So, it's 2AM and once again I find myself wide awake, but for reasons I did not expect. As the last post made quite clear, lately I've been stressed out quite a lot, and it's easy to lose sight of your long-term goals when you've got so much going on in the short term. All week I was worrying about buying a house, finances, planning holidays, looking for new work and so on. There are so many things that I could improve upon in my life, and I'm actively working on all of those things at the same time. Then I wonder, after I've achieved all those things, what's the one thing I would want to do? And I can only think of one thing that I want to do more than anything else: a no hurries, no schedule, unplanned cycling trip, in Japan, with my girlfriend.
I haven't cycled in months. Even before that I haven't been cycling much for fun since I got a car. I occasionally cycled for exercise, but even that not so much. Still, despite that, I would absolutely love to go back to Japan one more time, take it easy around Atsugi and train up on the flats and the easy hills for a proper long-distance fully loaded touring trip. After every past cycling trip I get new ideas about how to do the next one. There's things about the last trip that I want to improve upon, two in particular: I want to pack lighter, and I want to be more free about my route and my schedule, doing more side activities along the way. That's hard to do when you've got a job (and a mortgage) to get back to, and I don't know if it'll ever happen, but at the very least I can write it down here so I can read it back when I'm 80 and add it to my list of regrets.
It may never happen. It definitely won't happen in the next year. But who knows: if the opportunity presents itself, that's what I want to do.
Things I must do before I die:
- Become financially independent.
- Cycling trip
- Drive the Nordschleife
- Become immortal