It has been two weeks now since I gave up my apartment and a week since I left Seattle.  I have to admit, my training is suffering. It is hard to plan for cycling and hiking when I also have to figure out where to stay, how to get a shower after training without paying the price for a hotel, how to protect my gear in the car when I am on the bike and protect the bike when I am hiking, and where I will get my next meal from.  In the last two weeks, I have slept on couches and in spare rooms and lived off the generosity of my friends. Other nights I have camped or stayed in hotels when I needed a shower and a real bed.  I have eaten at restaurants way too much for my budget.  Preparing healthy food is challenge without a refrigerator.

The thing about going camping or on holiday is that we have someplace to return to.  We pack all the supplies we need based on that fact.  If there are leftovers, we can just put them away in the fridge when we get home.  We know that when we are tired of the fun of camping that we can go home, put the gear away, soak in the tub, make a healthy dinner, and just lay around on the couch writing a blog post.  I am feeling the lack of that right now.  I know it will get easier, but yesterday I was struggling so I got a hotel room thinking that would help and when I woke up this morning I realized it didn’t.  I just need to fight through it, maybe have a good cry, and then get on my bike and ride, whether there is a shower following it or not.  Yet here I am watching the sunrise over Moab realizing I should get my bike gear on and all I can think of is that my hair smells so good for the first time in 3 days, I just don’t want to get sweaty.

There are so many things we take for granted in life.  Well, maybe you don’t take them for granted, but I certainly did.  Things like hot showers, refrigeration, WiFi, friends, and relative safety.  Right now, I want about 3 days of it.  Someplace that I can just make dinner, get caught up on work, not feel like a burden to others, a place where I can get up and ride and go hiking and come back and shower. A place where I can feel safe for a few days.

But that isn’t where my life is right now and only I can struggle through it.  I chose the path I am walking and I do not regret it.  I have seen the most amazing things, met fantastic people, and know I am already becoming a different person.  Somehow, I have to figure out how to live on the road, yet eat healthy and get my training time in every day and get some work done in the process.  There has to be a way…I just need to find it.

It is funny, I started this blog because people asked me to, blogging is not the technical academic writing that is my comfort zone. But the blog itself has become magic.  I start out writing that I am struggling, thinking that this will be a depressing post, and by the end of the post, I realize that I am ready to face the challenge. Whether anyone reads this or not, it has benefited me to write it.

So here is what I am going to do…as soon as the sun it up, I am going to get on the bike and ride a short route down by the river that will put me back at the hotel in time to shower.  And then I am going to reorganize the car. After two weeks, I think I am realizing what I need and what I don’t.  I think that will help.  Then to the grocery store for some healthy food and off to see some incredible national parks for some camping and hiking.  I might get to Colorado by Sunday.