WOW! This guy gets it (especially at the bottom of this). Fascinating to read this other person’s account of their journey bicycling the entire way from the Gulf of Mexico to (and around) Lake Michigan. This fellow is coming to the end of his journey:

“From the end of my last tour:

It is 2500 miles to bike up the Mississippi River and 1000 miles to bike around Lake Michigan. I have crossed scores of rivers, thousands of streams, and seen countless lakes and ponds during this journey of exploration.

I have spent the last 2 months next to some of the most iconic waterways in North America getting to know their course and understand their moods. When I read stories like Huck Finn or hear The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, I understand them better now. I know what the river bottoms smell like. I understand what it means for a cold wind to race down the Great Lakes. They are not just shapes on a map anymore. They no longer exist in the abstract to me. They sparkle with a thousand colors. They sing with a multitude of sounds. They are in me now and I am changed by them.

The experience of encountering them at 10 mph has been humbling and enlightening. I feel like their history is now my history. That no matter where I go or what I do the Mississippi and the Great Lakes will always be in me. I have followed them, slept next to them, been incredibly frustrated by them, and actually brought to tears by them.

I can’t truly convey how special this journey has been. It has been about so many things—people, storms, rivers, lakes, seasons, hardships, and joy—but most importantly, it has been about wonder.

Every morning I pack up my life and set out. What lies ahead is unknown and that is its charm. I am being told the most incredible story and I can’t wait for each new installment.

Soon this chapter of the story will end. I will go back to my house, a job, and a routine. But that doesn’t mean the story is over. I know that down the road, around the bend I’ve never taken before, are more chapters waiting to unfold. And they are filled with things I can’t imagine—like abandoned forest roller coasters, magical homesteads, and kind old Southern Gentlemen. It is the story we write when we find the wonder in our lives.

Find that story in your life and chase it. You’ll never regret it