I just got off the phone with my friend Denise, who also happened to be one of my first commercial clients as a photographer. She loves what we’re doing and offered a home for my cameras while we are gone.

At one point, she asked me when it was we decided to go on our trip. It was a little hard to say since it was so many things at once. For me, there was a point when we were riding through the vastness of Joshua tree, descending from Cottonwood to the end of the park that I felt in every cell of my body that this was what I wanted to do. I don’t have many religious moments or moments when I’m spontaneously moved to tears, but I have to admit, as I was gripping the handlebars with the wind whipping around me through the cool desert morning, I began to tear up. Laura was riding ahead of me and a great valley lay in front of us slowing growing larger and that instant felt PERFECT.

But it was also many things before that moment.

I remember a conversation with my college roommate Iain. We were outside of Sproul Hall, sitting on the planters, having those deep philosophical conversations that seemed to happen every night in college, but so rarely after. Those nights always seemed so full of possibilities.

“You know, when we’re old. When we’re fifty or sixty, we’re going to wish that we were 20 or 30 again. That we could have another go at it,” he said. I nodded in agreement.

“But,” he continues, “what we don’t realize is…that the wish IS coming true right now. The wish has been granted.”

The wish has been granted.

The wish IS coming true. I still get goosebumps when I think about what it means. It feels like I’ve been offered a chance to hop back into a time machine. It feels like I’ve been offered the chance to cheat old age and death for just a while longer. It feels like I’ve been given an authentic choice in my life and I’m going to choose the one that hints at great joys but not without paying the great price of living in ambiguity — running on shifting sand.

But we’re ok with that now. The road is calling