If I go, I'm goin on fire

Drunk me thinks that I haven’t posted anything about the actual motojourney in a while, and that this is a problem. In lieu of another journal entry I have this… a sort of b-side, written a couple of weeks before leaving—when I truly realized what “leaving” meant.

My journey started as a just a distant idea. 

Wouldn’t it be cool to ride a motorcycle around the country?

Then I became a college graduate. Faced with determining my own direction for what seemed like the first time in life, the idea became something more—it was an option. 

I jumped a risky hurdle and turned that option into a goal.

In the blink of an eye it turned into a plan.

I shared that plan with people, and its whole metaphysical chemistry shifted… it left my head. It became a part of the world.

Excitement suddenly started to germinate.

I planned a route for my adventure, started to pack, started spending money on gear; all the while imagining new places, different faces.

Working the same old job day in and day out started to get real hard. I started yearning to soak myself in things that I had never seen. Your imagination can run wild in a state like that.

What began as “just a distant idea” is now two weeks away. Finally, the seriousness of the whole thing has started to bear down on me.

In reality my motorcycle trip isn’t just a two month jaunt around the country—it is a first step. A meditation ground for the next part of my life. In order to leave for my trip I am also permanently saying goodbye to the job I’ve had since graduating high school and the best home I have ever lived in.

The coworkers, my band of brothers, who have endured work with me for the past 5 years, are suddenly giving me sentimental comments about how much I will be missed. It makes me think about the people I am leaving and all of the things that I would love to do with them—wish that I had done with them. I think about their faces and I am sad to think that moving on and pursuing my dream also has to mean saying goodbye to so many people and things that have been absolutely wonderful to me.

There is a sense in which I will always be able to come back and visit these things, but I know that when I get back, things aren’t going to be the same. I will never truly come back to this place.