Less than a year...

It occurred to me last Saturday, after Caleb and I finished our epic 40-mile ride around the Shenandoah Valley.

He showed me some of the landmarks from his years living in the area; a Mennonite church on a hill with rows upon rows of horse-and-buggy tie posts; a gravel road that leads to a "bridge," which is nothing more than a concrete slab resting on the creek bed that is completely submerged by heavy rains (fittingly, it is named Concrete Slab Road); his old friend's house which was "just over the next hill" (I counted four next hills in all) where we replenished our rapidly depleting water supply.

There were also some surprises, even for Caleb -- namely, the mile-long row of raspberry bushes along the road, all brimming with ripe fruit, so much so that they seemed to glow red in the diminishing sunlight. We dumped the water from all but the largest water bottle, and began filling them with the bright red berries. Caleb's will was much stronger than mine; after a short time he had filled two bottles, while mind was hardly even a quarter full. The instant gratification was too tempting...

Later, after an amazing dinner of curried eggplant, lentils and rice, a dessert of our hand-picked raspberries (I wish I had picked more for later), and a few Pabsts on Caleb's porch, the reality finally settled in: less than a year from now, another chapter of my life will come to a close, and I will be pedaling across the country in hopes of seeing the Pacific before August.

I have a lot of physical/mental/emotional preparation to take care of...