Hudson, MA - Yeah, I borrowed the title from Bilbo Baggins, and its not very accurate, but damn if I don't feel a little like I just returned to Hobbiton after a long and treacherous journey halfway across Middle-Earth. Or at least Middle America.
So I'm home. At precisely 1:50 p.m. EST, I rolled down Davis Road and crossed the threshold of our driveway, letting out a massive "Woo-hoo!" before braking to a halt for the final time this trip.
It was incredible. It really was. I said back in Bar Harbor that I was saving the true moment of catharsis for when the trip actually ended, and I hit it this afternoon. Around 10 miles from home, I started getting goosebumps. A mantra stuck in my head: "I'm home." It repeated itself over and over again, strengthening each time I passed an area I recognized. In Ayer, I noticed the spot where I had had my driver's test. (I passed, despite parallel parking about 3 1/2 feet from the curb.) In Harvard, I spotted the beach where my father took me a few times. In Bolton, I stopped at the Candy Mansion, site of numerous sugar-laden shopping trips in my youth.
From there the whirlwind in my head just got stronger. The route map took me directly onto Berlin and Frye roads, two isolated, wooded routes that I had bicycled I don't know how many hundreds of times in my youth. By the time I get off the route map to head home along Rte. 62, I was picking out the landmarks before they appeared: the garden center, the 495 interchange, Roller Kingdom. A jog through the trailer park, up a short hill, over the end of Davis Road -for several years of my toddlerhood, the farthest away my parents would let me ride my bike- and I was home. 6,100 miles, and I had completed the last one.
I was, I dunno, agog. Ecstatic. I couldn't wipe the smile off my face. I had finally done exactly what I set out to do: get from Hudson, MA to the Pacific. I did it in reverse, but that's plenty good enough for me.
I was home, the house where I spent the first 17 years of my life and a not insignificant portion of the next 13. The trip from Maine to Mass. had actually proven fairly uneventful and often pretty dull. But I couldn't imagine ending the trip any other way, and I couldn't imagine ending it anywhere else.
So I'm home. At precisely 1:50 p.m. EST, I rolled down Davis Road and crossed the threshold of our driveway, letting out a massive "Woo-hoo!" before braking to a halt for the final time this trip.
It was incredible. It really was. I said back in Bar Harbor that I was saving the true moment of catharsis for when the trip actually ended, and I hit it this afternoon. Around 10 miles from home, I started getting goosebumps. A mantra stuck in my head: "I'm home." It repeated itself over and over again, strengthening each time I passed an area I recognized. In Ayer, I noticed the spot where I had had my driver's test. (I passed, despite parallel parking about 3 1/2 feet from the curb.) In Harvard, I spotted the beach where my father took me a few times. In Bolton, I stopped at the Candy Mansion, site of numerous sugar-laden shopping trips in my youth.
From there the whirlwind in my head just got stronger. The route map took me directly onto Berlin and Frye roads, two isolated, wooded routes that I had bicycled I don't know how many hundreds of times in my youth. By the time I get off the route map to head home along Rte. 62, I was picking out the landmarks before they appeared: the garden center, the 495 interchange, Roller Kingdom. A jog through the trailer park, up a short hill, over the end of Davis Road -for several years of my toddlerhood, the farthest away my parents would let me ride my bike- and I was home. 6,100 miles, and I had completed the last one.
I was, I dunno, agog. Ecstatic. I couldn't wipe the smile off my face. I had finally done exactly what I set out to do: get from Hudson, MA to the Pacific. I did it in reverse, but that's plenty good enough for me.
I was home, the house where I spent the first 17 years of my life and a not insignificant portion of the next 13. The trip from Maine to Mass. had actually proven fairly uneventful and often pretty dull. But I couldn't imagine ending the trip any other way, and I couldn't imagine ending it anywhere else.
About me
I'm Tom Moran, a bicyclist from Fairbanks, Alaska. I'm spending the summer of 2006 riding from Anacortes, Wash., to Bar Harbor, Maine.
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