In the movies they would call this the intermission, but I prefer interlude.  I got to spend about 48 hours being a somewhat normal person.  Tuesday morning I had breakfast with my TransAm crew and got to say my final goodbyes, then hopped in the car for a 1-11 hour drive to Portland.  I've been staying the last two days with Kip and his family in their amazing condo overlooking Portland - a few pictures below.  It's great to have friends and especially ones as caring and giving as Kip. 

In between these two trips, thinking about my last trip, the thing that strikes me the most is context.  Here's what I mean by that: one of the hot new things is this game Pokemon Go.  IT's an augmented reality game, which means that it uses reality, but it adds a layer on top of it.  So your favorite park bench or public library might suddenly also become a center for good or evil monsters, or some such.  And this same idea applies to touring by bike.  Walk out your front door right now, or look around you, wherever you happen to be.  What you see, what you notice, is defined by how you got there: walking, car, train.  On the way in to San Francisco I rode through Vallejo, and the very next day I ended up driving back across that same stretch of land and highway.  But from a car it looked totally different.  You could barely even see the bike path that I'd been on next to the highway.  The point is this: there is a whole secret world out there, right under your nose, and the only way to see it is to ride your bicycle.  Stores look different, roads look different, towns look different.  The sleepy town of Davis becomes a bustling metropolis.  Bike shops become outposts of civilization.  Diners are the Taj Mahal.  It's fun, and I personally love it.