(Later on) Mile 6,901: The Night I Peed on the Bedroom Floor

Pulled over on the side of the road somewhere in eastern South Dakota. I knew I was somewhere east because it was flat, and there was nothing around. Safe to pull over onto the shoulder and take a leak.

My wife was on the bike with me. We felt the rumble strips just to the right of the painted line, placed there evenly to wake up sleeping drivers. Didn't work.

The bike is still running. This won't take long.

"Hey!"

My lady raises her voice. She's not yelling, but her voice carries a frantic sense of urgency.

"What are you doing?"

I don't respond.

"You're peeing!"

"I know," I reply calmly and matter-of-fact. This was not a piece of information I lacked.

"Hey! You're peeing."

I don't get it. Why am I being coached on this?

And then I realized that I was not on the road, but standing by the window on my wife's side of the bed right there in our bedroom. Not in South Dakota. But back in the good old United States of Texas.

But wait. I'm on the side of the road.

No, I'm not. I'm peeing on the bedroom floor.

This is what 4,129 miles in two weeks does to the brain. You keep trying to come home from Oz saying, "There's no place like home." And there's not. But there's also no place like the road. The body is back, but the mind is still out there somewhere.