And so we beat on... - Day 98: Montauk to New York City, NY

Forgive the melodramatic title. I just can't help but think about The Great Gatsby after achieving a goal and having no idea what to do with myself, as the moral is that everything goes to shit if you run out of goals to strive for. Can't say the book really illustrated that well when all the bad things that happened were pretty much unrelated to any lack of striving, but that's beside the point.

Something fell on me and woke me up. It weighed about as much as a light sandwich, I thought. I started to peel back the tarp I had thrown over my face when the sandwich started walking around on top of me. I paused. The sandwich cooed. I finally poked my head out to see a morning dove performing some kind of victory dance on my stomach. I only lasted a couple seconds before I had to laugh, which unfortunately scared it off.

It was really nice to wake up to a sign that nothing needed to change after achieving my goal: interesting things could still happen, and the adventure wasn't over until I decided it was. Hopefully I'll find some way to never decide that.

I caught the Long Island Express to Patchogue and wandered around the town for the rest of the day with Jon and his girlfriend. We saw a giant telescope in somebody's shop, went to a nature reserve, caught a frog, and handfed some unfortunately-tame wildlife of various sizes, then returned to eat pizza and hang out at an event where Jon was doing sound. I again slept in a bed pre-warmed by Jon's small dog.