After living with the bare essentials for 3 weeks, the first thing I did when I got back from the trip was clean the closet and throw out 3 sacks of jeans (over 75 pairs) and 5 sacks of shirts (160+) some items dating back to 8th grade. Found my hyper-color t-shirt, wind pants, basketball jerseys, and my super baggy jeans. (…hey I used to shop at the Goodwill Dollar Days not to mention inherited a lot of the clothes…)

…A pastel patina blotted by paper towel clouds and a paintbrush prairie, these roads, places, and faces are like freckles on my arm… I stop the bike three miles from home where asphalt meets gravel and a Minden Exchange Bank sign sits repaired since the last time I saw it. It’s been 525 miles, 9 hours of moving. Standing at the rear of the bike I write this last entry, a habit more nourishing than the food I consumed today…

…on the cliff, overlooking the blue gully of water, near the heart shaped pebble and phone call to Krista, the rocks whispered…

Screaming fingers reach to the stars, orange burns in pops and ticks, white charred zebra stripes glow, heat effervesces, ax dirty and dull, satisfaction in warmth, accomplishment in doing, to cause takes on a whole new meaning.

To spend the whole day outside wrapped
in a fresh air sandwich,
considering time only when long shadows
emerge and golden light flows,
entertained and content by the campfire light
insight as to why some stare at a T.V. and don’t want to go to bed at night.

My mind mirrors the clogged stream at my feet, spaghetti leaf stems and long three pronged pine needles, the kind you pulled apart like a wishbone as a kid, divert flow allowing only a small trickle . Thoughts have been this way the past few days. The valve in my mind rusty, letting only a single drop intermittently kiss the galvanized synaptic steel rim before falling out my mouth. No postcards, no observations, no making time for me. A stranger said it was good, it means you’ve been busy. I said well maybe, but I think you’re wrong, I’ve been neglecting. Three chocolate kisses, a stale cracker, a red apple stolen from a tree, washed down with a few swallows of water reeking of lavender air freshener. I’m naucious and tired. Drove 300 miles the first day of return. The bike went down. Before I knew what I’d gotten myself into it was too late. A dirt road steep with ruts the size of olympic moguls, it was too much. Stayed up most of the night, moaning and begging to be freed of my condition. Finally around midnight I puked, lifted my head to see a shooting star, naked dreams soon followed. There are some secrets we weren’t meant to know: back by Silver Lake I saw a young rainbow galloping near mountain bluffs careless on a background of heavy blue clouds ignoring his mother’s number one rule. Dear friends, there is no barrel of gold to be found, just empty space all around.