next steps are a doozy

I've got another week in this apartment.

Even though I am moving to a place I would consider an upgrade in most ways (except for the kitchen--I'm taking one for the team here), I still feel a lot of connection to this place.

After all, it was my first apartment all to myself. No one else's. I think I've never grown so much as I have in the last 16 months and I did all that here. In my little piece of rented land. From relationships to cycling, from music to the chopping block, I've done a lot, learned a lot and gleaned an awful lot more from myself than I expected.

I was supposed to only be in Nashville for six months. Here I am at D-Day + 10 months. To think, that number will only double as I have agreed to stay in this lab for another year.

For the longest time I questioned whether taking the other path out of college (not med school, etc) was a mistake and that maybe I should have just gone on and gotten my life on track. I wonder if perhaps I would have done the template, graduated Berea, taken a few weeks off then entered into summer at a medical school where I would be sufficiently happy (and likely miserable all at the same time).

Then I realize what this little apartment has seen me go through by me taking this other path. I learned how to be a teacher and a mentor--something I think is the duty of all of us to become, I learned science in a way I never understood, I found love--though finite those nine months were some of my best, I finally took time to focus on passions I had--playing music, getting into cycling, and the most recent and most heart-beat skipping, I spent the second half of my summer in Maine and found something there that I still can't shake out of my mind (but that's almost certainly because that's the last thing I want to do).

Despite the fact that everything moves at break neck speed, feeling like the days fall like dominoes and trying to keep up is tiresome, there are some things that stay put and wait for you at all times.

I'll miss this apartment, this home. But I'm going to wood floors. Sorry apartment, I hope we can still be friends.

To new nests, apple cider, and that feeling when your heart skips a beat because of your dropping in to say "hi" through my phone.

Oh shit!

Hello, fall.

I didn't know you were joining us so soon.

No, no, it's my pleasure that you're here already.

I've had a bed made for you for weeks, and dinner is on the stove.

Make yourself at home.

much easier to know the answers if you know where to look

Take the guitar player for a ride
Cause He ain't never been satisfied
He thinks he owes some kind of debt
Be years before he gets over it

So pleased I am with this weekend.

Good friends, in a good town, with good things, and good times. Are you getting the picture yet? I fully understood my love of all things americana-folk at some point over the weekend. Maybe it's that I can now successfully write folk songs...that I'm actually happy with.

I'm planning on entering some Tour's next spring/summer, definitely a few good one's here in Nashville. One will be a century ride--maybe I can win it! Ha! I just zinged myself.

If you haven't, just indulge yourself in Tallest Man On Earth (apolgies for the Myspace linkage, it's all he has). It's beautiful, raw, guy-and-a-guitar folk.

Went and saw an apartment today...fell in love as soon as I stepped inside. Original wood floors, circa 1930, 50% larger than what I'm in now, lots of windows, dining room, huge living room, cozy bedroom, yet mediocre kitchen (oh well). I'm 99% certain I'm going tomorrow to snap it up.

Woot!

To seeing that smile, hearing that folk and perusing Zen and The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance.

don't dream it's over

As I got back in the car that night out front of the restaurant, I had an overwhelming feeling at that very moment.

I realized I was never going to see that girl again.

It hit me like a moment of clarity. A wind-sucking blast to the chest that I could only figure was a gut-feeling. Afterall, it was all a fluke, chance meeting anyways. There was no reason, no recourse and certainly no insurance for such an arrangement. No, no, this was certainly the last time.

Without much pause I decided to push through and went to turn on the car, when I then turned on the radio for the first time, because, well, times like these call for music.

At which point, I heard this song. And my eyes began to well.

In that very moment, the song which had literally just started and whose first guitar strum I immediately recognized, I realized something very comforting. So incredulously uplifting and encouraging.

Maybe I would see her again.

Maybe, just maybe, it was all just beginning instead.

What?

I'm back from Maine?

...

I did not get that memo.

Apparently, yes, it would appear, that the six-week trek/expedition/vacation/foray to the northern reaches of Maine has come, developed and ultimately passed by.

Let's get one thing clear, if I haven't made it abundantly clear elsewhere: I absolutely loved my time in Maine. The trip was all about the science and acquiring samples for my research. That was successful and revelatory in its self. My PI (principal investigator) explained where he saw all this work going and I have to say...

WOW.

I have a lot of work ahead of me as we hope to publish two papers, one in a relatively prestigious journal such as Journal of Biochem, Biochemistry or maybe Evolution, etc., but the real crux of the research is being saved for the highest-impact, highest-prestige journal in the world: Nature.

I mean, it's hard to even fathom this. Especially when I will be first-author on such a paper. Of all the opportunities made, experiences earned and general life lessons I would get from this incredible job...this was by far the last thing I expected to get.


Actually.

The last thing I expected to get was finding something so special while I was in Maine that I find myself waking up with smile on my face, having an extra skip in my step through the day.

She's special.

The kind of special you write home to mom about.

The kind of special you don't rush and you let be its self.

The kind of special that I am not going to let pass me by.

Unlike those six weeks in Maine, this is something not so temporary but just as exciting and eye opening.

I went to Maine in a state of mind that said the world was my oyster, and somehow I left with an attitude of I could really do and have anything.

It's not a coincidence.

Maybe it was all by chance, but that's not how serendipity works.

Here's to us.

Theories, Hypotheses and Beliefs

It's a great thing, this feeling I'm swimming in.

Somewhere between the foggy days with a quarter mile visibility over the harbor and the crystal clear waters of the inland lakes, to the wonders of those brown eyes, I'm starting to think there might actually be some sort of structure.

That is right. Structure in the chaos. What sort of structure? The sort that one finds incredulously frustrating while providing the most comforting guidance of your days.

It's the sort of feeling one can get lost in. It's the sort of feeling that you should get lost in.

On that note, I'm not sure there's much more to it.

I do know that I've been enjoying the smiles, making smiles and knowing that out of nowhere something so wonderful and so special can pop out of seemingly nowhere.

That something that comes from the unexpected, dissolving the expectations, while instantly gratifying your sense of what to expect.

It's truly the next step of figuring it all out.

So.

It would appear, to the untrained and the trained, occular observers that I would be smack-dab in the middle of Acadia National park.

It would also appear that I've learned a lot about myself. Mainely (get it? Maine-ly...anyways), I require mountains, hiking trails, bays, harbors and sailboats to provide myself unequivocal sanity on the largest proportions.

I've been here 12 days...which is preposterous in itself!...and have thoroughly enjoyed every minute of each day and every step of each trail. I've hiked most of the eastern shores of Mount Desert from Dorr Point to Sand Beach and all the summits in between. So far, Dorr Mountain, Beehive and Champlain have been my favorites. I believe that I will need to return to Cadillac Mountain by bike this time and go to the true summit, and not the tourist summit that misleads even the one's who care about summits and hiking.

So I've got just under a month--a day short--to take in the rest of Acadia and all of her sights. My brother and sister-in-law arrive the 17th and their visit will coincide with the Bar Harbor Jazz Fest...hell yeah!

I need to really buckle down and get some serious mileage on my bike up here, and a trip around the island sounds quite enticing. At least a ride to Northeast Harbor should be in order.

Tonight was a particularly good night; it's always a good night when you get a gorgeous girl's number. Wow.

To Acadia and Maine