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Day 196. We arrived safely back in Oklahoma early this morning. My son was right. When you walk outside here, it feels like someone IS trying to make stew out of you. I liked how it felt in Durango much better. You could spend all day outside and not feel like an entree.

Tom's service was, indeed, memorable. It included the delightful surprise of getting to see Steve (from the houseboat trip with Tom, Tim, and Dana) for the first time since we floated about on Lake Powell. One speaker acknowledged that Tom certainly wouldn't like the fact that it was held indoors (in an auditorium just big enough to hold everyone), nor would he have felt comfortable in such a large gathering (she mentioned he put a limit on how many people could attend his retirement party). Everyone was certain that he would have been aghast at the amount of media attention. Tom preferred to go quietly about his business of caring for the teeth of children in the world's most under served countries. Gotta love an introvert. I would add that he may have squirmed about the length of the service. I certainly did. Methodists are conditioned to church ending at precisely 50 minutes so we can dash out and beat the Baptists to lunch.

I am going to return my focus to cycling, meditation, and blogging. Focus and action. Both are legacies left by Tom. I have welcomed the structure and constancy of my sitting practice during this challenging time; however, the Monkeys have been difficult to silence in the last several days. So many swirling thoughts. If there was an Olympic event titled Excessive Thought to Avoid Emotion, I would be a strong contender for the Gold.

I spent all evening wrestling with the dinosaur, who won tonight's bout so I am writing in the darkness of my vacated office building. My thoughts and emotions are equal parts mush. I will engage the only reasonable response: get my butt on my cushion.

Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc