Coming Home – Days Twenty through Twenty-four

We left Rapid City Monday morning and headed for Sioux Falls, SD, by way of Badlands National Park. We came from the west, so we rode the long way to the visitor’s center, which is on the east side of the park, then decided to take the scenic loop back almost to where we had exited I-90 just outside of Rapid City. So we back-tracked, but we were so glad we did. I don’t understand how a place can seem so barren, dry, and lifeless and still be so beautiful, but this place is exactly that.

We have added Badlands to our list of must-hike places, but hiking is not on today’s agenda. We drove through, stopped at most of the scenic overlooks, and visited with some cool people from Minnesota, who took our picture for us. Then we headed on to Sioux Falls.

Leon said this is what he expected the Painted Desert to look like. He was very disappointed in the Painted Desert when we went through there last year on our way to the Grand Canyon. But he loved Badlands.

The next day, we rode to Omaha to see our dear friends and neighbors, Mike and Jan. They live next door to us in Fort Worth, but they are in the process of having a house built in Omaha and will be moving as soon as it’s ready. In the meantime, they have an apartment in Omaha and have been going back and forth from FW to Omaha. I think it’s a way of weaning themselves from all of their friends in FW, because they’ve been gradually spending more and more time in Omaha. Anyway, we wanted to see their house and their son and his family, who also used to live near FW, so we added Omaha to the itinerary.

As soon as we got to the apartment, we all headed to the new house, where Mike harassed the workers and I picked out the bedroom where Leon and I will stay when we come to visit. I half-jokingly also started claiming various parts of the house for when we move up there after we retire: I’ll put my drums here, and we can park the motorcycles here on the north side of the garage, and you’re going to put a shower in this bathroom for us, right? Jan agreed to all of my suggestions without hesitation. Then we went to a burger place/ sports bar to watch the TCU baseball game. (Go, Frogs!)

I knew the College World Series was going on in Omaha that week, and I also knew we would be in Omaha that week, but I didn’t put the two together and think to book way ahead or make other arrangements, so when I finally sat down and tried to book a room, it was pretty slim pickings. The cheapest I could find was over $200/night and most places that even had vacancies were over $400/night, but we needed a place to sleep so I booked one of the $200 places. When we got there, it was one of the nastiest places we’ve ever seen. When two cops say it was one of the nastiest places they’ve ever seen, you know it’s a nasty place. We turned around and walked back out.

I texted Jan, who said to come back to the apartment and we would figure it out. They only had a couch, two chairs, and an army cot to offer,  but they called their son Scott, who headed over with an air mattress and extra sheets and pillows. We got there around the same time, and in the middle of the discussion about whether the cot or the air mattress would be more comfortable,  Scott said, “Why don’t you guys just sleep at our house? We have a bedroom in the basement with two twin beds you can push together.” We didn’t want to offend Mike and Jan so we weren’t sure what we should do, but when Scott said, “If you like a cool place to sleep, you’ll love it. It’s freezing down there,” that won us over, so we followed Scott to his house and stayed there for the two days we were in Omaha.

Mike and Jan moved into their house next door to us in 2004 within a month of when we moved into ours. We met them one day, almost exactly thirteen years ago, while our house was being built. We came on a weekend to insulate the interior walls because the builders wouldn’t do that, and we noticed that they were in their garage next door. We walked over and introduced ourselves and learned that they were there insulating their garage because their builders wouldn’t do that. We’ve been friends ever since that day. These are the kinds of neighbors you’re lucky to have even once in your lifetime and the kinds of friends you don’t ever want to let go of.

Their son Scott was in medical school when we met them and in the next few years would be doing residency work at JPS. He and his wife Natalie lived in Benbrook and spent lots of time at Mike and Jan’s. They had two kids when we met them but soon added two more. So we’ve known them a long time, too, and have watched the kids grow up, from next door on the weekends at first, and then on Facebook and during holiday visits after they moved to Omaha, once Scott finished residency and moved there for work. I love them all dearly, Mike and Jan and both of their sons and their families. It’s been an incredible blessing to have them for neighbors, and we will miss them terribly. (Hence, the half-joking about moving into their basement in Omaha.)

So we dumped all of our crap at Scott and Nat’s and went to sleep. The next morning, we visited with Natalie and then went back to Mike and Jan’s. We went to lunch and then to see the oldest grandchild’s Eagle Scout project. I don’t know how Adam went from being four years old and riding his tricycle up and down Mike and Jan’s driveway to being a fifteen-year-old Eagle Scout with his driver’s permit in so short a time, but there he is, Eagle Scout and all. His project was a memorial to the the outfitting posts who cared for the Mormon pioneers who plodded through the area that is now Omaha, in wagons and pulling handcarts, as they fled persecution and looked for a place to settle. He did a great job!

We stopped into the nearby Mormon Trail Visitor’s Center briefly, then headed out to the Platte River, just to have a look.

Later that evening, Leon and I rode to a mall outside of Omaha to meet another dear friend of mine, Greg. He and I were at TCU at the same time and were both Religion-Studies students, and in our many classes together, we became good friends. Now he lives in Lincoln, so we got to have dinner with him. I’m very glad for him and Leon to have met. Greg was part of my life during the darker days and hasn’t seen me outside of that, so it was nice to be able to have dinner with him and for him to see that I’m very ok now. I don’t imagine he’s lost any sleep over the last fifteen years or so worrying about it, but I’m still glad for him to know I’m happy now. I was reminded, after spending time with Greg that night, why we were such good friends back then.

I’ve treasured this photo since it was taken, but Greg brought his copy to dinner and I enjoyed seeing it again. We did a re-creation of it, and he even brought a hat to match the one in the older photo.

 

 

We said our goodbyes, and Leon and I left to meet Mike and Jan at a local ice cream shop before heading back to Scott and Nat’s to get some sleep before our long day of riding the next day. Mike and Jan were also leaving Omaha Thursday, going home to Fort Worth for two days and then to Houston to take two of their granddaughters on a cruise. They were making the trip in one day, so they would beat us by a day.

We got up the next morning and rode to Guthrie, Oklahoma, and then to Fort Worth Friday. When we turned onto our street finally, after riding over 6300 miles in 24 days, Mike and Jan were tromping across the yard toward our house, phones in hand, videoing us as we pulled safely into our driveway. Just as they had stood with us in the shop nearly a month earlier while we made sure we had everything packed, said a prayer for safe travels, and embarked on this amazing journey, now they celebrated with us our return home.

I wrote in an early entry that I expected us to learn a lot about how to do a cross-country motorcycle trip. That we did. What I didn’t expect, though, was that I would come to understand, by being gone for so long, what it is to be home. It’s not just the physical existence within a certain set of walls. It’s much more complicated than that, and yet it is as simple as being ok wherever you are. Maya Nagelou wrote, “I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.”  Whether it’s thousands of miles from where you live looking at things you’ve never seen before, hiking a new trail or eating dinner with your daughter and catching up on her life, pushing yourself to do something that scares you but doing it anyway, accepting an offer of hospitality from an unexpected source, reconnecting with an old dear friend and finding it’s as if nothing ever changed, or whether it’s being in your own garage with treasured friends or just watching tv in the living room with your family, home is knowing that everything is ok.

I’d like to say a thank-you to my incredible husband for some of the things he did for us on this trip, including but not in any way limited to the following:

• Packing all the stuff I don’t know to pack, like tools, cleaning stuff, etc.
• Making sure the bikes were in good order before we left and along the way
• Washing and folding all of our clothes, several times
• Every night when we stopped, plugging in all the electronics (phones, helmets, laptop, wifi, and I don’t even know what else) to charge them for the next day
• Packing and unpacking the bikes at each destination while I did whatever I do that always takes so long
• Being patient with my need to stop and eat all the time, or pee all the time, or take pictures all the time… all of that stuff
• Encouraging me, reassuring me, reminding me (“Look where you wanna go”)… all of that stuff too
• Leaving me time to write this blog and sharing your laptop with me for that purpose
• Mostly, for making everything ok with the world, and for being my home. I love you, Bubby.

 

Thanks, too, to Francie for taking care of the house and the dogs while we were gone. There’s no way we could have enjoyed this trip without knowing Snickers and Gilbert were well-cared-for! You’re awesome, Francie!

Also, thanks to everyone who bothered to read this blog. I’ve enjoyed writing it, and I hope someone found something interesting or useful in these paragraphs and photos.

Be at home, wherever you are.

Live hard and ride easy, friends.