The long way home.

There's something about a long car ride. You forget your troubles. Forget you even are in the car at times. You have to focus on just one thing and nothing else really gets in. If you're alone it's you, the white line, the yellow lines flashing past, and the music. If you know me at all, you know this is what I believe in. I don't believe in god, I'm not big on church, that feeling, where nothing else matters is what I believe in.

I'm big on that moment just before sunset where the light is just right, no matter where you are it's beautiful and the whole world seems to have paused except for you and your car. The windows are down, your almost always passing a field, and Tom Petty miraculously comes on the radio as if the DJ were seeing the same thing you are. And for just a second you're wearing rose colored glasses, you completely zone out and there's nothing more important going on in the whole world than this moment. There's no real explaining that feeling, you just know it. Every time you feel it you want to feel the wind beneath your hand, sing a little louder and more than anything, have someone with you looking over, seeing the same thing. You don't really have to speak, you just understand. If you're alone, you don't go home and tell someone about it, you just smile a little bigger and wish they only knew.

I think somehow in the busyness and lack of sleep this year I forgot what those moments were like. Going to California I realized that those moments are not only more beautiful here, at home in Colorado, but that people here have the mindset to really appreciate them, it's when we forget that that we lose what makes where we live what it is and become the kind of people we do everything to avoid. I believe religiously in forgetting my feet are touching the pedals, feeling the wind beneath my hands and above all else, that even after the sun has gone down, that tomorrow there's another opportunity for the DJ to play Tom Petty at just the right time.