Home life (8/31/23 Thu)

They say you can't go home again. Perhaps it's clearer to say you and home have evolved. If you've ever tried to reproduce the same trip, you'll understand it's ends up a different trip each time. Time away changes you as a person. That same passage of time alters every environment, even the one we label as home.

Changes happen in many dimensions: physical, emotional, and experiences. The physical stuff is easiest as we can literally feel, view; maybe even smell and taste it. If rain falls the entire time you are away you see the affects in streams, foliage, maybe even water leaks. Emotions are trickier. While you experience your travel emotions, those left behind are experiencing their own. Two people can have similar emotional paths. For example, both sides could miss each other and appreciate the role the other plays in their life. More likely their emotional paths diverge. Their separated exposure to life constrains each individuals path in different ways. While the traveler is far from the home rain, those at home are left to endure all that arrives with it. The rainy gloom and associated extra work uniquely affects them. Just as the traveler is uniquely affected by the environments they travel through. In my case 24 hour days of sunshine, and no lawn chores.

Clearly the traveler is having mew experiences, while those at home are closer to the daily repeating loop of everyday life. The everyday work left undone by the missing traveler may require someone else to shoulder the burden Or perhaps it remains undone, building up for the traveler to work at upon return. More than likely the work is split, some of that burden being shouldered to completion, some left waiting for the travelers return. Experiences, both good and bad, determine our mental map of life by which we base a never ending stream of decisions on. Updating blank map areas and making corrections can alter our overall view of the world and the mental lay of the land we all use to navigate our lives with.

While I was away we had a very rainy summer. While I was having the ride of my life, friends back home had a hot humid summer. Great for me, bad for them. Rain and heat grow grass, and limit the available window to mow. Rain washes out parts of our driveway, and splashes ever deepening potholes in our road. Anne learned to mow, but drove around the road erosion.

Anne rode with me to Newfoundland and Labrador, plus a stop at Hopewell Rocks. She enjoyed our trip, but certainly feels like she is missed out on my 45 day Dust 2 Dawson trip to so many western parks in the US and Canada. That's natural, nearly everyone would like to have gone on that trip.

As I plan my final tour of the year, Anne's patience is waning. I am still excited and looking for national parks to visit along my route, lining up stops along the way to visit family and friends. In a order to hit the "on tour for 1/3 of the year" I plan to tour just short of one more month. I have already missed family birthdays and other events this year, so I intend to leave after my anniversary on 9/22. This is not exactly what Anne wants to hear after a long summer alone at home. She hasn't been living in a bubble, so there are other life complications that she would like me around to help with. It's still lovely in my bubble, please keep those pins away from it.

Then there is that small background thing about the family bread winner not having a job and our suplimented insurance running out in November. I am not a worrier, Anne is. So all of this is much harder on her than on me. Through better or worse... at the same time!