I found "The Weird"

I hesitate when it comes to paying for a campsite. All I really need is a patch of dirt and some expectation that I won't be picked up for trespassing. Settling in just south of Asheville however, my Fellow Traveler had reserved a site in Pisgah National Forest. It was my intention from the beginning to do as much Ninja-hobo camping as possible, tenting out someplace without being seen and leaving no trace. I had done plenty of it during test runs in NH, and it sure as hell fits the budget. Since I wasn't footing the bill, why not enjoy a campground with fire pits, showers and good company?

The camp ground was a great place cook, relax and sleep peacefully. The real value to me was in its proximity the BlueRidge Parkway and to the Weirdness Capitol of Western North Carolina: Asheville.

I wanted nothing more than to rip some loops on the BRP and the surrounding highways, but that back tire was hurting bad. I begrudgingly made the call to a local shop for them to order my new Pirrelli Angel GT, and scheduled the service. The Monster sulked and kept watch over the campsite, hobbled and anxious, while we went out on the town!

My early impression of Asheville was established by the first person I saw in town, and it turned out to be a pretty fair judgment. I dropped my Fellow Traveler off at the first of several yoga training seminars. They were the reason she was in the area in the first place, and with no bike, being able to borrow the car was pretty handy. It was actually a total downpour when I got into town, so I parked underneath an overpass to step out a bit. Before I had even fully parked the car, I was scrambling for my camera. Walking through the sheltered area of the overpass was the character who served as Ashville's ambassador... And his dog.

The dog was an oldish border collie, damp from the rain, but stepping sure-footed and confidently. He wore a backpack, at least the canine analog to a backpack. It probably contained at least one first aid kit, a flare gun, and various medals of bravery awarded to dogs that save cities. If you were some wussy pomeranian that had ever been carried inside a purse, you could never make eye contact with this dog. If you were a puppy, you would have a poster of this badass border collie on your wall which you would stare at and think,  "Someday, I'll be just like him..." His tail did not wag. His tongue did not hang from a panting mouth. His eyes did not dart from car, to squirrel, to bird, back to car as so many dogs' would. He looked at precisely what required inspection, and nothing more. He was the Champion Badass of all dogs, and he knew it. He stood stoically next to a man that could not fairly be called his owner, as a dog of his status can be "owned" by no man.

The man assessed the rain with a keen eye as they both dried off. It seemed not to be the first rainstorm he had been caught in. "...And it won't be the last," he seemed to be thinking, not giving a shit. In his position, the average person may worry about stepping in puddles or ruining their fancy hairdo. The rain only made his dreadlocks look more feral. The grimy puddles only made his bare feet tougher. Like his furry traveling companion, he had a backpack as well. It looked like it had been looted off of a German shock trooper in a trench during WWI. Unlike the dog's backpack, I did not have to guess at its contents.

Protruding from the bag was an assortment of wooden flutes. I imagined that one of two of them had been carved by an Amazonian shaman. Perhaps some were entrusted to him by a monk in a Himalayan mountain temple. Another was surely smudged ceremoniously by an Aboriginal tribal elder. They were all slung together over his shoulder in a way that facilitated a quick draw should the need arise.

Together they stood; the Uncrowned King of Dogs and Flute Ninja. In any other place in the world, they would strike you as utterly absurd. Well, it turns out, Asheville isn't like anyplace else in the world. They were right at home.

I could go on and on about this city. The culture, the architecture, the food... I've got too much for a blog post, so your choices are to wait until my book is published (filthy-rich investors wanted!) or to go there yourself. That being said, if I had to pick one feature of what makes Asheville the town that it is, it's a no-brainer: the music!

Genuinely "Weird" towns like this tend to attract younger people... Or maybe a youthful crowd just weirds-up the place, but either way, the demographic of the city in comparison to the musical landscape caught me by surprise. Why would all these hip young people be walking around in Olde-tyme clothes rocking banjos and washboards? It wasn't until I factored geography into the equation that things started to make sense to me. Bluegrass music was never something I never had much exposure to in the northeast, but it is still embraced whole-heartedly in Appalachia. In fact, I only continue to show my ignorance when I say they "still" love Bluegrass around here. It is, and has always been, the music of these mountains.

During my time in the region, I developed a real respect for it. The nature of a melting-pot nation that is only 238 years old means that much of what we think of as iconically American is an amalgamation of immigrant cultures. If I were a pretentious music aficionado, I would remind you that it does supposedly have roots in British music, but fuck that. I have ears. The voice of Bluegrass seemed to speak only of the mountains all around me and the people that lived there.

On every streetcorner, at any hour, there was music. Sometimes it was a five or six-piece band with washboard, fiddles (often more than one), and banjo, with any or all of them accompanying a lead vocalist with rich harmonies, hoots and hollers. Around the corner would be a young kid with a drum set, giving a 10 minute, Neil Peart style solo. Across the street, in front of a bookstore and Cafe was a very serene man bewitching passers-by with some sort of convex steel drum that I had never seen before. When I heard the bagpipes, I had an isolated moment of weakness. Hearing the sound of my people so unexpectedly, my heart ached briefly for Boston. I dropped two bucks in his tip jar knowing that my soft heart had just cost me a cup of coffee.

The divisions between music, art and dance are not important in Asheville. This was embodied succinctly in bronze statutes just a block over from my favorite bookshop. A dancing couple, a little girl whirling and laughing and a trio of musicians all frozen in time.  The statues were planted on the brick sidewalk, forcing you to walk directly through them. When you are approach the figures, you realize their scale is a perfect one-to-one. Music, art and dance. Standing among them, those all just seem to be different words for the same thing.

I haunted Asheville day after day, every time discovering a new wonder to behold, among them, the strongest and therfore best iced coffee in the world. One morning I received a call from the motorcycle shop; my tire was in. In no time, I got the Monster outfitted with some new rubber. My thoughts and my motorcycle turned toward the Blue Ridge Parkway. That tire wasn't going to burn itself. It was during one of the many trips up into the mountains that ensued over the next several days, I met someone who I will always know as Yosemite Sam.

I was on my way back to camp, but I had not yet descended from the ridge. I was enjoying one last view East from a scenic overlook before I bowed out for the day. There seemed to be storm brewing, and I had left my rain gear back at camp. My eyes traced the horizon to South, when I heard what sounded like a high performance engine coming in hot. I heard him downshift just before he rounded the corner and pulled into the lookout point. His car was a black Mercedes, later model, maybe a C63. If you're not familiar, it's pretty slick. I'm not a big car guy, so it takes a bit more than that for me to gawk. I sat on the edge of the retaining wall and went back to my inspection of the mountains. I was born with one of those faces that looks like I am brooding even though in my head I may be reciting the Holy Hand Grenade bit from Monty Python, so what happened next took my be surprise.

"Golly! Hell of a view, ain't it!" It was him, of course. He had gotten out of his car, and as he walked my way, I got to appreciate his style fully. He wore a filthy, brown cowboy hat with two white feathers tucked into a braided, leather hat band. He had a reddish-grey beard and matching ponytail. Teeshirt and jeans, both loose and dirty. He topped off his ensemble with a $300 pair of Oakley sunglasses and he clip-clopped bowleggedly toward me in a pair of cowboy boots that probably cost double that.

"You goan hit some rain, boy! I just come up through Black Mountain and I tell you what, it weren't pretty!" I responded only with one of my patented slow-blinks. Usually I use them to express condescending boredom, but this was delivered slack jawed; genuine dumbstruck moment for me. "Yeah, boy! I just heered em on the radio talkin quarter-sized hail! Quarter-sized hail?! That's like... THIS BIG!" He held up his thumb and forefinger, describing the size of a quarter.

Slow-blink.

"You see all that down'ere?" he pointed down the wall I was sitting on at a large bramble of bushes and vines. "They had me comin up here three weeks in a row tryna get rid of her! They said to me, 'Thatch'ere's poison oak, you better be careful,' and I told em 'I... don't... GIT poison oak,' but they din believe me! But I come up'ere, cut 'er back, she keep a-climbin. Cut 'er back, she keep a-climbin. Finally, I went down'ere with a bottle 'o bleach and that got 'er!" He laughed hysterically. By this point, I had regained control of my tongue and realizing how much entertainment there was to be had, I coaxed him into regaling me with stories, one after another, of everything from his car breaking down, to local politicians, to the funny weather in the mountains. It was glorious. I've met nobody JUST like Yosemite Sam, but I have met a few people cut from the same cloth. They all just want to talk, to be heard and on some level I think they want to be remembered. Days later, down in Asheville, I happened upon an open drum circle. I watched strangers playing together with big grins while others descended into the square just to dance. I watched the surging crowd when I saw a filthy, feathered cowboy hat bouncing up and down. It was Yosemite Sam. He stomped and whirled. He hooted and clapped his hands. As I watched him, I thought of one of the last things he had said up on the mountain.

"Yep, you goan hit that rain, for sure. But the weather up'ere can be funny. Might be pourin down,  but don'tchu worry. Ten minutes later, it'll come a-shinin."

At the time, I thought he was talking about the weather...

=======

My time in Asheville had come to an end. The Monster was chomping at the bit to tear up some new roads. My Fellow Traveler and I would be diverging, and I would be back to being John Solo. Next up was South Carolina and Savannah Georgia, a campsite ten feet from a Florida swamp and the Fourth of July in Jacksonville,  all leading up to my first major milestone, Florida's Gulf coast! Keep an eye out for my next entry and if you enjoyed reading, share it!

A ride through Hell

I've already said my piece about riding in the rain. I'll take any day on a bike over any day in a car. That being said... My ride from Boone to Asheville was a bit of an ordeal.

The first leg of the trip was pretty tame. After a great time in a cozy town like Boone, I was feeling down-right warm and fuzzy. As we proceeded to make our way through the mountains, I felt the storm brewing, and knew it was time to face the music. I switched over to my rain gear and expected to get a little wet. "Maybe it'll be like my trip through Connecticut. Ooh, won't that be exciting!" I thought, naive head up optimistic ass. Turned out I was off by orders of magnitude.

How to describe this storm... I'm coming up with a bunch of cliche shit like, deluge of biblical proportion,  or sheets/buckets/fuckloads of rain, but you get it, it was bad. Roaring, surging waves of cold, evil sky-hate assailed me. It made me wonder how there could be a single desert on this entire planet when rain like that can happen. Cars were pulling off the road. Yes, cars. Pulling over because they feared for their safety.

I splashed through puddles that reached my brake rotors. I hydroplaned across rivers of run-off that crisscrossed the road. The speed I had to hold was fast enough to not get bullied off the road by the inevitable asshole that would wind up right behind me, but not fast enough to sweep the rain off of my face shield. The only way I could see anything was to actually keep my shield open and get peppered on the bare eyeballs. The utter absurdity of my situation was too much for me to bear with a straight face. Every blinding splash from an oncoming semi made me laugh harder at myself. I amused myself by playing the "what part of me is wettest?" game until it was a tie across the board. After that came "what part of me is coldest?" I didn't find it difficult to keep my spirits up. I thought ahead to the deep South, when I would be broiling hot. I thought of the open desert of the southwest, where sun and heat would surely conspire to burn me to a crisp and explode the air-cooled heart of my trusty steed. I shared a moment with The Monster.  "We're gonna remember this one!" Contentment comes easy when you leave sanity behind.

My Fellow Traveller and I descended from the mountains and circled the city toward our campsite amid crackling lightning. I think you can still see the finger marks on her steering wheel to this day. 

All told, it took five days for my boots to dry out completely. They still squeak when I walk, which I don't even understand. I think they are still wet on a sub-atomic level. The Monster needed a new chain and a front sprocket, but we survived it. Turns out, it will take more than that to stop us.

Coming in my next posts, Asheville, day trips up to the sky and back, and I finally introduce you to my hands-down favorite person of my trip thusfar: Yosemite Sam. 

A ride through Heaven

"Where I come from, the roads around here are famous."

That's what I usually say to the people I meet in Appalachia about rides like the Blueridge Parkway, Skyline Drive,  etc.  It's no lie. These are the roads I've been hearing legends about for as long as I've been a Biker. I had heard about the twisty roads, the views and the combination of it all that made it all worth talking about a thousand miles away.  It was time to drop it into gear and lay a patch toward the highcountry!

Skyline Drive was first on the list, and it would take us through Virginia to our a campsite I found in Waynesboro. With my Fellow Traveler behind me and my gear stowed in her car, we turned into Skyline. I was immediately treated to a healthy climb in elevation on a winding ribbon of pristine asphalt through a corridor of green. The first thing that struck me was the condition of the road. Scenic byways like this are closed to commercial traffic and parts are shut down seasonally. They are spared the rigors of heavy trucks and plow blades. The result is an absence of the split road surface and Biker-launching potholes that are so common in New England. The grueling highway miles loaded down with gear had done a number on my tire. It was time to give the middle of my tire a rest, and keep it on the edges. The Monster was devouring the turns, and my face was starting to ache from the ear-to-ear grin.

All along the road are scenic overlooks that are so gorgeous, you could just lean out your window and get a postcard quality picture. Since you ride along the ridge, you get views of the overlapping peaks and valleys of West Virginia and Kentucky on one side and the expansive hollows (pronounced "hollers" apparently) to the east. The weather at some points on the Appalachians moves East to West, so as I watched fog rolling over the top, the feeling of heading north one moment and South the next added to my euphoria. Even in the middle of the day, turkeys and deer made appearances occasionally, but not often enough to make me lay off the throttle. It was what I can confidently call the ride of my life so far.

We descended back to earth and jumped on the highway for a bit and camped out at a TA Travel Center. That's right, a tent site at a truck stop. I thought it was awesome and it fit the budget nicely at 15 bucks. Despite a passing 18 Wheeler blowing a tire a hundred feet away early the next morning, it was pretty relaxing.

The next day we made our way towards the next stop: Asheville, NC! My Fellow Traveler once lived in a great town by the name of Boone, and with high recommendations of a thai restaurant located there, I was happy to get to Asheville via Boone.

Boone is a big magic trick... A commercialized college town somehow hiding behind a tiny, tight knit village. Everyone there seems to know everyone else, and I couldn't help but feel like I was in Vermont. Artisan bakeries, craft beer brewpubs, locally sourced restaurants, art galleries, you name it. All the awesome food and art snobbery you could imagine, and not so much as a whiff of the college hooliganism you'd expect with the school right there in town. And I say that as a UMass Amherst alumni, so I know my shit. How do they do it? Whether by design, or good fortune, the malls, the department stores and all that commercial garbage are all a mile away from the village, with a buffer zone of residential neighborhoods in between, dorms included. The swanky thai restaurants and Moroccan tea room don't fit the college budget, so they all steer clear. We met with some old friends of my guide, and I had an unforgettable dinner with all of them. Great food, warm people and a cozy town. We found ourselves going back to Boone often during our time in NC, and we always got the best of their hospitality.

Departing Boone was where things got a little dicey... And by dicey, I mean soggy. And by soggy I mean absolutely fucking soaked. Find out in my next post when I take you on A Ride Through Hell. 

Finally, some pictures: DC

A few good ones from Washington.  More to follow.

The geek-o-meter is over 9000!

I arrived in Washington with spirits high at the prospect of some opportunities I wanted to make the most of: WASHINGTON DC, A chance to meet up with a friend from back home also doing some traveling of her own promising a guided tour of Appalachia, and a car to stash my gear in for a couple of states! How could I pass that up? I met up with my hosts on a hot and sticky night in DC after my marathon run from Boston. I'm told the Satan's-butthole level of humidity is to be expected this time of year in a city built on a swamp. Who knew? Anyway, the Monster and I both needed some maintenance, his in the form of a wash and a copious grease job on the chain, mine in the form of wine, air conditioned rest, Game of Thrones and getting my ass handed to me at Monopoly Deal.

Humidity and roaches, that's it for the negatives. Other than that, the residential parts of town I saw were gorgeous; Brownstones dripping with wrought iron, all with little "yards" out front. You can tell the people that didn't give a shit about maintaining them. I saw one that was a ten by ten square of meticulously groomed lilies and Japanese maples with a meandering slate walkway winding through the mulch. The yard right next to that? Not a word of a lie, a square of astroturf.

The people are youngish. A slightly older, more professional demographic than the iconic urban collegetown in Cambridge I had just left. Dressed for business and a bit brusque, but not in a razzing New England "Good to see you, ya sonovabitch" way, but still no detectable malice. I didn't mind it one bit, but being immersed in that for too long doesn't sound like my kind of thing.

The touristy stuff is awesome. The Air and Space Museum is basically Mecca for me. I started to geek out before I even got through security, and when I walked out into the lobby, I turned it up to eleven. I buzzed from one exhibit to the next. 30 minutes in the lobby alone, for godsake. The Apollo 11 capsule and lunar lander, Gemini and Mercury capsules, a one-to-one scale copy of The Twins in the Mars exploration exhibit, the fucking Saturn V engine!? ARE YOU KIDDING ME??? Just awesome. It always bothered me that I had never seen a shuttle launch, but my time at the museum made me resolute in my goal to see the Space X launch this fall from Cape Canaveral. Somewhere between John Glen's flight suit and rounding the corner past Skylab to the shuttles main engine, I had one of the moments I've been seeking. I was starting to feel like the planet I've been living in for 31 years, the one I've heard so much about, is a real place. All the most heroic people and exotic places you've ever heard of, all the most beautiful poems and songs ever written, all the good deeds ever done, they all happened on this planet. And you live there! Do you not feel lucky for that?

Next up was the Natural History Museum, which was better than I expected. Quite a bit bigger too. I could have spent the whole day there. The Early Origins and Human Genome exhibits were great, but no T-Rex! WTF! I could have looked at more  paleontology, but I to get back to meet my hosts for dinner and hanging out. And laundry! Thanks again guys.

The next morning I faced the next leg of my journey with my new traveling partner/Appalachian tour guide ("guides" actually if you count her four legged bodyguard). It was great to see them again and they are much more well-traveled than I, so I was happy to join up.

More to come, including the most jaw dropping beautiful views of my life, two epic rides; dubbed The Ride Through Heaven and The Ride Through Hell, AND a genuine recurring character like nobody I have ever met! I couldn't make this guy up!! Meet him next time. See you then.

Where to begin?

Hard to believe,  but I am almost a week on the road! Things have been nearly too exciting to keep up with mentally,  much less to keep up with blogging. In fact, I've barely talked to my family, so don't feel left out. I'm composing this entry just south of Asheville,  North Carolina! I know, I didn't expect to be this far already either, but I had some good opportunities, so I made a move, and I'm glad I did.

So this is what you've missed! I marked the beginning of the voyage in Montpelier, VT. With a warm send off from my sister and my niece, I continued through NH to bid farewell to some friends and family on my way to my first stop: Boston!

I arrived in Boston late Saturday afternoon to meet a long time partner in crime at his new apartment in Cambridge. He's only a few blocks from Harvard Square, and we spent a night out with a few of his friends and coworkers. Everywhere was a beautiful mix of ethnicities and languages that made me remember how trapped you can feel if you let your world get too small. Eventually we found ourselves at the Tavern on the Square ("in the Square"? I'm not sure) and I got a lesson on why Patron is so damned expensive from a Mexican guy. I forget every word. I spent the next day ripping around Boston on the Monster. About halfway through, I found myself making some genuine Masshole maneuvers, and decided I no longer blamed these people for the way they drive. That night I ate at pretty kickass korean place. Chilled noodle soup, which hit the spot on a hot night. We then rounded the corner for a few drinks at a bar where the waiters wore shirts that said "Will work for soju". Pretty awesome, but ironically I didn't drink any soju. The latest Korean pop videos played on huge flatscreens while we drank some kind of fermented rice wine served in a copper teapot. The drinks were great, the videos made me feel like all of the very worst influences from American popular culture are the ones that other cultures seem to pick up on. Just the same, I caught the green line back, the train driven by a man with the most gigantic gold Rolex I had ever seen. I could have spent weeks in Boston, and the new and old friends I spent time with would have made me feel welcome, but got word from some friends in Washington DC, and I couldn't pass up my chance for some time there! My last morning in Boston came too soon, but it was time to hit the road. I spit on John Harvard's statue, and was on my way.

As I pulled out onto Cambridge St from what's got to be the biggest loophole in the City of Boston's entire parking scheme (no, I'm not telling) I thought,  "Okay, Boston to DC, I'll be leaving during rush hour and arriving during rush hour, rain in the forecast, and I'm riding a motorcycle with my entire life strapped to it... Am I out of my mind?" Turns out, they're right about the "desperate times, desperate measures" thing. That day, I broke a vow I made long ago; I went through Connecticut.

My return to the state where I spent the worst year of my life was rewarded with a slap in the face in the form of a rain storm. Pretty light at first, but by the time I hit Waterbury, I had switched over to my rain gear, and kissed my ass goodbye. Everything held up fine and I made it through in one soggy piece. Something occurred to me about riding a motorcycle in the rain. I kept thinking,  "It could be worse, John. You could be stuck in a car." Maybe I had lost my mind, but I think some of you will understand what that means. The route I wanted to take kept me away from I95 and gave me a shot at some nice riding once I cleared NY. I went through Scranton and Gettysburg and who the hell knows where else. I was so determined to destroy my prior record for hours on a motorcycle in a single day that I didn't give a shit if I was riding through Somalia or Antarctica or the fucking Gobi Desert, I was going to make it. And make it, I did.

My neck was a ball of knots from the cold rain and the disregard for speed limits. My wrist was locked up like a rusty hinge. My legs were jello from clamping onto a rocket for 11 hours. I was spent, but let me tell you, the beltway into the city felt like a victory lap.

Lots more story to tell; Washington, Skyline Drive, Boone NC, and the torrential downpour of biblical proportions that was my ride from Boone to Asheville!! More to come soon, with pictures (I promise!) but I'm out of time for now.

Engage...

Alright, it's you and me, World. Let's do this...

"Dead reckoning" - When all the stars have gone dark

A word on "dead reckoning"

The are a lot of different ways to find your path. I think most of us are sent on our way with something akin to a Mapquest printout for our lives.  (That's right asshole, Mapquest. Like before GPS. Don't pretend you never did it) It looks something like this:

STARTING LOCATION
Your mom's boob

1. You have been born. For the next 16 years, stay in school, don't do drugs, clean your room. Everyone is special and everyone gets a trophy.

2. You have arrived at 16. For the next 2 years, disobey your parents, be an all-knowing little shit.

3. You have arrived at graduation (high school). For the next 4 years, go to college for godsake because it is the most important thing in the world.

4. You have arrived at graduation (college). For the next 40 years, land your dream job and use it to pay off your student loans,  because you can do anything you want as long as you work hard enough. Marry somebody and spawn some kids.

5. You have arrived at retirement. For the next 20 years, hold hands with your loving spouse and rock on rocking chairs while your fat, happy grandchildren frolic around you.

YOU HAVE REACHED YOUR DESTINATION!
Emotional fulfillment.

Something like that. At some point, I think most of us look at that list of landmarks and directions and think, "I've got it all figured out." Some people never lose sight of that next step. No missed turns, no detours, no bumps in the road. Not even a question of,  "Wait a minute, is this where I actually want to be going?" And good for them. You get ANOTHER fucking trophy. So shiny and special, just like you.

My journey is not dedicated to those people.

What do you do when your navigation is interrupted? You missed a turn, you lost sight of your landmarks, and your precious map flew right out the window. There is another type of navigation that can always be used as backup. Planes do it when their position is unknown. Animals use it to migrate thousands of miles. Ancient seafarers used it when they were swallowed up by a storm and all the stars went dark.

It's called dead reckoning.

Navigation by pure logic. You know where you were. You feel the wind in your face. You know how hard you're pushing to get through it. It can be a primal, fuck-everything-else way to get through it, or it can be cold, clean and logical. Either way, it will get you through it.

My journey is for those of us who know where we were, but something happened. We pulled the e-brake and reevaluated that course we were on. Maybe we had been following a path we never chose. Maybe we were led astray. We all have it in us, in a deep ancestral part of our being, to take a deep breath, to look at the path behind us, and then look ahead with renewed certainty, not of our destination, but of our next step.

If you find yourself at that point. Take that breath. Look back, but only once. Feel the wind in your face. Wherever you destination is, your path is ahead of you.

I'm out there too. I'm thinking of you.

Can you get high on freedom?

I highly recommend that once in your life, you do the following:

Vacuum an area to the point where your vacuum sounds as though it is approaching the sound barrier; past the point when it has started to smoke and if it had eyes it would be glaring daggers at you. When it changes from a death rattle to derisive laughter at your impending ordeal of emptying and  un-clogging it, pick it up, carry it outside and throw it into the dumpster. Send it to Vacuum Hell in a stunning double cross that breaks the longstanding cycle of "Clog, Un-clog." Dust off your hands, and deliver your favorite movie catch phrase (I suggest something from Bruce Willis), and walk away from the explosion in slow-mo.

...Okay, so mine didn't explode, but this is how I made my exit from my old apartment.

After a few massive yard sales, a few handwritten "FREE STUFF, TODAY ONLY!" signs, I am in the clear. Old life: sold. Boss: pissed. Attachments: dropping like flies. Belive me when I tell you, I can feel it! Speeding away from my old place,  I was having ecstatic conversations with friends and family during which I employed the following lines of dialog:

"I feel like I'm standing at the center of the universe, but it moves with me."
"I AM PRESENT!"
"You can only feel the full extent of a crushing weight once it's gone..."
(And if I had to pick my two favorites...)
"I AM A CREATURE OF EARTH" (yelled this one out the window)
And
"Can you get high on freedom?"

Needless to say, I am delerious. I wanted to capture the feeling because I feel a turning point.  Proverbial light-and-tunnel shit, up in here.

Liquidation equals Liberation

I am counting the days.

In less than two months, I will be leaving behind thirty years of a life that has been good, but much too small.

I have virtually every vestige of my old life on Craigslist (liberating as hell, that). I've come to realize the weight of every piece of furniture, every coffee cup, every knicknack. All at once I felt the crush of every "maybe I'll need that", every "this reminds me of". Everything must go! A clearance sale for everything from my silverware to my Subaru; my napkins to my Nissan. Liquidation equals Liberation.

Half of my new life is laid out on a lovely, round solid wood table with folding leaves (50 bucks and it's yours, kid). REI Passage 2 tent, Koppen Viggo-20 sleeping bag, Thermarest bedroll, Cortech tailbag and Tourmaster tankbag, various survival gear, compression bags, cargo nets and bungee cords. Everything I need to survive The Road. The other half of my new life is spending the winter dreaming in a warm basement.

If you had told the 5-year-old me (or even the 15-year-old me) that he would one day own a motorcycle, you might as well have told him that he would grow up to be a Ninja Turtle. If you had told him he would live on the open road and chase the horizon across the country on a Ducati with no attachment... well, he probably wouldn't appreciate it. Not at 5-years-old, but let me tell you, to 30-year-old me that sounds like heaven. Cowabunga, dudes.

I have been fortunate in life. I have loved deeply. I have achieved. I have obtained. I have both provided and received support from others. As thankful as I am for what I have seen so far, I know every inch of my little world. I know it too well.

I am counting the days.