This feeling of peace, the beach at the end of the day, a state of divine grace: carry it forward.

This town is terrifying. Flat, wide, no people. Why a seaside town built so far from the beach? But what a beach. Wide and long, running on forever, surfers out at the point where the river meets the sea.

Seventy-two years old, the last seven spent traveling the world on his bicycle. He let me go first because he thought he’d be slower. A little whole later I stopped to take a picture and he pulled up. “Trudeau, that was his name,” he said, “It just came back to me.”

A birthday lesson from the universe: sometimes things will be hard. You’ll be tired and lost. You’ll think, “I can’t go on,” and then it’ll start to rain. Just keep pedaling, one turn after another, the strength will come.

I forgot about the first seven days of suffering, my ass hurts, well I didn’t really forget, my lungs are burning, I just forgot how bad it could be, and I feel like I’m going to puke.

The start of an adventure and I’m thrilled. Cranking up hills and taking pictures of the moon — I am less in shape than I thought and I am at peace.

You feel it in your blood, and in your mind you can see that long stretch of road running beside between the mountains and the ocean. Tomorrow: adventure.

The wind howls against the windows all night and when you wake up in the morning the clouds move fast across the sky.

And suddenly you meet a whole clan of people who you’d never met before, and they’re all family, and you can’t help but think, yeah, this feels really nice.

The singer gets on stage. Now he’s not Elvis, he’s just himself. “The three most important things in life,” he says, “Are Faith, Hope, and Love.” Later I see him sitting in the buffet with a chubby woman in a staff uniform who nods her head vigorously while she talks. The singer talks in his native Kiwi accent, but occasionally a little bit of The King slips in.