Time is cyclical, not linear. Our convenient little units keep repeating themselves. We wake up each morning, make ourselves busy all day, and go to bed at night. We watch Friends on Thursday, football on Sundays. We go to the lake in the summer and the ski area in the winter.

Time runs on a treadmill. It loops back on itself. We are tricked into thinking it runs on forever, unchanging. We lose urgency because -- after all -- there will always be another Monday.

This all makes perfect sense and it's darn helpful for things like knowing when to pay bills and turn on the television, but what I'm starting to realize as I continue along on this trip is that it's completely artificial. It's something we made up. It's useful, but I think it's a little misleading.

You see, Sarah and I have stepped out of those cycles. And things look different here.

We arrive somewhere. We see sights and meet people. But then, much too soon, we have to move on. We leave, never to see that town, that person, that site again. It's gone. It's in our past and it's not coming again.

I think that life -- like this trip -- is linear, not cyclical. It has a start, a bunch of stuff happens, and then it's over.

A high-school teacher once said that the sign of truly bad writing is quoting song lyrics. I have a feeling that the same rule applies to quoting lines from movies so I will avoid the "carpe diem" reference, but let me provide my own dime-store knockoff:

CARPE VIDA     (Am I mixing Latin and Spanish? Well, who cares!)

Realizing this now, while I'm still on my trip is a good thing. It helps me appreciate every little drop of juice I squeeze out of it. It drives me out of the hotel room into the rain.