Gigi Malibu: Coming Home

We have been working at "being home" for more than two weeks. Its a strange situation when we are weirded out by not traveling. We have gotten so accustom to being on the move that we hardly know how to stop. But then Cascadia is a beautiful place with lots of beautiful people and we have glorious ways of being reminded of this fact. Below is a pretty good example. After touring with international bike-dance sensation, Gigi Malibu we have a new appreciation for what it means to be on point.

Pdx is good. It's such a mecca of, well, pdx-ness! In a good way of course. I appreciate it in many ways, appreciate many things actually, after being gone from pdx for 10 out of the last 14 months, and those 4 months in town were living in a warehouse. I'm thankful for the simple things, which I'm sure you too are also missing, like my OWN MATTRESS!!!, my own bike (ok, you have your bike, but I haven't had mine...), the Asian markets, onsite laundry, a shower (the warehouse didn't have a shower), vegan gluten-free chocolate chip cookies, lots of bike parking, New Seasons, New Seasons employees, omg...NEW fuckin' SEASONS, and and and. I feel really grateful right now. It's nice to honor the seemingly "mundane". It puts excitement back into the mix. I'm working again, taking on some temp part-time stuff as well, in the process of transferring my finances to a credit union, have almost completed my downsizing from a 900 sq.ft. apartment to a modest 150 sq.ft. room and have therefore donated most of my (unnecessary) belongings and by Sunday will be storage unit FREE, and am keeping active with cross training, biking, and yoga...in case you were worried! ;)

Anyway, just wanted to say hi. I was really glad I got to see you again before leaving Europe. A lot of people have asked "how was it traveling with Phil?" and they don't mean that in a mean way, but they're curious, because you do have your "reputation", so to speak. So I am really proud to tell them how on it you are, and that you are doing it, and are manifesting your desire to act out this random, crazy project of yours, and that you never complain, and you made sure we were all taken care of, and I'm happy to report all of that, and I thought you'd be happy to hear that that is what I'm reporting. It's always nice to know when people are saying nice things about you, yet we rarely get to hear those nice things directly because we aren't there, so there you go...direct from the source.

Hope your covered wagon is windin' 'cross the prairie.

"wagon train go windin' 'cross the prairie
onward through the storm and gale.
Towards the land of dreams
 trudge the old ox teams.
Down the Oregon Trail."

I had to sing that in the 3rd grade...

Traveling with  Gigi was something special. Dazzling neon colors, multiple jump ropes and her plucky attitude kept our spirits high and focused on sharing joy with strangers from all over.

We would not be surprised if generations from now this image appeared in a dictionary under "on lock down"



Thanks Gigi! Hope we can travel together again!