pursue passions. I will live abundantly.

Thank you all for taking an interest. Thank you for the kind words, and gifts, and your voices when I was far from home. I cannot wait for the next adventure.

With Love For You All,

Charlie