Drifting

Days are starting to blend together now and it's hard to know what I'd like most to write about, to remember. Wyoming was full of tiny towns and mostly empty land. Riding 70 miles with no buildings or people around started to feel like drifting in the middle of the ocean. We are so far from home, now but not near new Orleans yet, and I wonder sometimes what I am doing this for. I know that there must be something I need to learn from this, and that I will probably only realize what that is when I finish and look back on it all.
My favorite part of traveling across the country is seeing how differently people live from town to town. Some people seem so happy living in the same small town their entire lives. The locals are so connected to each other that they dont have menus in the restaurants because everyone just knows what their options are. The gas station in town is also a hotel, a coffee shop, the place to buy feed for your livestock, and a pair of overalls. The tiny towns have no choices, and sometimes it's better that way. I've come to like the styrofoam cups of stale coffee with powdered creamer more than the big city's organic fair trade soy cafe misto's. Because the people around that stale pot of coffee will give you yours for free, along with a slice of cake leftover from their sons bake sale. They will tell you all you can hear about the weather, how big the rattlesnakes are, how steep the hills are, and where you can sleep.
I feel that I grow restless too quickly when I stay in one place, and that the beauty and excitement of a new city fades too quickly. Only after leaving do I realize how much I loved the people I was with, and how lucky I was to live in that place. So I suppose this is one thing I have learned, that it's possible to love the same people, the same house and sidewalk and bar and grocery store, for your entire life. That things do not have to change to be special. And I admire these people I have met who know that already.

-Mary