It has been some time since I have posted, or pissed philosophical about life's encounters. It is time to return to the site and let go of some interesting stories. Quite a bit has happened over the past few months. I had, what some of my friends call, a quarter life crisis. To manage through the difficult time, I did what so many mid-life crisis sufferers have done in the past: I bought a Harley. That wasn't quite enough though, I am not sure why, but it wasn't. So I got a tattoo. Oh, and then I started hanging out with the long term sub that had just graduated from Colorado State University.

All three are still constants in my life. I won't be washing the tattoo from my inner-left shin anytime soon. I won't be paying off the rather large loan for the Harley anytime soon. And well, the longterm sub, I think she'll be around for at least a little while.

What was it that caused me to nearly thrash out and reach for such change all at once. . .
A tunneled routine that had no visible light at the end.

I sat down a few weeks ago with a friend from Romania, Ionella. She told me a story of when she was a child and her brother had to go to a handball training camp pretty far from the house, "We didn't have a car, so we had to walk over three hours to get there, I went with him. We knew that if we followed the railroad tracks, we would get to the training camp."

"He was thirteen and I was much younger. The first trying moment of the walk was having to cross a railroad bridge hundreds of feet above a river in the mountains. There were planks missing and a train could have come at any time, at which point there would have been nowhere to go. It was very frightening, but my brother and I made it across. Besides the constant awareness of the wilderness and the animals that hid within it, the second trying moment was the tunnel. We followed the tracks because we were unsure of any other path to get to the hotel where the training camp was held. It wasn't unusual to walk such long distances, even with the whole family. We had done it before with our parents, but they were used to the trails and the wilderness and knew their way. We had to follow the tracks. We started into the tunnel for the train and the light from the opposite end seemed the size of a nickel, and with no lights the entire distance to light our way. At any moment the train could have come, and with nowhere to hide, no where to get out of the way, we would have been hit and crushed by any coming train. After what seemed like ages, we finally made it back to light, resurfacing to the sun and the wild around. Not three minutes after we exited the tunnel, a train followed our steps and came out from the dark. We were lucky that we made it through."

I was lucky that I made it through. What I grasped for, or what I needed was the company to help me make it through. The tunnel is still near, and the tracks may be cyclical, but there are added rails each time you pass through the tunnel with success.