The next great adventure

I’m getting that travel bug again ladies and gentlefolk. It seems that anytime I start settling and extending roots in one place I get the urge to pull up camp and start fresh somewhere else. Recently I went on a trip to LA and while I was there I was researching ideas for the next place to travel. I don’t fully understand why I so desperately want to leave good situations where I live a happy and fulfilled life. This blog entry is a self-examination of my travel obsession. This blog started out based on the presupposition that travel is an important facet of my life and now I am going to take the time to parse apart the reasons why this is so. I need to figure out why I have this pressing desire for change and whether it would benefit me (whatever that means) to follow this unremitting compulsion.

Life is good in Portland. I could easily spend many more enjoyable months doing exactly what I have been doing in the city of my birth. I have several jobs which satisfy me in different ways. I enjoy my work and also feel that I am well compensated for it. I have a job serving food to rich people at a fine dining hotel. This job pays pretty well and I work with some interesting folk (hippie burnouts, alcoholics, general depressants, and one mad Russian). I also have two gigs working as a coach for kids, one teaching gymnastics at a large gymnasium and one at a school cafeteria teaching my own passion, breaking. Coaching is rewarding work. It’s my first time working with kids and I am learning how to be assertive, gaining leadership skills, and group management skills. It also makes me feel more like an adult. I have to make decisions and enforce them. Surprisingly, these kids see me as someone who knows what he is talking about and I have had some great moments watching the kids improve their skills under my tutelage. Working with kids is a delicate balance of encouragement and constructive criticism. Yesterday was a great day at the gymnastics center. Usually I have to coax, prod, and weasel the girls into working on the skills they are supposed to work on but that day one of the girls said “I like to work” and skipped our fun event, jumping on the trampoline, in favor of working on her bar routine.

No only do I have a great job, I also have a great group of friends in the city of roses. I am lucky enough to live near many of the friends I made in high school. We know each other well and after years of association we have a comfortable ‘kicking it’ groove. We have fun whether we are going out or just chilling and staying in for the night and I think we have struck a good balance between these two. Portland has lots of great bars and clubs to visit as well as fun events such as art walks, pub-crawls, and movie screenings. Many of my friends live with their parental figures so we have houses stocked with board games, flat screen tv’s, and stereo systems. In addition to my high school buddies (nicknamed ‘the running dog’s by my father because we all met through running together in the cross-country program) I also have several friends from college in town and some new friends that have developed through socializing and work that I can hang out with in case I need a change of pace from the uniformly serene nights in suburban paradise.

Then, of course, one cannot forget that living with mom and pops affords me an extremely cushy lifestyle. People say that in the 20th and 21st century humanity has seen an elongation of the adolescent period. Careers, marriages, and children are increasingly things that people are putting off into their 30’s and 40’s. As a 23 year old living at home with no imminent plans of fleeing the nest I am an example of this trend. Lots of the things self-sufficient adults have to worry about do not bother me. Do I need to worry about cooking dinner? No. Do I need to worry about paying rent and utilities? No. Do I even need to worry about fixing the broken light in my room or changing the oil in my car? No, my dad loves taking care of practical things. (But yes, I do worry about putting gas in my car and rotating my laundry, and I wipe my own ass too!)

Of course things aren’t perfect here. I miss my college friends a lot. I don’t have a lady friend in the city of roses, and, although living with the parents is cushy, it doesn’t really scream cool (my friend Taylor told me that if I bring over a woman I should tell her that I live in a single unit apartment that I rent from an older married couple.

So my work is satisfying, my social circle is entertaining and diverse, and my home life is comfortable and stable. Could it get any better? Yes! I have even been able to satisfy my travel bug with short vacations because my work schedule is flexible and it’s possible to take time off if I schedule this time far enough in advance. Since moving back from college I have been to LA twice, San Francisco once, Oakland once, San Luis Obispo once, and Eugene twice. I am also in the midst of planning another short trip to Seattle. So what’s the problem, David? Friends, family, work, play…who could ask for more?

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I think it’s that feeling of adventure that I am missing out on while living in Portland. I’m going to law school in late-August and this fact looms over me like a foreboding, paper-spewing, fun-gobbling behemoth. The average age of a law school student is 26. Since I will be 23 when I start I consider myself as ahead of the curve in the professional/career advancement/responsibility type game . I am worried that, with my early entrance into graduate school, I will miss out on all the crazy/awesome/eclectic things young people do before they enter into stultifying careers where the best perks are free coffee and bagel Fridays. Once law school begins my chances for random adventures diminishes. First off, the massive amount of debt I will accrue unless I can convince the admissions committee that I am a lesbian, Native American with Downs syndrome will deter me from doing any sort of travel. Second, I just won’t have all the free time I do now. During the school year studying is a full time commitment, then, over the summers, the best students will get internships in the field of law in order to accrue valuable experience/brownie/networking points. If you’re going to pay the equivalent of a house for an education then you better have a good idea how you’re going to make some money once the final school bell rings.

I think another reason I want to travel is that I have a masochistic urge to be uncomfortable. I want to be stuck in the pouring rain trying to change a tire on the side of a dirty interstate or half starved backpacking through snowy mountain fields. That sounds like fun. For me, the great dichotomy that marks the difference between the good life and the bad isn’t comfortable and uncomfortable or success and failure, it’s interesting and boring. I can deal with failure, what I can’t deal with is monotony, stability, sameness. I relate to that wild impulse Christopher Mccanliss exhibited in “Into the Wild” when he burned all his money and took off into the great unknown. I feel incredibly lucky and grateful to have been born into a social and economic situation that has afforded me more luxuries than 99% of the world possesses, but, at the same time, I want to honor the blessing I have received by challenging myself to live outside the comforts of my life. Some people just can’t accept being happy, safe, and prosperous and I think I’m one of them.

Another reason to travel is to learn some practical ‘man skills’. Something that has always bothered me about myself is that I don’t know much about practicalities. For instance, I can’t fix a drain, change a tire, lay a hardwood floor, or power wash a wall. On a camping road trip you can’t do these things but you can learn such useful skills as: starting a fire, conducting routine car maintenance, cooking on a campfire, reading a map, navigating through woods and roads, and surviving adverse weather conditions. Right now my life is relatively hip and urban. I sit at coffee shops drinking lattes reading books with characters who are experiencing severe cases of existential ennui. I visit thrift stores, watch movies at independent theaters, and dance at nightclubs. I love all these activities but they also make me feel a bit effete. I want some survivalist, man vs wild skill points. I want some grime under my nails and some hair on my chest.


So now that I’ve described in minute detail all the reasons why I want to travel and all the reasons why I don’t need to, here’s the travel idea. I’ve done a few car trips but they’ve always been variations on the same theme. - Depart from point A and travel north or south along the general area of the I-5 corridor. I’ve traveled up and down the West Coast plenty of times but never made any advances into the great central part of the states. I haven’t even set foot in Idaho which is right next door to Oregon. I know nothing about the South or the Midwest. There’s tons of cities, towns, and countryside that I am dying to explore in this country. I think if I had my druthers I would take a southernly route through the US, traveling through New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, then travel up the Eastern seabord hitting North Caroline, Washington DC, New York, Massachusetts, then swing back around through the northern part of the US through Illinois, Montana, Colorado.

In high school my favorite author was Jack Kerouac. I loved the energy he wrote with and his fast-paced, jazz-inspired prose. I was fascinated by his manic characters who had too much energy to burn, who traveled across the continent with little or no pretence to practicality. The beats were about experiencing adventure and they cared little for material or professional gain. They were basically wild creatures who didn’t want to work or do much of anything productive. Instead they expelled energy in massive exhalations by criss-crossing the continent in cars and trains, screaming, drinking, smoking, and fucking along the way. As the first counter-culture figures the beats were the ambassadors of cool and one could do much worse in my book (not yet written) than to immulate their hijinks. I have always dreamed of hitting the road like Dean Moriarty and ‘balling that jack straight through the great heartland cat.’ (my poor impression of beat lingo)

So there are several possible strategies for an awesome road trip this summer. one idea is to do a cross-country road trip in a car like the one I described above. Another, more modest proposal is to do a tour of the Western states (Oregon, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, California) in a car. This may be more practical considering I either have to (A) us my 1986 volvo station wagon which tops out at 55 mph for the trip or (B) ask my parents to borrow one of their cars. Another is to buy an Amtrak train pass. You can buy passes for an affordable price which allow you to board the train multiple times in a given week or month. In this fashion one could travel across the country about as cheaply as driving without having to worry about the car breaking down. This would also give me more leisure time to read, write, check out the scenery, and talk to other train riders. The downside I see to the train expedition is that I would be limited to traveling to whatever places the train stops at and it would cut down on the wilderness exploration side of the trip since trains mostly travel through major cities. In any of these scenarios I would bring my bicycle, either on top of my car or with me on the train, and I would ride for exercise and fun every day. Tying for a distant third in potential trips would be doing a motorcycle or bicycle tour trip. I love the idea of doing either of these but what makesme hesitate is that both of these require a lot of planning and there is a lot that could potentially go wrong. There is only so much gear you can bring on a bike so packing right is very important and I don’t have a lot of technical knowledge that is required to deal with potential maintenance on a bicycle or motor bike

The road trip I have in mind would not be just a mindless, partying gallivant through a bunch of cities. It would be a trip with a philosophy. I would mostly travel through areas of outstanding natural beauty, state and national parks. I would live life at a more basic level and experience things at a slower pace. There would be some imposed hardships on the trip. I would stick to a strict budget so that I can afford to travel for a long time. I would prioritize my accommodations on the trip by price. Most of the time I would camp or couchsurf at friend’s houses. I would use hostels only for when I came to a large urban area where I didn’t know any locals and I would avoid hotels altogether. Second, I would avoid junk food and fast food chains. Sometimes when I travel I compromise my diet because the easiest food to grab on the road is at gas stations and fast food chains right off the highway. On this trip I would shop for food at grocery stores or, on occasion, eat at local diners. I would avoid food altogether from national chains. What’s the point of traveling if you’re eating things you could easily eat at home. Lastly, I would make every attempt to meet new people and record these encounters. As a traveler I would feel obligated to aid other voyagers in their adventures. I would pick up hitchhikers whenever I drove past (as long as the don’t look tooo sketchy) and I would do some couchsurfing through the social networking site.