Summer vacation, oh boy! (unedited)

I'm turning the Fourth of July holiday into a vacation week. I'm going to visit and stay with friends at their summer place a couple of hours north of the Twin Cities.

I'll have a good time, I'll bike several hours while I'm there and I'll occasionally forget that my life is empty and meaningless.

Rick Warren wrote a book I have never read, a book about a "Purpose Driven Life." All I know is I don't have one, and I have tried not to care about that, but it bothers me. There are people who are dying that would give the world to to have a healthy future ahead of them. I'm relatively healthy and well, yet I wouldn't argue if the ghost of Peter Falk knocked on my door right now and told me my meter has expired.

Chip is coming to visit next weekend. We're going to two Twins/Brewers games during the Fourth of July weekend. Then I head north to the lake for five nights. I'm going to a minor league baseball game one night, weather permitting, I'm playing in a free poker tournament at a bar another night and I'm hoping to spend several hours on my bike. It's not the summer vacation I want, but it's better than nothing.

One summer when I was in high school I made a difficult choice about my future, a decision that became clear to me thanks to the many hours I spent on the seat of my Schwinn bicycle. I'm not sure if I will find the clarity I seek next week, but I'm desperate for a sign, any sign, that the past 40 years weren't in vain. I don't have the energy for another 18 years of bicycling.