Settling In

It has taken a while to settle into this journey, for cycling daily to become my normality, my purpose for the day. It's a mindset. The change has been for the balance of my perception to become more weighted towards the journey I am on each day rather than the destination. It is something I seem to slip into quite quickly when walking but seems to have taken a little longer on my bike. Even while enjoying the route, too often in the first few days I would find my gaze slipping to my speedometer to see the distance I had travelled, my mind focused more on 'how far?' or 'how long?' than on embracing the day and all that was around me. And all too often I was disappointed: it had never moved that far. Maybe the adjustment has taken longer because there is a perception of being so much faster on a bike; distances should slip by. It takes a while to register that this is not the case; I may be going four times faster than walking but it seems to have taken time for the mind to acknowledge I am also going four times as far in a day too. And each day is only a tiny bite out of the crossing of France let alone the crossing of most of Europe. This trip is not about reaching Constanta and the Black Sea, it's about going there.