Hey, I’m Chloe, for those of you that don’t know. I’m managing the Long Ride blog and site and everything. My dad wanted me to record something about my feelings about the ride.

I don’t know that I have a lot of complex feelings about the ride, other than I’m really excited that he’s doing it again. I think it’s cool that he’s done a few different rides with different people in his life.

He’s had some that are pure fun, like the one he did with Lewis and Kathy and Kent, and then some that were just brutal, like the one he did with me. 🙂 The second one was fun.

And then he’s doing this one with his best friend from high school, which I think is just wonderful to rekindle that and to see what happens. And I think doing rides with different people brings out different awareness, brings out different blindspots, brings out different parts of you, and that’s really valuable.

I think what he said in one of his most recent posts about doing something like this in order to practice what you preach is really where it’s at. I think a lot of people don’t do that in their lives.

It’s really important to like get yourself out there, out of your bubble, off the Internet, you know, away from everything that you’re familiar with in order to grow and learn and be introspective. I think there comes a point when you’re just sort of doing your thing in your daily life where you can only push yourself so far in the way of growth. So getting yourself out of your daily comforts and habits is one of the best ways to grow and push yourself, to change your mind about things and be malleable.

I am the person that just picked up and moved to Spain for four months after college, and it was one of the most valuable growth experiences of my life. I am constantly craving adventure like that and getting outside of my own space that I know and that I’m comfortable with in order to have growth opportunities. Besides just having fun. I mean, fun is number one.

So so I’m proud of him, and proud that he’s doing it again and putting himself in a place where he doesn’t know what’s going to happen. He’s nervous, and it’s super long and hard, and he’s with someone that he doesn’t spend a lot of time with anymore, so there’s going to be all kinds of ups and downs.

The other thing that I’ve talked about with my mom is just how healthy it is to be able to do this inside of your relationship.

They’ve always had a lot of their own interests and things that they do outside of spending time with each other. I try to model that in my relationship too, because I think you have to just be your own person.

You can be married forever and have kids and do all the things and still be your own person, be your individual self, and still have a great relationship. You have to be have really honest and open communication about it and what you’re doing and be on the same page about it, of course.

But them modeling having independence and their own lives inside of their relationship has been super valuable for me and how I do my relationship.

So I think that’s about it. Proud of you, Dad. It’s fun to just watch someone out there doing their thing and having a good time and going against the grain, swimming upstream.

So keep at it.