Why Travel: Reason #45

Location: West Chester, PA
Only one more day until three months with the bike in Hawaii, Australia and New Zealand. I could leave this moment. But since I can't, I dug up the box of stuff from my last trip to Australia 21 years ago, and I found a bus ticket, a ticket for seat F9 at the Sydney Opera House for this guy on the 17th of November, my journal, and also $2.40 in australian coins. So, I am pretty much set in the money arena because, as you well know, $2.40 in 1991 money is worth a whole hell of a lot more now.

In 1991, at age 19, I packed a backpack and spent 10 months in Australia, Indonesia, Thailand, and Japan. Even my parents really don't remember how that happened, except for the fact that I was not happy in college. How that jumped to a one-way ticket to Australia with a couple hundred bucks escapes us all, but I have to think they might have been trying to kill me.

It was a fantastic time, as my journal recounts. It's full of scribble and poems and drawings and names with numbers attached. Some of them I can remember, but most are lost on me. Some of it is just words, like "Central Java" or times, like "2:54AM" and a date. Nothing at all to clarify why I wrote them down at all, just a timestamp on a page.

There are pages of short stories that begin with dramatic first lines like this: " Poochai could cry on demand." It's full of the people I met, the price I paid for a rented motorcycle, the three nights I spent sleeping on a park bench in Shepparton, Australia, and the girls that stole my brain and my heart if just for a while. But mostly it's chock filled with pining for my high-school sweetheart. Jesus, I was in love.

Old passport, ID, coins, and a ticket to a show. 

It's also full of some pretty good shit for a 19 year old on his own in a foreign country with no money and not knowing anyone. Specifically; it lacks all sense of fear. Everything is fun. Everything is great and beautiful and fantastic and it all smells just like a ripe rose.

When I showed up in Sydney, I got a bus and I found myself a hostel. I sold potpourri door to door for a spell. Then I amped it up and joined a traveling band of misfits who sold mass-produced art door-to-door. I would tell my victims we were a group of young American artists on tour in Australia and that it was all of our own art. I sold a ton.

We would stay in caravan parks at night and drink beer and tell stories of our day. The husband who showed up drunk and pulled a gun, the little girl who emptied her piggy bank in front of me because she wanted the painting of the two swans (which I gave to her for free.)

There were six of us, David (aussie) who was right all of the time, his girlfriend Veronique (French) who I felt I was meeting for the first time every time I spoke to her, Francois (french) who swore by matches and categorically dismissed any other method for lighting a cigarette, Brad (aussie) who wore sunglasses all of the time and would not miss a chance to tell you about his parakeet named Jesus, and then me and then Inga (german), who I fell in love with very quickly. Inga and I had the most beautiful one month together of never having sex you could ever imagine.

I pick up these journals and I don't ever have to wonder why I travel.

Share the good stuff. Repel the shit.

Location: West Chester, PA
As much as I dislike daily re-assurance type crap like pinning a post-it to your mirror that tells you to like you and that you are special, I do occasionally find myself stopped in my tracks over a particularly good horoscope or a random spam-mail that speaks to me. Since it's the last few minutes of the year, and we are all in a bit of a look-back mode, here we go:

The quote below has been on my fridge for a year now, because it speaks to me.  On it's own it can be a pretty powerful reminder all year that when it feels like everything is uphill and the wind is strong enough to make taking a breath an effort, that if you're fighting the positive fight, you're in a fight you can't lose.

That's not a fanny pack, yank.

Location: Delray Beach, FL
I cant always recount the specifics behind the oomph I need to make a decision, but I can tell you that as spontaneous as they may seem, behind them lay a thousand tiny dead-ends. In other words, I don't just decide to book a ticket to Hawaii, Australia, and New Zealand (as I have.) In truth, I decide the fuck out of it.

I feel extremely light because of it. Mostly because the click I made to confirm my purchase took close to a year. In March of this year, freezing my balls off somewhere in Portugal, eating a dish of fried food whose contents where unknown to me, I made up my mind that next time, next time I would go somewhere where English came first, and where summer got flipped. There are only a couple places like that and, well, there you have it.

Beware the Donkey Strangler

Location: Miami, FL Photos: here
I flip flop between wanting to be on the map and lost in space. I've flopped about 20 times and I always come back to the map. At the time of my last post, I was about as close to wanting to drift on into space as I have come, hence the long delay. I was also staying on a sailboat for the last few days, and without wi-fi. 

From Boca Grande I went to Punta Gorda, and I had a shitty dinner. The next day I drove across the Everglades, where the last 275 Miccosukee Indians on earth, relegated to the middle of an asshole, tempt passerby's with knick-knacks and air-boat rides. 

Price of Admission

Location: Boca Grande, FL

I bite my fingernails. Not all of the time, but some of the time, and I agree that it's gross. So did Gwynne, my brief girlfriend in 8th grade, who was tall and blonde and thin and just loved kissing. She told me if I didn't stop biting my nails she would break up with me.

I quit it for her, but only until the Halloween Eve when she broke up with me anyway, right after the scary hay ride, right after I was certain I might get a handjob. That night I chewed them down to the wick.

Snake Hoppin In Gainesville

Location: Gainesville, FL

Sometimes I go somewhere because someone tells me I should. And since I am disinclined to question anyone's judgement when I don't know a single thing to the contrary, I will. And that's what led me to Gainesville.

While the city itself doesn't do too much for me, I enjoyed it mostly. There are several nice pedestrian areas with lots of bars and restaurants. The University of Florida is beautiful, although I don't understand why the frat/sorority houses are so ugly. They look hastily built, and as if someone, too late to the party, came by and said,"It looks like a fucking prison. Add white pillars and hope no one notices."