The Shortest Answer

I should be more excited.  Now that I have actually started my journey I am entirely too calm.  I was so excited about this trip months ago but now that it is actually happening it almost seems too surreal, so instead of getting excited I have gone numb.  I will feel something once I get to Panama.  Being in a boring airport is hard to get excited about.

But it does feel good to have everything in order.  Months of preparations and arrangements are done.  The three long days of driving from San Diego to Cincinnati are over.  I was really dreading that.  I really should be happy to be in this moment.  All the work is done. Now all I have to do is enjoy my trip.

Now that I think about it I am pretty excited.  I got about three hours of sleep but had no problem getting out of bed at 3:20 AM.  I also had a hard time falling asleep on the first flight to Houston.  Starting now I’m going to enjoy every possible second of this trip, including the long wait in a Texas airport.  I have a tendency to always look forward to the next really fun thing and then I miss the pretty good thing that I’m doing.  It would be easy to spend this trip looking forward and wondering about the next country or town instead of enjoying the place that I’m currently at.

A few hours later…

Okay, that shit I said before about not being excited was totally wrong.  Now that I’m somewhere over Central America I’m pretty excited.  I slept for an hour and when I woke up we were over the turquoise waters of the Caribbean.  The water was mostly a dark, rich blue with stripes of luminescent aqua.  Then we flew over a dry tan shore that gave way to a flat green country side that was covered in low clouds that look like perfect cotton balls.  I wonder what country we are over.  Guatemala?  Honduras?  Wait, we are back over the water now.  There is a chain of barrier islands.  They are mostly white sand with light brown coral around them.  They form an intricate pattern of swirling spots that is surrounded by every shade of blue imaginable.  This is the best plane ride of my life.

An hour later…

After I wrote that this is the best plane ride of my life it got even better.  We flew over Ometepe, which is an island that is formed by a double volcano.  It’s in the middle of Lake Nicaragua which is so big that it has sharks in it.  This part of the world is awesome.

Three thousand pounds; that is how much stuff the movers hauled away and put into storage. That seems like too much for one person. I know it is relatively little compared with how some people live but it is an insane amount when compared with how most people live. Since I showed up at Steeb Hall with one sea bag, a paint ball gun and a plastic bottle of Popov vodka I have been accumulating stuff. Some of it I have held onto and I still cherish, but most of it was a waste of money that now takes up space. I look forward to drastically streamlining my existence. I will take about fifty pounds of gear with me. I’m going to leave behind a lot of the heavy stuff that I don’t need. If I realize that I need something, I can get it along the way.

Packing has always been a cathartic experience. On the surface it is a simple task but if done wrong things are forgotten which can lead to disaster. Forgetting one document or piece of paper can lead to delays, missed flights, financial loses and in extreme cases incarceration in third world jails. Pack well my friends. When done right it is a meditative and meticulous process that not only prepares your luggage and clothing, but also your mind for the approaching journey. Packing is a way to make the terrifying or exciting future concrete a little bit before it actually materializes.

I haven’t actually done anything yet. I am just writing about preparing to do something cool and interesting. But at least now I am so close that I feel like I’m in the gravitational pull of this massive event and at this point there is no escape.

I booked my one way ticket to Panama City yesterday, not the redneck one in Florida, the real one in Panama.  My mom booked her round trip flight today.  And we both booked our flights from Panama City to Bocas Del Torro today.  The plan is for us to fly out of Cincinnati together in a month.  We will have a layover in Houston, but since I’m trying to save my airline miles I’m taking a longer route through Costa Rica and then to Panama City.  My mom will fly from Houston to Panama City so she will arrive several hours before me.  We are going to spend a few days in Panama City and then fly to the Bocas Del Torro on the Caribbean coast.

I just realized I’m already tired of writing about things I’m planning on doing.  You don’t get credit for shit you plan on doing, shit you almost did, shit your cousin did or shit you wanted to do.  The future tense is boring.  The point is that everything is booked.  The vague idea that I had one boring night while standing tower duty at Cherry Point has now been set in motion.  In the last five years the idea has gone through many versions and in the last two it has come into focus.  At least the first week has come into focus.  The next three months to three decades after that are still gloriously blurry; which is exciting and really is kind of the point.

I was feeling totally overwhelmed with work this week so I decided to take the day off.  I slept late.  It was awesome :).  After I got out of bed I spent about three hours on the internet.  I just check out face book and twitter.  I really needed to catch up and comment on some of the crazy things going on in my friends’ lives.  Later I went to grocery store to stock up for the royal wedding party I’m throwing this weekend.  I spent over two hundred dollars.  I got Corona Light, Smirnoff Ice, chips, salsa, crackers, cheese dip, sandwiches, a veggie plate and so much more.  I am going all out because something this important only happens once in a life time.  I’m going to have thirty people in my tiny apartment, but I’m sure everyone coming over will get along.   Well I need to get ready for the royal wedding party; I’ll post again and let all you know how it went.

I am sorry.  I will never do that again.  I promise to only write about interesting or exciting events and topics.  The above writing is what I imagine most blogging on the internet looks like; self indulgent, boring and obsessed with trivial and meaningless event only vaguely related to the writers life.  It will not happen again.  For the record I did take the day off today.  I did go grocery shopping.  But I am not having a party to celebrate the royal wedding.  All royalty are parasites on the society which they claim to represent.  The “English” royals are actually descendants of inbred German tyrants.

I’m sitting in my comfortable apartment on the beach in beautiful San Diego.  My patio door is open.  I can feel a cool sea breeze and hear the waves.  Up until a few weeks ago I had a near perfect life.  I had a cool girlfriend, my dream job and I was living in one of the greatest cities in the world.  The girlfriend was the first to go.  The job ends in two months and although I love San Diego it will feel different soon.  I can always come back.  That is what I tell myself when the fear creeps in.

In third grade when we were studying the pioneers, the teacher told us that when a pioneer family had exhausted all their options in one area or when they thought there was an better opportunity over the horizon, they would never just pack their things in the wagon and leave.  They would always burn down the house before they left.  The reason for this is that in the nineteenth century wood was cheap.  In most places it was free if you had an ax and some spare time.  Nails, however, which were hand made of steel were expensive.  So the settlers would burn down their wood house on the last night before they left.  In the morning they would pick the irreplaceable nails out of the ashes.  With these little bits of steel and their tools they would they leave the smoldering ashes of what had been a safe place and move forward into the unknown.

It is not quite a pile of smoking ash yet but the fire is burning strong and bright.  I’m going to enjoy its warmth and beautiful glow while I can, but very soon I will be picking up my small pieces of steel and moving on.