Turns out March 30th is when big chapters close and new ones start to breathe. Twenty-two years ago, I signed away my Sikorsky saga between jogs around Maltby Lakes, then spent the evening angling for movie plans with Lisa. Four years later, I was camping at City Brew, scheming up a solo road ride to Thompson Falls while everyone else ghosted the morning race. Showed up to tumbleweeds, did a victory lap, crowned myself champ. Classic.
By 2009, I was waiting for Turner parts and contemplating dog-level bike naming creativity. Then 2010 brought the pre-ride at Devils Slide, where Ross pulled off a ballet move to avoid eating dirt (captured on film, then mysteriously corrupted). We cooked brats, read Dickens by the campfire, and called it perfect before the race even started.
Two years after that, I was somewhere in Montana, geography blurred by rain and that fiery sunset over what I think was the Gallatin Valley. Hands too numb to open the door when I finally got home. The next year, I faced that familiar fork in the Bridger Foothills, caught between the storm closing in and the pull to just keep going. But I turned around. Had washing machine hoses to buy, friends to visit, races to plan.
Ruby the fat bike hit 1,000 miles in 2014, earning her party with the fatties at Snow Basin. She'd gone from green horn to champion, my best friend through a thousand miles of snow. Six years later, I was stuck at home during lockdown, writing bad poetry about free boondocking and churned loam. Then the van took its final bow thanks to a speed demon, and the insurance company played their greatest hits: eager to take money, reluctant to part with it.
Last year brought beaver family reflections at Seeley Lake, those persistent engineers teaching lessons about resilience while their lodge poked through the ice. And just this year, I finally told the whole MoBill origin story, from Julie's suggestion through green goggles and ambush backpack trips to that hand-hold on the way home from Lima.
March 30th keeps teaching me the same thing in different languages. Whether I'm signing papers, chasing friends through the Swan Range, or buying washing machine hoses in a rainstorm, the answer is always the same. Turn around when you need to, but only because there's something worth coming back for. The wheels keep turning, the chapters keep closing, and somehow that's exactly how adventure works.