This speaks to me!
In 2015, a friend and I resolved to ride our bicycles across Japan. I had felt the yearn to go on an adventure that engaged my whole body and encouraged exploration in an environment completely new to me. I deeply desired some version of crossing Middle Earth, and a bike ride with a start and end point but no plan in between felt like just the thing.
In April of 2016 we set off from Kagoshima, and a few weeks later we ended our trip in Osaka. We made it roughly a third as far as we had wanted, but it’s a trip we’ll never forget, and one that we desperately want to continue someday. It scratched an itch I didn’t know how else I could scratch.