Home Again, Carrying the Journey With Us

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[The last post]
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It’s 3:47 Friday morning. Jet lag probably has something to do with that.

I am lying on the couch in the dark, wrapped in a blanket and looking through the window toward our screened porch. The red glow of the LED lights and a single candle on the floor provide just enough light to make everything feel warm and familiar.

After nearly 60 days of moving from place to place, sleeping in unfamiliar beds, and wondering what would be waiting around the next corner, I can feel the comfort of home settling around me.

The end of a long journey always brings mixed emotions. Lisa and I sometimes call it the “vacation blues,” although that does not completely describe it. There is sadness in knowing that the daily adventure has ended, relief in returning to the familiar, and excitement about seeing the people we missed. There is also the strange feeling that part of us is still somewhere out there, pedaling down a quiet road in Portugal, climbing a mountain in Spain, sharing a meal in France, or laughing with friends in Belgium.

In a few hours, Lisa will wake up and the sun will rise. I know we will walk around the neighborhood and inspect our yard, looking closely at nearly every plant. We will check the garden, notice what changed while we were away, and slowly absorb the feeling of being home. We are excited to see old friends and especially to spend time with Sebastian again.

Home was already welcoming us back. Randy and Sally had placed a wonderful “Welcome Home Jim & Lisa” sign in the yard, and Sebastian had left fresh flowers on our dining room table. Our friend Pat had also come over the night before to charge the Honda’s dead battery, then returned the next morning to make sure it started.

As Lisa put it, “Wow! We really are loved.”

That may be the best description of coming home.

During conversations with our Warmshowers hosts, people often asked what Iowa City is like and what we love about living there. It never took them long to understand how deeply we care about our home, our friends, our family, and our community. We value living in a place that emphasizes friendship, education, openness, kindness, acceptance, and taking care of one another. Those values feel even more important after traveling through places where public spaces are shared, bicycles are treated as transportation, and most people seem willing to allow others to live their lives with respect and dignity.

We came home hopeful, although also a little uneasy about the direction of our country. Travel continually reminds us that most people want many of the same basic things: safety, healthcare, education, security, meaningful relationships, and the freedom to live without fear. Most people we met were not focused on greed, power, or accumulating more and more. They were interested in sharing a meal, telling a story, listening to ours, and making sure we felt welcome.

When I asked Lisa which single moment best represented the journey, she could not choose one. Every day brought something new: changing scenery, difficult climbs, unfamiliar faces, old friends, animals staring at us from fields, and people along the road whose eyes met ours for a moment before we exchanged an illuminating smile.

That may be the answer. The journey was not one great moment. It was thousands of small ones.

For Lisa, some of the happiest and most present moments came in the mountains, beside the ocean blowholes, and during the unconventional sections of our route. Those were often the roads I worried might make her cry. Instead, she saw them as gifts. She felt that I had chosen them because I understood her adventurous spirit and knew they would excite her.

There were quieter gifts too. Sometimes Lisa would come out of the shower to find that I had opened a bottle of wine and poured a glass for her. It was a small gesture, repeated several times during the trip, that made her feel especially loved.

For me, the happiest moments often came in the countryside, especially in the mountains. There is something meditative about finding the rhythm of the pedals, feeling the cool air on your face, and allowing the road to pull you forward. Cycling requires enough attention that your mind cannot wander too far. You have to find the route, stay hydrated and fed, watch the road, and keep yourself and the person you love safe. As Lisa described it, there simply is not room to think about much else.

That sense of presence is one of the things we already miss most.

We also miss the changing scenery, meeting new people, and beginning each day with two very important questions: What is around the next corner and what are we going to eat?

Nearly 60 days together also reminded us how fortunate we are to genuinely enjoy each other’s company. We joked that we were probably never more than 100 yards apart during the entire trip. Even at the airport, when Lisa suggested that I use the restroom while she waited with the oversized luggage, I said we should just go together.

“Oh, you miss me already?” she asked.

We planned routes and meals together, repeated silly phrases until they became part of our private language, and found quiet places where we could sit, look at the scenery, laugh, and simply enjoy being together.

Lisa said she feels grateful that she had the patience to wait for someone with whom she wants to spend her entire life. She appreciates how our different characteristics fit together: my planning and concern for safety, our shared love of friends, and especially our sense of adventure. To her, every road, reunion, accommodation, and unexpected turn felt like a small gift and another date that she could cherish.

Jos once told us that what we have together is rare and special. We do not necessarily think of ourselves that way, although perhaps these posts allowed our friends to see something that we experience every day.

Kindness became another continuing theme of the journey.

There was the wrong turn down a private-looking lane in that could easily have ended with someone yelling at us. Instead, it ended with coffee, conversation, and stories shared beside a beautiful little pond.

There was the woman near the top of a mountain who made sandwiches for us when there was no other food available. We could not communicate very well, yet kindness did not require a shared language.

There were hosts who prepared special dishes, showed us their neighborhoods, shared stories from their own travels, and listened carefully to ours. There were evenings without televisions or phones competing for attention. The phones came out only when someone wanted to share a photograph. The rest of the time was simply people talking, laughing, listening, and being together.

We already miss Aude in the Pyrenees, Feyyaz and Arielle in Charleville-Mézières, and the many new friends who welcomed us along the way. We miss Jos running to the bakery for special treats and traveling to another town to bring home the best fish soup I have ever eaten. We miss Peter and Kristein and the warmth of B&B Molmento.

Lisa especially remembers the pride, generosity, and thoughtfulness Kristein puts into breakfast. It feels as though she puts part of herself into every detail of the meal and the entire Molmento experience. It is more than a place to sleep. It feels like returning to family.

Saying goodbye to people like these was the most emotionally difficult part of the trip for Lisa. Every reunion eventually required another departure.

The most physically difficult part for her may have been carrying our bicycle boxes through airports and train stations. Those boxes became heavier with every hallway, elevator, platform, and curb. I would probably agree. We were happier climbing mountains on bicycles than wrestling 23.7-kilogram (52.2-pound) cardboard boxes through an airport.

For me, the most difficult riding day was probably the long, gray, flat ride from Saint-Dizier to Varennes-en-Argonne. We faced a persistent headwind, and I was dealing with what felt like a mild cold or an allergic reaction to our previous apartment. We were incredibly fortunate with the weather during the entire journey. Had we experienced days of heavy rain, the trip would have been much harder.

There are parts of touring we are happy to leave behind. Lisa will not miss wearing dirty clothes or waking during the night with legs so achy that they threatened to buckle when she tried to stand. We will both appreciate sleeping in the same bed for more than one night, knowing what the pillow will feel like, and not carrying that small daily concern about whether we will make it to our next destination.

Returning home creates its own kind of culture shock. When I open the closet, I wonder why I own so many clothes after living for two months with only what fit on a bicycle. At the grocery store, I find myself thinking about what we will need for the entire week. On tour, we rarely planned food beyond the next day or day and a half.

Lisa recognizes that comfortable things can be nice, although she no longer feels that we need so many of them. People cared for us even when we were dirty, tired, and probably did not smell particularly good. What mattered was having an open mind, love, compassion, and sometimes a few words in another language that could make someone smile.

The trip also reinforced how comfortable and respectful cycling can feel in other parts of the world. Over 2,552 miles, we experienced only one angry honk, and that one may have been partially my fault. We did not encounter walkers or dog owners angrily telling us that we did not belong on a trail. Most people simply shared the available space and respected one another’s right to be there.

That is not a complicated political philosophy. It is a belief that communities work best when people recognize that the world belongs to all of us, not only to whoever has the largest vehicle, the most money, or the loudest voice.

Lisa returned from the journey wanting to slow down and genuinely offer more of herself to other people. Travel teaches us to accept discomfort, allow ourselves to be vulnerable, try another language even when we might get it wrong, and remain open to possibilities we could never plan. That vulnerability often makes other people more comfortable too, creating opportunities for conversations, friendships, and unexpected acts of generosity.

Books, television, and photographs can teach us about places. They cannot completely recreate the feeling of standing there, uncertain and exposed, and discovering that a stranger wants to help.

Photographs also fall short. They cannot capture the scale of a mountain, the depth of a valley, or the feeling of light moving across a landscape. Our stories cannot fully reproduce the warmth of a smile, the sincerity of someone’s welcome, or the joy of realizing that a new friendship has just begun.

We still feel compelled to try.

Our friend Doug became part of the adventure in a particularly meaningful way. He drove us from Iowa City to Chicago at the beginning of the trip and returned nearly two months later to bring us home, something he has now done for several of our journeys.

When Doug arrived to take us to the airport, Lisa felt that unmistakable sense of, “It’s time.” Months of planning were suddenly becoming reality. His genuine excitement made it feel as though he was part of the adventure too.

He continued to be part of it by following our FindPenguins posts each morning. When we returned, he remembered details such as the fishing and the Hemingway statue and asked thoughtful questions about what we had experienced. He even joked that he would need to find a new morning routine now that there would no longer be a new post waiting for him.

When he met us at O’Hare, Lisa could see both pride in what we had accomplished and perhaps a little relief that we had returned safely. Driving friends and their enormous bicycle boxes between Iowa City and Chicago is no small favor, yet Doug never makes a production out of helping. He has a gentle way of making people feel seen and heard, often through a simple comment, a book, something he has learned, a hug, or a smile. He keeps it simple and never asks for anything in return.

His friendship provides a bridge between home and adventure, and his support helps make these journeys possible.

We are also grateful to everyone who traveled with us in less visible ways. Thank you to the people who shared advice and stories before we left, followed our FindPenguins posts, left comments, worried about us, encouraged us, hosted us, fed us, guided us, smiled as we passed, or simply wondered where we might be that day.

Lisa said that even though our friends and readers were not physically beside us, she carried them in her heart and mind. When she felt afraid, she remembered stories people had shared, and those stories gave her courage. When she felt excited, she imagined telling someone about the experience or wondered whether they had once done something similar.

Travel is one of the best investments we can make in ourselves. It develops curiosity, patience, humility, trust, and compassion in ways that are difficult to measure. The memories continue working inside us long after the trip has ended.

That is also why we believe people should not wait too long to take the journey they have been dreaming about. Traveling earlier gives you more years to remember it, more time to let it influence you, and perhaps enough energy to climb the hill, carry the bicycle, explore the ruined tower, test the playground slide, or take the strange road just to see where it leads.

Plan the next adventure. Go see the world. Try the language. Accept the invitation. Sit down for the coffee. Take the wrong turn occasionally.

You will probably discover that most people want to be seen, heard, accepted, and treated with kindness. They want to share their stories and hear yours. They want friendship, security, love, and a safe place for the people they care about.

Now it is after 3:47 in the morning. Home is quiet, and the next adventure feels far away. Soon the sun will rise, Lisa will wake up, and we will walk through our neighborhood together. We will see friends, spend time with Sebastian, inspect every plant in the yard, prepare our bicycles for whatever comes next, and gradually settle back into our lives.

We are sad that the journey is over and grateful that it happened.

We carried everything we needed on our bicycles.

We returned home carrying much more.Read more