When reading an article on Neil Peart’s personal web site, about a bike trip to Yellowstone, he mentioned a journal entry he made sitting in a restaurant in Utah, after a 790-mile day. “Every detail I think of putting down seems inconsequential, yet it is the sum of those details that made the day.” When I get done with a trip and start thinking about posting my ride report, that’s very much how I feel as well. I did a lot of things, saw a lot of things, and experienced a lot of things, but sometimes it feels as if I’m conveying meaningless details when I write about them.

As anyone that rides a lot can tell you, any one experience or site or sensation by itself may not seem like a big deal, but it’s the totality of it all that motivates us to keep doing it.

Some things cannot be conveyed by the written word or in photographs. They simply have to be experienced in person.