We sat on the chair lift looking at the snow-covered mountain below us, our legs swinging, heavy with boots and skis. The icy, hard-packed snow wasn’t the best condition, but the sun was shining and it was warm and we’d left our coats in the lodge when we took a break in the late morning for breakfast burrito.

As the chair rose slowly up the mountain, Carter said “I just love New Mexico.”

“I do too,” I said.

I was holding that moment close to my heart, and I realized: there’s a day coming when I won’t be able to enjoy this anymore.

…when I say, “I have arranged my life to be this way,” and when Katie and I combined say, “We have arranged our lives to be this way,” we only mean that we have made decisions, good or bad, that affect the things we can control.

Long distance riding is a relative thing. Before cancer, I rode 9 hours one day in a meandering, unplanned sojourn to see my dad and brother. …

I saw an advertisement today, glossy and well-produced, about focus and getting things done. The man looked quite successful and showed his color-coded calendar, making the case that you should NEVER use a to-do list. Just calendar everything…

Rolled into the garage on Thursday afternoon with exactly 1,141 miles on the trip odometer. I know a lot of people do that much in a couple of days, but that was a major accomplishment for me.

Life has its own way of doing things, but all in all, most things aren’t that dramatic, really.

When I was just a few years out of high school I had a Yamaha 650 motorcycle that I rode back and forth to Centralia Community College which was about 15 miles one way. I was just starting to study business even though I really wanted to be a writer. My parents said I could never support myself much less a family as a writer.