So I took some time today to relax and catch up on email and personal stuff. I didn’t really need to, but I kind of wanted a day to be lazy. This is my vacation after all. You are probably wondering about the title of my post, so allow me to explain.

Like all vacations, I established a budget for this trip. The original plan was to spend most of my nights camping and very few nights in hotels. I quickly learned that at the end of a day of riding, being sweaty and tired, sitting at a camp site fighting off mosquitoes and continuing to sweat in the heat of the day is neither ideal nor comfortable. A few nights in even shoddy motels made me decide that being able to get a shower and sleep in a real bed is well worth the cost. As a result, I have spent almost every night of this trip in a hotel or motel and I have burned through my budgeted allotment of money more quickly than I had planned and desired. Now, I could continue to spend the money and extend this vacation by another few weeks, but I think there are more responsible things I can be doing with that money and I’ve decided to cut my trip short.

There’s another important factor in this decision. In late August, I will be going to a military training school in Maryland to finish up my Basic Noncommissioned Officer Course. As I discovered in an email I received this week, I have a lot of work to do to prepare for this course, and it’s nothing I can accomplish while on the road. This is an important course for me and showing up unprepared is not an option.

So, I will spend the next two days completing my ride to Little Rock, AR and then I will return home to prepare for my military training and spend some time getting my house and property back into tip-top shape. I still plan to do quite a bit of riding while I’m home. Peoria has a wonderful multi-use path I can ride on and return home to that nice shower and bed I’ve grown accustomed to, and I’ll be able to spend the necessary time preparing for my training course.

That’s the new plan. I have to admit that I’m disappointed I can’t continue my vacation on the road, but I’m not the least bit dissatisfied with what I’ve accomplished. I certainly didn’t ride 4,000 miles and it was apparent early on that wasn’t going to happen. I wish I could make it to Fort Hood to visit my friends there, but I will have to do that another time. I have lots of long weekends and some vacation days available and I will be sure that’s one of my first trips.

I’ve been blessed with many things in my life and my friends and family who have supported me on this trip are at the top of the list. Thank you all for your well wishes and your comments here. At the end of a long day of riding, it’s nice to be able to log on here and read some words of encouragement. To those of you who said I’d never make Los Angeles, you were right. C’est la vie. To those of you who said I’d never make it past St. Louis, HA! It’s been a wonderful experience and I hope I have the time to do it again someday.

I will continue to update my cycling blog until I return home at the end of the weekend, and, with any luck, I’ll find new things to write about when I get home. (Although history dictates that my updates will be significantly less frequent. A trend I hope to break.) So as always, thank you for reading.

Rob

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 21st, 2010 at 19:49 and is filed under Summer Ride 2010. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.