After breakfast with Lucas at a tasty local spot, we bid our friends (two- and four-legged) a warm goodbye, and packed up the gear for the last cruise together of 2010. Rain wasn't predicted until the Philadelphia area - at present, there was hardly a cloud in the sky. The oak tree outside of Luke's place was a vibrant yellow - he described last night the successive days of walking into a leaf-shower as the surrounding trees began shedding. Home was becoming closer by the instant.
After gassing up and briefly retracing our steps back to the highway, I noticed the moon overhead. It had outlasted the sunrise, and was standing proudly in the sky on its way back to the horizon. A good omen.
Through Ohio and West Virginia, the tail end of the foliar display was magnificent. The Pennsylvania border began the foothills of the Appalachians. Over the phone yesterday, my dad had reminisced on vivid memories of traversing this very highway years ago, and how breathtaking he remembered it being. He was right, and I was elated following yet again in his footsteps - literally this time. Here we were, our last day together on the excellent adventure, on a warm and sunny cruise through the Appalachian mountains in autumn. The burning desire to return home was placated by the beauty of the moment. Perhaps it is the nature of human affairs to always stray from what is most important; but if that is the case, the return movement of the cycle is equally true.
We arrived at Snake's parents' place after dark, winding through Amish country and foggy rural Pennsylvania and just having missed the rains once again. Was it reparations? A reward for our endurance elsewhere? Whatever it was, we were grateful for it. We pulled our bikes into the garage - Snake's remaining there for the season - and were greeted yet again with warm hospitality.
Tomorrow, I finish the last leg to Boston solo. Although the bike's condition is shaky - sputtering and coughing any time the RPMs dip - I am confident that I will make it back, barring any unforeseen anomalies. Although the excellent adventure proper finds its terminus here, my own continues another few hours. The experience will take quite some time to sink in, and even more time to distill the lessons learned and revisited. But that will come in due time. For now, it's one more day of focusing on the road, back to where I began. And in a certain abstract sense, back to where I had been all along.
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