Some final feelings and observations.

First let me offer some final numbers from my trip. I covered 7,328 miles, 11,793 km, in the six weeks I was gone. This includes traveling around town in the various places I stopped. I was long distance traveling for 19 days, or an average of about 380 miles, 611 km, per day. My longest day was 522 miles, 840 km. The bike got 48 mpg, 22.4 kpl, over the total time. The most I paid for gas was $5.99 pg, 1.28 Euros pl, in Needles, CA. The least I paid was for the last fueling here in Fredericksburg, $3.05 pg, .65 Euros pl. The real hero here is the bike. I couldn't imagine a better ride.

Just returned home.

The trip made me once more appreciate the grandeur, the variety, the beauty of the country. The land refocused my values and let me understand that all the stupid, vapid grandstanding by various public figures who believe that they are somehow important is meaningless. All the silly, selfish ideas we have about ourselves and what makes us happy are trivial. The land will be here long after the land has forgotten humans even existed.  The land outlasted the great Native American cultures; it will outlast ours; and it will outlast those who come after us. We are but a fractional moment in the fabric of global time.

"It was the wilderness, the big woods, bigger and older than any recorded document:-of white white man fatuous enough to believe he had bought any fragment of it, of Indian ruthless enough to pretend that any fragment of it had been his to convey; bigger than Major de Spain and the scrap he pretended to, knowing better; older than old Thomas Sutpen of whom Major de Spain had had it and who knew better; older even than old Ikkemotubbe, the Chickasaw chief, of whom old Thomas Sutpen had had it and who knew better in his turn." (William Faulkner)

The land belongs only to the Great Spirit, always free. I am here for a moment shorter than any moment and I must make the most of this brief spark called my life, "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." If I don't grasp every chance I have at happiness, I am a fool. I refuse to be Prufrock; I will make those damned mermaids sing to me. Well enough of that.
 
Pauline this trip was for you. If you were still here, oh, what a party you would have thrown. The whole neighborhood, any family you could have rounded up would have been here. I would have told tall tales, true and untrue, and the Champagne would have flowed like water. So here is to you.

TO LIFE!

 You don't owe me that motorbike any more.