Where’s Nico?

Home is where I want to be
Pick me up and turn me round
I feel numb, born with a weak heart
I guess I must be having fun

Let’s start this off by letting you know where Nico is:

Our fair city! That’s right – Nico is home. Kansas City here we come.

If you’ve been reading this blog, you know I have been naming the posts after Talking Heads songs. I had planned on using “City of Dreams” for the post when we got back, and I had used ‘This Must Be the Place’ already back in April, when we were in Wichita Mountain National Refuge. But I’ve had ‘This Must Be the Place’ in my head all week, and there are no laws that say I can’t use the same title twice on the blog. So ‘This Must Be the Place’ it is.

‘This Must Be the Place’ is from the ‘Speaking in Tongues’ album (and there’s a great live version of it on ‘Stop Making Sense’, which is where I got that GIF above with David Byrne dancing with a lamp) and it’s grown to be my favorite song they ever did.

The less we say about it the better
Make it up as we go along
Feet on the ground, head in the sky
It’s okay, I know nothing’s wrong, nothing

I thought it may be fun to share some stats about this amazing journey we just completed:

• Total days on our adventure: 169
• Total miles driven: 19,097
• Number of locations we slept at along the way: 43
• Total miles hiked (at least where we had AllTrails turned on): 472 miles with 49,327 feet of elevation gain over 113 hikes
• Number of states visited: 17
• National parks, monuments, forests, wilderness refuges and such visited: 45 that I can remember off-hand
• Number of chipped teeth: 1
• Number of regrets: 0

Hi yo, I got plenty of time
Hi yo, you got light in your eyes
And you’re standing here beside me
I love the passing of time

There’s so much I’m still processing about this trip. I thought I’d share a picture of the day we left, and a picture of us now that we’re home. I promise I’ll shave and get myself a haircut soon enough.

In some ways, this reminds me of two of my favorite albums in my dad’s record collection. He had these two ‘greatest hits’ double albums for the Beatles – still my favorite band, even though that almost feels cliche to say. Fans often refer to these albums as the ‘red’ and the ‘blue’ album, with the red album focusing on 1962-66 and the blue album on the 1967-70 output. I remember staring at the covers – both are pics taken by Angus McBean at the EMI offices, with the band staring down over a railing. The first picture was taken in 1963 and the second in 1969 – six years apart, but they look like completely different people. I’d look at the covers and consider what an amazing journey those six years had been for these guys.

Our before and after pics are six months apart, not six years, but I also feel like I’m quite different than I was the day I left.

Never for money, always for love
Cover us and say goodnight
Say goodnight

It feels so unusual to be back in Kansas City. Feeling AC as I walk in the front door just feels kind of strange, after living without it for six months. After being very stingy with water usage and power consumption and all the other stuff you have to worry about when living ‘off the grid’, it feels almost criminal to leave water running as I wash my hands or take a shower.

Home is where I want to be
But I guess I’m already there
I come home, she lifted up her wings
I guess that this must be the place

In some ways, I feel almost feral – like some freak who was stranded on a desert island and just returned to civilization and it all feels just so weird. I think Kristen feels the same – as does Nico, if I had to guess at his thinking. We thought he’d be giddy when he saw our house again, but to be honest, when we got back, he almost seemed mildly depressed to not be on the road together anymore. That said, he was super excited to see our mail lady, Lindsey after being home for a couple of hours – she always has a treat and some special hugs for him.

We live in a 99 year old house that straddles the Brookside and Waldo neighborhoods in Kansas City. It’s a small place – maybe 1400 feet or so. It now feels massive to me. We’ve spent the past six months living in a trailer with 208 square feet – 231 with the kitchen slide out extended. Our fridge the past six months is all of six cubic feet, with another two cubic feet for the freezer.

I’ve felt this way before, to a smaller degree. When I was a teen, I was very into the Boy Scouts. I remember taking a couple of trips to Philmont Scout Ranch in Cimmaron, New Mexico. At Philmont, your troop leaves the main camp for a ten day excursion through the back country, carrying all your supplies on your back and picking up food rations every three or four days along the way. When I came home one year, my folks took me out to one of our favorite restaurants – the Ronnenberg Inn in the Amana Colonies, about a half hour outside of our hometown of Iowa City. They stared at me as I was mopping up the juices from the meal with the table bread to make sure I ate every bite. It seemed weird and wasteful to not finish everything after living on every scrap I could get in Philmont. I’m sure I looked like a freak to them, as I was sopping up the liquid off the red cabbage.

The last full week of July, there’s a big event in Iowa every year called RAGBRAI. About twenty thousand people each year meet up along the Missouri River on the western end of Iowa, and they spend a week biking across the state, ending at the Mississippi River on the eastern end of the state. I’ve done that ride a dozen or so times over the years, and there’s a similar feeling when you get to the end. You’ve been living this very simple life, often camping in tents or sleeping on basement floors at host houses, living on a diet of beer and whatever food you buy off vendors along the route and just biking. It’s always blazing hot and humid. The feeling passes after a few days, but coming home always feels just kind of off.

One thing I loved about RAGBRAI is that I usually did it with the same group of folks. I was part of a team of twenty or so folks based out of Colorado, but the team was composed of people from all over the country. The vast majority of these guys and gals were folks I knew exclusively from the RAGBRAI weeks – I never saw them at any other point in the year. But when I’d show up a year later and see them, it felt like no time had passed at all since we were last together. Being off-grid with people for extended periods gave you a unique closeness.

In a similar way, the past six months brought Kristen and Nico and I closer. Not that we weren’t close before, obviously – Kristen is the love of my life, and Nico is the coolest dog on the planet. But when you spend six months together in such close quarters and largely isolated from everyone and everything else, you really see each other in such an unvarnished light. It definitely deepened and enriched my relationship with both of them in ways I really hadn’t anticipated going into this adventure.

I can’t tell one from another
Did I find you, or you find me?
There was a time before we were born
If someone asks, this where I’ll be, where I’ll be

If you think you have the best parents in the world, I regret to inform you that you are wrong. They’re at best number two, because I was raised by the world record holders when it comes to parenting. One of the main things I’m thankful for when it comes to my parents is how through their actions, they taught me to focus on gratitude. If you’re having maybe not the day you were hoping for, take a few minutes to just think about all the blessings you have in your life. Appreciate how lucky you are for those things that weren’t even in your control. And if it’s possible, reach out to those who are responsible for those blessings and thank them. If it’s not possible, then maybe share stories of those blessings with others. At a minimum, hold them in your heart. Your day will feel better – I promise. Tell those you love that you love them. Hug more. As sappy as I realize this sounds, spreading joy is a great way to increase your own joy.

Sure there have been plenty of tough moments along the way, but I’m so grateful for the life I’ve had and especially for where my life is now. I’m in the ‘best of times’. Who knows how long that will last, but I intend to fully appreciate it and be aware of it while I’m in that window.

Hi yo, we drift in and out
Hi yo, sing into my mouth
Out of all those kinds of people
You got a face with a view

While it feels strange to be writing this to you from within my climate controlled home with an endless supply of running water and no black tanks to have to empty, I’m very thankful to be home. I’m excited to catch up with friends that I’ve missed dearly these past six months, and to hit some Kansas City Royals games during this magic season they’re having. At the same time, I can’t wait to get back out on the road again, as Willie would say. Kristen and Nico and I will be doing this again in 2025 and 2026 and on and on, as long as we’re enjoying it and physically capable of doing it. We’re probably going to make the trips a bit shorter going forward – our current thinking is that we’ll do two three-month trips each year, rather than the one six month excursion – but there’s so many wonderful places we’ve seen that we’d like to see again, and so many wonderful places we have yet to explore.

As Kristen and Nico and I hiked around the country, we often did it in silence. It was an amazing time to reflect on all I was experiencing and all that I had to be thankful for. Man, it puts you in such a good place in your heart and mind and soul.

I’m just an animal looking for a home, and
Share the same space for a minute or two
And you love me ’til my heart stops
Love me ’til I’m dead
Eyes that light up, eyes look through you
Cover up the blank spots
Hit me on the head

Several people I’ve talked to along the way ask what the highlight of the trip was. That’s an impossible question to answer, of course. I sure loved Escalante and the Oregon Coast an awful lot. But the truth is, the highlight was simply that I had a chance to live this existence where I was with the woman I love and the chihuahua I feared and admired and was constantly entertained and impressed by, and we got to just to navigate this journey and handle any weird curveballs thrown our way. I loved the simplicity of starting our days out scratching Nico’s belly as he stretched out in our bed, hiking some beautiful trail or splashing around in some lovely lake, making dinner together, and listening to the baseball game as we had a drink in the evening. Just idyllic. Thanks for coming out to this blog and letting me bend your ear about the adventures along the way.

– Ken, 8/27/2024