Meg did the 4K just doesn’t quite work…
I feel like I spent a lot of time on my bike this summer imagining what I would say in my final blog post. What would it feel like when it was all over? How am I supposed to sum up what we did this summer, put it all into words? And then, the ride ended and I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I just didn’t have any words. I still don’t.
How am I supposed to express what the 4K meant to me? What it meant to all of us? And what it still means?
All I know is that now that I’m back at school I keep having the same conversation over and over and over and over again.
Friend/Acquaintance: How was your bike ride thing?!
Me: It was awesome! I had such an amazing time.
And that is usually the end of the conversation. Which is kind of depressing because that so does not do it justice at all. But, I don’t know what I’m supposed to say in that two second conversation that would actually encompass what the 4K was. There’s really nothing. How am I supposed to describe how good it feels to roll up to the host at the end of the day? Or what it was like to tell someone about what you were doing and why and have them tell you about how their mother/sister/brother/father/cousin/friend was battling cancer and that what you were doing meant so much to them? I did find this quotation that I think is the best summation of what it felt like to ride your bike for so many miles a day:
When I go biking, I repeat a mantra of the day’s sensations: bright sun, blue sky, warm breeze, blue jay’s call, ice melting and so on. This helps me transcend the traffic, ignore the clamorings of work, leave all the mind theaters behind and focus on nature instead. I still must abide by the rules of the road, of biking, of gravity. But I am mentally far away from civilization. The world is breaking someone else’s heart. ~Diane Ackerman
But even that only scratches the surface.
This summer, we biked through deserts. We got chased by dogs. We slept on the floor and thought it was the most comfortable place in the world. We stood atop mountains, above rainbows. We saw snow in July. We had strangers open their doors to us as if we were old friends. We ate watermelon. (Did you know that it’s full of vitamins?) We laughed. We laughed when we were sad, we laughed when we were hurting, we laughed because we had volunteered for this and we were biking our way up the fifth mountain of the day because we chose to be there, we laughed because we knew that even though it sucked so hard the next water stop was always just around the corner. We cried. We cried when we were happy, we cried when we were biking into the wind and felt like we would never make it anywhere, we cried when we saw that glorious Golden Gate sitting right in front of us as if someone had built just as a final monument to what we had done, like it was there just for us.
But still, just saying what we did doesn’t really do it either.
It’s not even really about what we did, but what it taught us. We learned that no matter how bad something hurts, it’s not gonna kill you. And no matter how bad you’re hurting, there’s someone out there who’s hurting worse. We learned that on some days 50 miles feels like 1,000, and on others 100 miles feels like 10. We learned that sometimes home is as simple as a sleeping bag and that a shower can be the greatest reward at the end of any day. We learned that writing someone’s name on your leg might seem simple, but to that person it can mean the world. We learned that getting up a mountain would never mean as much without someone waiting at the top for you and that, contrary to popular belief, cycling is a team sport.
I can show people pictures, and tell them how much fun I had, and tell them stories and try to show them what the 4K was, but it’s just hard to describe what it really is. The 4K changed everything, and at the same time it changed nothing at all. I’m not a different person. If anything, I think I’m more confident in who I am now than I ever was before. But, the world, or at least the country, is kind of a different place for me now. I’ll never be able to walk around the harbor and look at it the same way again, or if I go to Colorado seeing those Rockies will mean so much more to me now. National forests will always give me that feeling of dread in my stomach because they inevitably mean mountains and crunchy peanut butter will always have a special place in my heart.
Often, I like to refer to things as “game-changers.” For instance, when I got my iphone? Gamechanger.
So, how was the 4K? Gamechanger. (On a whole different level than the iphone… which says a lot.)
And, yaknow, it’s weird but even though it’s a much later wake-up, getting up in the morning to go to class still sucks so much more than getting up to bike for the day.
I miss the 4K. I miss waking up to those 26 people every morning and doing our cheer and getting on my bike. But now, I’m just waiting to see what my next adventure is going to be. Where is this crazy life going to take me next? I have no idea. I’m pretty psyched to find out though.
Sadly, I guess this is my last blog post. I started this all out as “Meg does the 4K” and I don’t think I can really keep that up now because “Meg did the 4K” just isn’t really a good title… I enjoyed blogging. For those of you that stuck with my crazy rantings from the beginning, thanks, I hope I provided a little entertainment. And to all of those that donated, read my blog, sent me packages, thought of me along the way, I can not thank you enough. I could not have made it without the support of all of you. (Especially you, Mom and Dad). I don’t know who’s actually going to be reading this, so as Cindy in Eureka, NV told us “I don’t know all of you, but I love you.”
xoxo,
Meg
“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
