Dave and I spent a week in La Crosse, Wisconsin to spend time with his family there. We stayed with his parents, Rich and Jan, in their condo on the La Crosse River. Dave’s brother, sister-in-law, and nephew drove up from Golden as well, and we all had fun playing Scrabble, ping pong, sledding, and snow shoeing. Jan cooked up a feast complete with about 50 kinds of cookies for us to chow on for the week. We all drove to Madison from La Crosse on Christmas day to visit with extended family on Rich’s side, wonderful people that I was glad to get to know a bit, and they made me feel extremely welcome. Then Dave and I stayed a couple of nights with Kris and Leslie, the couple with whom we’ll be paddling around Baranof Island in the summer. All in all it was a great week.

Now we’re talking about the last few details of our upcoming SE Asia trip: deciding on bedding, whether the cook kit is necessary, sun protection for our face & neck while wearing a helmet. Most other details are set, and the bikes only need a wee bit of tinkering since Dave has already done most of the work.

We only have two weeks of winter left, then we’ll be in the sauna of Singapore and the beaches of Malaysia soon enough.

We fly out of Denver on January 14th, and will arrive in Singapore a day and a half later. For some reason the tickets had to be paper, and I have them right here beside me. How exciting! In a month we’ll be on our way to hot and humid beaches and jungles.

Right now I’m watching it snow, the tiny flakes blowing down on a good eight inches already there. I’ve seen three vehicles from the neighborhood drive by with skis on top. I guess everyone wants to skip Friday at work for the powder.

I’ve never been on a vacation where I escaped the cold winter to a warm beach. Will I like the sound of waves from inside our tent at night? I think I will. I sure hope we can camp on the beach as we make our way North.

It’s going to feel amazing to be back on the bike every day. It’s such a natural routine to get up, move your body, eat, move your body, then stop and rest each evening.

More than two months after my first bike tour I think I’ve learned something.

I learned a lot, actually, but this one thing goes beyond touring, yet can come back around to touring again to make it better next time. This thing is living in the moment.

I’m a great analyzer, a terrific planner, and I can give dog-on-bone attention to detail while wading through a long project. I’m just not good at living in the moment, even sometimes when those moments are the sweetest. To do it well I’ll have to unlearn many years’ worth of practice doing just the opposite.

To distract myself from losing my mom at 15, I dove into every activity I could to keep my mind off the present, wearing myself down to the point of getting mononucleosis and losing 25 pounds. This constant busyness naturally continued through the next few years while I also became a focused planner. I tried to build my own feeling of security by planning and planning, whether it was in my job, planning my financial goals and budgets, or planning my workouts, running mileage or weight-lifting goals. Everything was on a spreadsheet, projected out many weeks/months/years ahead.

Meanwhile I was missing so much of every day. I have entire blocks of time with virtually no memory beyond the generalities of relationship status, work projects, athletic efforts, or financial state. This is not good.

I’ve realized for some time I need to live in the moment more. It hit home after my last relationship dissolved in the span of 45 minutes and my world fell apart for the umpteenth time. I practiced it in those dark days afterward, stopping and feeling when it hurt. Then life got better and time sped back up to normal speed. It hit home again when I met the most beautiful, thoughtful, kind and amazing person–Dave–and realized I didn’t want to miss a minute. But eventually human nature tends to take over when we lose focus.

I’ve been going back through my daily journal entries for the Great Divide and it really puts me back in those moments. And the thing I notice most is what I didn’t write, but what I clearly feel when I put myself back in that time.

I held back, wasn’t in the presence of my own experience a good portion of that time. I was worried about all the unknowns, the things I couldn’t plan for, couldn’t control, didn’t have the experience to expect. Simply put, I was thinking more about what was around the next bend than what I was experiencing at the moment. I realize I’m talking about a vacation, a ride purely for the fun of it, a tour, after all. But sometimes the hardest thing to do is simply enjoy something for what it is.

There were days on the tour that I was successful at living in the present, but it wasn’t nearly enough. Looking back now I can see that. So, it’s hit home once again that I have some personal evolving to do. I want to put it into practice on the next tour, because I don’t want to miss a minute.

I have been mostly a Brooks saddle user for several years, with one on my mountain bike and another on my commuter, and I’ve been very happy with them. But as I wrote in my Brooks saddle review, I think for the mileage and time in the saddle experienced on tour I need something else. I think I’ve finally decided on a Selle An-Atomica Titanico (a very testosterone-packed name, in my opinion), the same saddle Dave bought just before the Divide. I’ve read a lot of reviews and studied the Selle An-Atomica website and think this design is likely to work pretty well. It’s similar to the Brooks B17 shape and size, but with the center cutout it should move a bit more with me while still supporting my sit bones solidly.

I had a few emails back and forth with the owner and designer of the saddle, Tom Milton, because I thought I might have them convert my old B17 with the cutout–a service they offer on their website. But because of the wear on the saddle it sounds like it will be better to start with a new An-Atomica Titanico. Tom also wrote that he got on our site and read Dave’s review of the An-Atomica and said the stretching Dave experienced is more than normal and that he would warranty Dave’s saddle by replacing it with a new one. That’s excellent service, especially since we didn’t even ask about Dave’s saddle!

So we’ll order a new Selle An-Atomica Titanico saddle for me and have it sent with Dave’s new one.