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July 15 - August 28, 2024
Read this the way you would receive a long story told over dinner.
if discontent is your disease, travel is medicine. It resensitizes. It opens you up to see outside the patterns you follow. Because new places require new learning. It forces your childlike self back into action.
This, I believe, is why time moves so slowly as a child—why school days creep by and summer breaks stretch on. Your brain is paying attention to every second. It must as it learns the patterns of living. Every second has value. But as you get older, and the patterns become more obvious, time speeds up. Especially once you find your groove in the working world. The layout of your days becomes predictable, a routine, and once your brain reliably knows what’s next, it reclines and closes its eyes. Time pours through your hands like sand.
We show up as adults, confused by our own thinking, and with time running out.
travel has a way of shaking the brain awake.
When you have a weird name, one that’s uncommon enough to stand out but not a nightmare to pronounce, people remember you. And when they remember you—especially when you’re young—it builds confidence. You feel special, worthy of being remembered.
But the big fancy adults preach the opposite as well. They say, “fall in line” and then, in the same breath, “think different, take risks!” We are told, “follow your passion” and “stay hungry,” at every commencement and graduation speech. This mixture of school and risk is the holy cocktail of American ideals, and for those rare beacons of exceptional success, it turns their life stories into fables. But for ordinary folks, it is a difficult road to walk. Be sensible, but be wild. Be ordered, but be free. Be responsible, but take risks.
This practical optimism gave me the worldview that life had many paths, all there in front of me always.
The carefree timelessness of my youth was rattled in my twenties. A kind of panic set in. Time became visible. Each choice I made began to feel more and more final, as if every choice was the death of all the others. Millions of doors were locking behind me as I passed them in the hallway.
It often dawns too late that we have only one life, only one path, and the choices we make become the story line of our lives.
It wasn’t the job that chased me away, it was mortality.
The mark of adulthood is when we happen to life.
I was now an adult, with or without my consent, and adults are responsible for their lives. I wasn’t going to become someone I didn’t choose to be.
Friends do not walk blindly, one behind the other. They walk shoulder-to-shoulder. I wanted clarity from my friend. To hear answers to my questions.
When you don’t know what to do, you travel. You go out and see. You have to rattle the bed, shake yourself out.
But with hands full, I couldn’t receive anything new. And I couldn’t see that I was clutching both treasure and poison.
The point of bringing up their parenting style is this: somehow, my parents had tricked me. They had made me respect them and want to emulate them, all without me realizing it. And comically, I came to the conclusion that I wanted to go on a great adventure in a way that felt completely original to me, and spontaneous. Like I was the first person to ever think of such a thing.
By thirty, I had learned a valuable lesson: You are not an idiot. It’s okay if you don’t know everything. Don’t pretend. Ask all the questions you want. It’s fine if you’re not prepared for the zombie apocalypse at all times.
And I’d done it for a grand total of a week. Damn it. So typical.
He believed nothing was more powerful than example.
I knew it wasn’t forever, but it felt like it. What if my friends went on without me? What if my absence revealed that I was never really necessary? What if no one notices I’m gone?
I had, in normal fashion, trailed off from talking to God to simply thinking. Talking to myself. I always scolded myself for doing this. For doing it wrong. For not actually talking to God. “Amen.”
The start of a big journey makes every detail feel monumental. At least it does for me.
(It’s hard to find a cool bike helmet.)
“I thought you didn’t believe in money?” I smiled as I said it. “It’s not that I don’t believe in it. I want to dethrone it. Money is a currency, like a current, it should flow through me. Savings is stagnant. Feels wrong.” “Sounds like something Jesus would say.” “I mean, that’s why I gave all my shit away. Jesus said to the rich man, give it all up and follow me. Well, here I am. Don’t know if I’m following Jesus or just the truth behind what he said.” “Are you calling me Jesus?” I said. We both laughed.
I do this with everything. If I’m at a party, and it’s getting late, I calculate exactly how many hours I can sleep if I get to bed in fifteen minutes, or in an hour. The calculation makes me feel like I’m in control.
Oh gosh I do this with everything!
Day one was done. The sound of the water. I was under a bridge, tired and full, listening to Van Morrison by a creek. I was doing it. Only 9,978 more miles to go.
My theory of waking up my senses and slowing down time was proving true. Those days had stretched into ages, my mind so awake that every foot of every mile was noticed and relished.
How do we explore a planet without secrets?
I long for the days of lands we didn’t know existed, before the uncharted places all disappeared. That’s why I love looking at old maps, the ones with misjudged proportions and large sections labeled “UNKNOWN.”
With the Internet connecting us all, the rest of the world feels closer, less alien. But I think that’s only true in our minds. The Internet does not bring Argentina one inch closer to me than before.
“Back in the forties, fifties, sixties, everyone was hitchhiking everywhere. My dad hitched from Florida to New York and back a bunch of times. What changed was the news cycle. Back in the day, if someone was hurt or attacked in Maine, the people in Los Angeles never heard a word of it, so the sense of safety was only learned organically. National news made people in Boston fear what was happening in Phoenix. It’s the same with people locking their doors in their neighborhoods and not letting their kids play in the woods. It’s no more dangerous now, it’s just the fear has changed.”
She spoke like life owed her everything, but hadn’t yet paid her a dime.
human civilization has managed to get so complex that we cannot trace out the consequences of our actions. So long as the immediate result is what we desire, we are ready to try it—but the threat of long-range danger is harder to feel.
I found myself wondering, “How can the earth hold up all this stuff?”
I would be stripped of what made me feel safe to make room for something else.
On the day we rode up the first inclines into Big Sur, we had hot sun. I felt chosen by God.
God I love that feeling
I was nervous about the idea but fine with being pressured. If we got a ticket, it wouldn’t be my fault, and I could say “I told you so.”
Saying everything you think or do in public isn’t appropriate at a dinner party or online. So that shouldn’t be an issue. No, I’m just going to post what I would post if I were talking to my friends in mixed company. That’s effortless and still me.
‘Who can be sad on a bike?’
“I know. I’m so excited. Feels like a sign from the universe. From God. I think Johnny Jones was an angel. And he has your same initials. Wow.”
I’ll admit, I believe in giving things multiple tries, and not holding a person or an experience or a thing to one bad memory, or three. Especially things that people love.
The shock of this should have sobered me up. It did not.
He wasn’t a caricature, no matter what his antics. He was a whole person, shaped by nature and circumstances.
thoughts and emotions stay cloudy until I put them into words, give them bodies to walk around in and be their own thing. That’s when they become knowable.
I like timeless things, old things. They’ve made it to the modern age and taken on a meaning larger than their intention.
There is a weird paradox in trying to live a meaningful life, one you will talk about and tell about. There is the present experience of the living, but also the separate eye, watching from above, already seeing the living from the outside.
I have always wanted hills and trees. I trust land like that.
I’m not sure any of us are at our best living in paradise.
Still beautiful—still wild in many ways—but it felt more like real estate than nature.
