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I arrived home officially on day 362. After leaving Colorado, I made a pit stop in Kansas City to grab a bite to eat with a college friend before continuing on to St. Louis. I hadn’t slept at all the night before so by the time I was arriving home, around 10:45 PM, I already felt like I was in a dream. The experience was surreal, as if I was walking into someone elses life, looking at their old clothes, walking through their old house. It feels a bit more normal after a couple days, still odd though.

I’ve been asked by a few people if I’ll have some kind of final thought or if this will be the final post and I don’t know. There is still a lot from the journey bouncing around my head that needs to be digested so piecing together a set of or a single final thought may take a while. So I can say at least there will be one more post.

And a few quick facts: 362 days, 30 countries, 110 cities, 1269 miles by boat, 2662 miles by car, 3427 miles by train, 15245 miles by motorcycle, 43610 miles by plane and countless number of friends that made the trip worth taking. Thank you everyone!

It was a fun weekend in Denver at the Great American Beer Fest, I would write more but I need to go bail Jeremy out of jail (just kidding). A few facts, 2100 beers available to try, 12 in our crew, 4 hours to drink and 1 baguette.

After a couple days hanging with Dan in Arizona, hitting a Street Fighter 4 tournament and relaxing I continued on to Colorado. I spent the weekend in Grand Junction with Jeremy, his mom Tina and Becky where we hit up the Colorado Wine Fest. We’re back in Longmont now, getting ready for the Beer Fest this coming weekend.

The work is complete and the car is good to go. I took off this morning heading to Phoenix where I’ll spend a couple days with my BFF Dan lawlzor! I’m here now, posted up at a McCafe, have a cold drink. The car doesn’t have AC so driving through the desert was a bit hot. Anyways, a big thanks to Patrick for lending me the car and the hard work to get that bad boy up and running. After Phoenix, I’ll be heading to Colorado to visit Jeremy and stay through until Beer Fest.

Since the road trip around California, we’ve been working to get the car ready for it’s cross country journey. Partially mechanic work, partially legal work. In the meantime, we’ve been hanging out and checking out some things around the Riverside area. On Labor Day we went over to my cousin David’s place and met his wife Jessica and their son Brody. Had a good time drinking some beers, eating some BBQ and swapping stories. If things stay on track I’ll be leaving Saturday, it’s a wait and see.

Patrick and I took off around noon Friday and started making our way north. The final destination was Salt Point State Park, 75 miles or so north of San Francisco, where we were going to camp with his brother and friends. We made a few stop along the way, visiting friends of Patrick, taking night shots of the Golden Gate Bridge/San Francisco and finding surf boards on the side of the road. It was a big drive north and we didn’t get to the camp site until around 3 AM, then finding a raccoon in one of the coolers and pulling out a 6-pack of Hershey’s bars then scrambling up a tree. We spent some time the next day hanging out and taking a short hike to the ocean, then parted ways to continue the drive north, heading to Lake Shasta, just north of Redding, to visit another brother of Patrick’s. Along the way we stopped at a nice road house BBQ place along the coast, before heading in-land a bit and doing a little rally racing through the mountain roads. We got into Lake Shasta in the evening and headed to Patrick’s brothers house. We spent the next day touring around Lake Shasta and visiting with his brother. In the afternoon we took off to make the journey back and ended up going the entire way, getting back around 2 AM. On the way back we saw the wildfires at night, which had just started when we left for our road trip, and were now spread what seemed to be everywhere. Since then we’ve been relaxing and getting things sorted with the car to get it ready, perhaps the launch date will be later this week.

The last week in Portugal went out with bang. We had a couple dinners/BBQ with our friends, Pedro and Ana, at Surfing Baleal and crammed in as much surfing as possible. I sold the motorcycle and was forced to sell the surf board because of the cost to bring it on the plane. I took a bus to Lisbon on Wednesday, then flew to Frankfurt. I spent the night at the airport and took a flight yesterday afternoon to LA, USA. Back on American soil! My friend Patrick picked me up from the airport and we went straight out to meet up with his friends for sushi and sake. We going to take off today for a 4-day California road trip, then sometime after we come back I’ll be taking an old ’86 VW Golf, a spare car of Patrick’s, cross country and homeward bound. And I’ll be uploading pictures from Portugal as well as some from the last few days on the road, including Bilbao and the Guggenheim (although the order is all messed up because there are too many pictures), enjoy!

This is my official post for August =)

Not much to report other than the weather =) We’ve been in Baleal for about a month now, surfing, hanging out on the beaches and checking out the local nightlife. In the hopes of learning Portuguese, I’ve only managed numbers, thank yous, basic greetings and how to order beer (crucial lol). I’m off now to ride into Peniche and run some errands.