To Bob in Rancho Cucamonga....

7/17/10

Bob is a wonderful man we met back in Rancho Cucamonga, California, along with Mary and so many other wonderful people who are a special part of the ride because we met them all about 100 miles into it (the first week). They opened their homes and provided us with advice, laughs, food, and really showed us what a special time this ride was going to be. I remember thinking,

"Yes. This is it."

They were what the ride was going to be: love, laughs, family....life. Life stripped down to what matters. Simply us and our stories, our challenges and our dreams, our similarities and our differences, our bodies and our souls, a common love of the horse and a common understanding of our many different challenges and aches. Connected through love and connected through pain, we are connected. And when you brush away the clatter and the mess that we surround ourselves with but don't really care about we are standing there together, one with the land, one with each other. It's peaceful, strong, and beautiful and it is never, ever to be forgotten even in the darkest moments. As Stephen Sondheim so beautifully puts to music and as I always say throughout this ride, "No one is alone", and in those words holds the power of the people.

I don't know if Bob is still following along on this ride, but he has actually been a huge part of it up to this point. He sent us off with bundles and bundles of sage and told us to give a bundle to each person who is kind to us along the way. We have passed his sage out to hundreds of people along this trek and always tell them the story of Bob and his sage.

It's been a beautiful part of the ride. There is a little sage trail as to where we've been half way across this entire continent in the hands of the incredible people we have been so fortunate to now be able to call our friends, our family. The last bundle of sage went to a beautiful young girl named Lily not too far back in Allan, OK. Lily was running through a field in pouring down rain with her long blonde hair following behind her. She was overflowing with all of the beauty and promise of this world and was the perfect person to take the last bundle of Bob's kindness.

Now, there have been times where I am so sleep deprived and forget the sage so please if you're reading this and I had forgotten the sage, please know that every person we have come across has touched us so deeply and we think of you and talk about you all constantly. You all have become our friends and our memories, our conversations and our drive and will be forever with us in what has been the adventure of a life-time.

I kind of want to keep this sage trail going, though, so Bob...if you do read this and you would like to continue spreading your sage across America, we can give you an address to send some to up ahead! I think it was a beautiful idea and it would be cool to keep it going all the way home.