December 24, 2005

Expressing an envy that conflicts with her desire to avoid falling into ditches, Andrea Harris comments on my Big Adventure-Style Doings:

...actually, there-and-back-again vacation-type travel isn’t really my cup of tea. I consider it a torment: go to some place different from your dull, dreary life and have a wonderful time, then leave to go back to your dull, dreary life — what was the point, other than to make you realize how dull and dreary your life is and how tired you are of waking up to the same four walls, the same streets, etc.? Also, the logistics of getting to the vacation destination — the frantic need to hurry, the planning, the timetable, the rush-hour aspect of everything makes a vacation seem more like work than work. To me the actual journey itself is as important, if not more so, than the destination (the destination being often somewhat of a let-down — “well, we’re finally here”).

I've never been a good vacationer myself (as Pea will attest), which is why this here cycling madness is perfect for me. I've got maps, sure, and I've got a starting point and an ending point, but the middle bits are wide open and ill-defined. If I feel like detouring somewhere in Kansas to go commune with the World's Largest Ball of Twine then I'll do so.

Part of what makes this journey appealing to me is that won't be an escape from my "dull, dreary life," it will be my life. I caught a glimpse of this reality last Saturday when I was in the shop with Johannes, spec'ing out my new trike's options while sitting on the showroom GTO. "This is like ordering my next apartment," I told him.

The danger in speculating ahead of time about a journey like this is that too much emphasis on its Mighty Transformative Power can result in vast disappointment when encountering the mundanity of, for example, having to change a flat tire for the third time in a day because you're in goathead country and discovering that you quite recently rolled through a dog pile.

However, I can't avoid at least some speculation. My life's usual pattern, when moving from one dwelling to another, is to engage in a search for a new dwelling. But I'm not doing that now. I am selling my house, and moving to...a tricycle, with a trailer. No new bank accounts, no calling the telephone and cable company for new hookups, no first-last-deposit payments. No discovering where the closest grocery store is, no unpacking, no arranging of rooms, no hanging of curtains. No laughing at Bob the Cat as she cowers under the bed for three days. In fact: no bed.

Andrea says she has "recurrent urges to drop everything and just run until I get to, I don’t know, Idaho, but fortunately (?) [I] am too lazy and broke for this to be a realistic impulse." But "realistic" isn't really a word I've been paying much attention to, lately. It's actually on my list of Avoided Concepts, along with "career," "fiscally sound," and "knee cartilage." I've already had one person make the "must be nice to be independently wealthy" comment, and yes, it certainly would be, but I'm not. I don't need to be to do this...but that doesn't stop me from wondering what, exactly, I will do when this is over. I'll have some money from the house sale, but not a mountain of it. I'll be on the West Coast with no home or job waiting for me back East, no life - dull, dreary, or otherwise - to plug back into.

I'm trusting that Something Will Happen. I'm hoping.

I feel like the little kid on a tricycle in The Incredibles who keeps showing up at the end of Bob Parr's driveway after he sees Bob lift his car up over his head at the end of a particularly bad day at work.

"Well?" Bob demands. "What are you waiting for?"

"I don't know," the kid says. "Something amazing, I guess."

Me too, kid.