Iwanabikinaui

Pictures: here.   Ride: here. 

Flying into Honolulu in a window seat will make you think of Pearl Harbor. If you don't, then you are heartless, asleep, or not American, and only the latter is excusable. Once you land, and you're not in a movie or on an Apple Vacation, you will not get lei'd. You might get screwed though, like I was, and end up one bike-in-a-box short of complete.

My bike was in Phoenix, doing who knows what. She showed up the next morning though, delivered to my hotel room door, and I didn't ask any questions. I was just glad to have her back. I reassembled her and was so excited in doing so that I over-cranked a bolt in the stem and snapped it.

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.