margin

margin
Originally uploaded by rod lewis

Hey Kids! I'm home. Yoo-hoo (sung with a falling minor third), anyone home? Anybody miss me? Yoo-hoo!?

I arrived home in the wee hours of twilight, still frozen from the Great Smoky Mountains.

I started this trip with "cool change" by Little River Band as my soundtrack opener. "and now that my life is so pre-arranged, I know that it's time for a cool change."
Many songs came and went as I rode my 3,700 miles. They seemed to change with the culture and landscape. On a trip this long, some things morph gradually, but there are also geographic factors that cause rapid adjustments. On a single, long, straight rode, I experienced the Mississippi river culture with egrets and alligators, and continued into the foothills in Tennessee. Accents, idioms, dress, and way of life morph.
Descending into the piedmont from Asheville, after riding in the chilly Smokies, I could feel the heat of the south, unencumbered by elevation, literally climbing my body as I descended a couple thousand feet in a matter of minutes.

Everywhere I went, I came to realize that what I was searching for was room. Margin. "now that my life is so pre-arranged..."

When your surfaces are machined to micro tolerances, there has to be some superimposed margins. A bit of room for the lubrication to circulate.
For the last 17 days, I found my tolerances so wide that my gears wobbled and my bearings rattled. And it felt good.
Now I feel I'm in a better position to secure what needs to be, and to allow play where it is so desperately necessary.

Thank you more than I could ever express to Allison, Jack, Will, and Molly for sacrificing so that I could experience this wonderful gift