Friday Writings for Randos- Long Journeys

{Friday Writings for Randos - A weekly post that features pieces from other writers that touch some facet of the Randonneuring experience, even if that was not the author's intent. It's stuff that's best read out loud - slowly.} This week it's:.....

An excerpt from 

"Off the Map - Bicycling across Siberia" 

By Mark Jenkins

There is something about long journeys. 
You're lucky if you manage one in a lifetime, and by the time you are done you're swearing by God never I'll never do it again. 

But then some evening, months or years later, while you're browsing through the atlas, whistling or humming or eating, whop! A few weeks later you're gone. 
And if you somehow find yourself on just one more good journey, something gets in you, like a worm gone up through your feet. From then on, somewhere into every unbearable trip (because there will always be another trip), you'll swear up an down this is it dammit God dammit this is it, period. But then you'll find your way back into your own warm bed and clean bathroom and beautiful world and discover they're just as they were when you left, and after another month or two or six, this thing inside you will start to to swell and throb. You'll become restless and sore as if your bed were too soft and your bathroom to bright and suddenly your beautiful world has again grown moldy with mediocrity. So you'll pull out the atlas and fall into it and the next morning buy an airplane ticket and just when everyone thought you were finally figuring it out, you're gone.