Better than wiskey on a cold day

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Colour me in gold – JP Cooper
Golden leaves - Passenger

"You’re bottomless with wonders, like a flooded quarry I could dive into. You’ll grow deeper, I’ll grow fonder. Love goes deeper than the fishes into you."

-Nizlopi

It is not true that the things you own define you. They say something about you, with the way you keep them, what had you choose them at first and how you use them, but it would be unfair to pretend knowing me by looking at my bike and bags. You know someone by the mark they leave on you. Knowing someone is a risky science; it is never absolute and it will never leave you. The picture will get more complex with time; but as soon as they give you their colors, they will stain your hands and all that you are. Knowing something or someone is complicated; you have to be able to explain the subject to yourself in your own words before you can ever say that you know anything about it.
Now, describe yourself in a few words.
Are you defined by your job? By your religion? What makes you different from the other members of your team. Was your gender the first thing you stated?
Your interests, the push that drives you toward your goals, the trigger to your laughter or the light that make your eyes shine and brighten up in your worst moments, those are the things I want to know about. Yes being an accountant makes you good with numbers, but how would you describe your favourite song?
Because skills can be learned, formulas can be practiced, but feelings and tastes come from your own little world, it defines you.
What do you let others see, feel of you? I often felt that people didn’t get me, or knew me for who I truly was. You have to let them see, that’s why. Take the chance. They are taking the exact same risk that you are.

And now comes the thing that has been going ‘round and ‘round in my head all week: there is a little part of me that resides in my dearest friends, and the other way around.
I sat down and wrote a letter to a friend. I felt silly. What was there for me to write about that had not been said on Facebook and would hold his interest. As I sat before the blank page I imagined that he was on the other side of the table. How he would react to my doubts, how he would laugh at my insecurities and reassure me.
Without realizing I was smiling like an idiot and writing about all of those little things, how his presence was making me feel, even though it was only in my imagination.
After the writing session I just laid on my back and remembered. Filled the room with my favourite humans and friends, heard the laughter I have heard so many times and as it always does, it lightens my heart. For all of my special people I have those small moments that have never been photographed or documented, but they are clear as day in my heart, and when I think about her my head is filled with this song by Daniel Bélanger, there’s this book cover and then I am back in Rosemont on that day we stayed 5hours in the breakfast restaurant just talking shit and abusing of the free coffee refill.
It makes me feel at home even though there is no physical place and there are many different description; as many as there are souls that touched mine.
Home is a concept that you define in your heart, it resides in your soul and roots in all of those that you have allowed to connect with all that you are. Even if I am far, far from being stable emotionally, far from the house where I grew up, far from being sure of the direction I take, far from your arms; my soul is reaching and our hearts will connect if you trust in them. They know the way, you just have to get rid of all your insecurities, stop trying to guess the reaction and just be the cause.
I have learned that you can never truly know someone’s reaction unless you let it happen. Anger is human, so oh so human. But also is surprise and all of the little connections that will happen in the other’s brain and that you could not have thought about.
So go on and shock. Make a fool of yourself. Be vulnerable. Accept your miscalculations, but voice them first. Every time you open your heart you give yourself a chance to connect and grow.
I might be traveling alone in another country, but I am never forgotten, abandoned or even lonely; my heart is kept warm by a multitude of wonderful individual.
It may sound cheesy or whatever, but it is what keeps me smiling through the cold, the lonely hours and the rain; the memories we build together.

I might not look like much on my adventure, but I am the melody of a hundred beating hearts, booming laughter and words of undercover love.

Here’s that rainy day – Bill Evans

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Photos

Just outside of Townsend, Montana
I am so freaking trilled to be back on the road. I don't know why I stopped so long; it's been a confusing month.
I have been riding for three days, three grey, rainy, cold as hell days. I have not biked that much, just enough to get me to the beautiful city of Helena, but it has been cold and miserable. The kind of coffee'n reading kinda days. But it is Fall in Montana. The angry sky is glorious everywhere I look. The dying ground colors everything in it's last shout for greatness before decay. The air is chilling so I do not over-heat while biking...
I am so freaking trilled to be back on the road.

Helena, the beautiful one
Before leaving Belgrade I found a book in a yard sale, a book that is really close to me and my sister.
While writing that piece I was also thinking about all of those moment where my lack of self-confidence kept me from getting to know interesting people I met. This instantaneous-social media era has good and bad in it; I am not fully comfortable with it. But one of the pros: it maps everything and keeps your world together even through time and distance.
Cons: I'm constantly glued to my Iphone. I need to work on that.
There is no more smoke and the weather forecasting says it will be sunny for the rest of the week. I'll turn off my phone and go on some hikes, hoping to get some pictures of the area :).