My homie Damon loves discussing self determination and the mental approach around that. Particularly the phrase abundance mindset. Sometimes it’s difficult to have such a mindset when resources get paper thin scarce. Five days of that scarcity is a challenge. Adjust your safety harnesses as we go from scarcity to abundance real real fast. Really fast. On a Saturday no less. 12 paved trail miles out of the campground and its culture shock city for me.

Harrison, Idaho brings a lot of everything all at once. People. Dogs. Coffee. Breakfast potatoes. Ice cream. Beer. Beach. Swim. Park. Chill. Live bands. Bikinis. Sports!!!

Paved asphalt. 0% grade. Lakes. Trees. Water. Wilderness. Trailheads. Zero cell service. Friendly and good looking humans, on bikes. It’s a dream come true.

It’s a whole lotta hyper-normal world after a whole lotta nothing at all. Humanity to a certain extent. Still no cell service. I’m ok with that. My phone doesn’t seem to work even on this cafes wifi. Oh well. Nice $500 paperweight, Apple. Haven’t had a beer in a while, this Irish Death is putting in work though, ask Steve Jobs ghost.

The live concert series is today. A guy my age named Eric E is up there playing the shit out this guitar. So yeah, a theee year old is playing rock covers. Two songs in and he’s all like “pick a year!”, I yell out “1977”. So he plays “Carry On Wayward Son” hard as fuck. I accept it, even though the Kansas album that song is on was released in 76. 77 is when it hit the billboard top whatever. A few more years are called out — 1983: “I’ll be watching you”, 1992: “Tears in heaven”, 1991: “Losing My Religion.” Not bad Eric. After a second 7.8% beer I’m heckling him, yelling future years at him “2134!”. He ignores me as any professional should. 1988 brings Tracey Chapman’s “Fast Car” along with a third beer and I now know it’s time to roll on.

It’s all bikinis and boats and party time on this summer Saturday along this trail and every piece of the landscape contains its appropriate level of beauty. Especially these trees. Abundant trees. So many trees. Cooling us off. Smelling so good. Cleaning the air. These trees are gods. Tree-gods. I would have paid 20 bucks to have magically popped up one of these for an hour at almost any point in the last three days. I might have to hug one… maybe not. I’ll praise them. Like i should. Also. Why do the kids refer to “throwing shade” as something bad? This shade is good. Throw throw throw oh glorious tree gods.

Thirty three miles later and the sun is getting low in the sky. We ain’t got a set place to stop and the one campground I looked at isn’t very communicative. In fact the whole day feels so vacation-esque at this point that I don’t think we care. We push on. There’s no cell service. No ones wifi seems to work either. There is this crew of five young ladies riding, one is rocking a trike hard. She’s definitely got a be named Lindsay. Maybe Lindsey. Not buckingham. She smiles and asks for high way we’re headed. “East”. “Us too. Go to the Snake Pit for dinner, just north of 90”. Hmmmm. We push off. There it is. We stop for Mac and cheese and another beer 14 miles up. Lo and behold Lindsey and her crew arrive 20 minutes behind us. Super friendly smiles and conversations and I can tell this whole area is trying to trap me. Chad says a shotgun wedding is not for him. I tell him to relax, no one makes calendars with high school English teachers in them and I’m not marrying anyone. We bid the ladies on wheels adieu. We roll and the sun is below the mountainous horizon. Eventually we’re in Kellogg and it’s dark. We pop for a hotel room. First night inside and it’s day ten. I like camping but in this case the extra miles, the laundry and the breakfast are all worth it. Oh… and air motherfucking conditioning. Plus they give a discount to firefighters. Comfort!! Abundance. Sleep!