We started with the idea that the Meaning of Life or the Reason for Living would be the thing or things that have you getting up each morning. If we are depressed or despondent, we might have forgotten what these things are, or we might know what they are but somehow can not reach them given where we are or what we are currently doing.  The hope is that in Cycle Touring we can not only remember or learn  why life is great, but also reach with the bike the things that make it so.

At the end of each day of this trip we wrote down the one main thing that came to mind from that day that added Meaning to Life  or that gave a Reason for Living that day. This, as we say. could be something we had rather forgotten, or something that the bikes brought within reach.

Over 90 days of travel, that gave us 90 things to think about. It's hard to get a handle on so many things, so we grouped them, and came up with twelve groups. The twelve groups themselves fell into categories - three of them. So we can begin by reporting that the Meaning of Life has something to do with People, with Pleasures,  and with Personal Development. All of this, we claim, can be found or achieved  through Cycle Touring, which is good news for the creators or readers of CycleBlaze!

People has something to do with thinking about family, about connecting with old friends, and about meeting new people.

Pleasures has something to do with food, music, beauty in nature and in architecture, peace and quiet, and smooth cycle paths.

Personal Development involves solving problems, overcoming physical challenges, and learning about geography and history.

This list, of course, is just us. Somebody else might be more interested, for example, in "dancing", or someone might cycle to where they can do "gambling" or even "drinking". But for those, you would have to read a different blog, and we can't claim to have found or even looked for those joys. We do at least claim that we found everything that Maria (Julie Andrews) listed as a favourite thing in Sound of Music.

Since I am a statistician, I won't leave it at that, but rather offer a view of the relative importance of the twelve things on our current tour. The view is a bit biased, because only one thing was flagged per day. I also notice that although in towns we always looked first to the architecture and notably the church, we seldom flagged that at the end of the day. Anyway, here we are (Shades of blue: People, shades of purple: Pleasure , shades of orange: Personal Development).

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From this we see that the one single most important thing in life is Pleasure, which in one way or another garnered 49% of our mentions. Among pleasures, Food was very important, but it seems to have been edged out by finding Beauty and appreciating Nature.  

Also,  Pleasure did not quite win the popular vote, since something about People, together with  Personal Development comes in at 51%. And between People, and Personal Development one is 25% and the other 26%.

What do you think? Does any of this jive with your life or if you are a cyclist, with your life and your touring? Are you living for Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll? Does your family rate more than 9% of your thoughts? All that would be fair enough. Let us know in the comments.