I began solo distance cycling before the current cycling craze began. It became for me an outlet for frustration at losing a college girlfriend to her professor/tutor. As such it was successful because when I returned to school after a solo trip in Europe I was refreshed and full of optimism, both romantically and career-wise.

Here is another story:

In my senior year at college (the first time, I have two BAs) one day I took a break from studies and walked randomly through the library stacks, turned into a random aisle, went to a random bookcase, a random shelf, and picked out a random book. It was a book I had never heard of, obviously for me, but not unknown to a lot of people. It was the I Ching. I read in the introduction that the book was to be used as an oracle, choosing one out of the 64 texts by a random process. Now I know a lot more about the book. But while others know a lot more about it, I found it without any guidance from anyone, in every sense one can imagine. It stands with me like some other things that have happened to me, one of which is that day when I left the legend in Santee. Not everyone knows what the I Ching is. Not everyone knows what a legend, as I described it, is. It is for the individual to weigh. I accept it all, and I try to understand the disbelief, if that is descriptive. The comment from way124 is all I need to feel justified in making such a "way out" post. You can pile an awful lot of derision on a single comment like that and still consider yourself valid. I also appreciate the qualified compliment from orikal that it was "relatively well-written". As for explanation, I am happy with the post as it stands.