portland!

here i am, sitting in john and caitlin's nook in their beautiful house in southeast portland. caitlin and john are slumbering in their respective rooms and i am sitting here looking through my journal from the last few days, looking over pictures, and wondering...how did i get here?

the last time i wrote on here i think i was maybe on my 2nd day of the trip. from lake sylvia, i pedaled westward toward the coast, reaching the ocean at westport. seeing the open ocean again was an incredible feeling. i sat on the widest, grayest beach i had ever seen, and watched the birds fly south for winter. and no one was around for miles. it's interesting touring through these beach towns in the off-season. they feel grey, damp, lonely.

the following day i rode south, 55 miles along the coast toward bay center. this day was pivotal to say the least. for one, i encountered and fixed the first flat of the trip:






which was rewarding to say the least, but more importantly, somehow on this day i finally started to feel completely comfortable, happy and content with being by myself.i was pedaling along in probably my thirtieth mile of the day, thinking about why i like being around other people and why i like being alone. i like being alone because when you're alone, you can do whatever you want. you can be as fast or as slow or sit for as long as you want, and there is no one there waiting for you, or pushing you or pulling you in any direction than the one in which you want to exist. and i like being around people because i like talking and interacting and hearing stories and sharing my stories, and being affirmed in the the things that i say and above all, i love laughing with other people. and this is when i realized how rarely i laughed when i was alone. and why not? why cant we laugh--loud and uproariously laugh--when we are alone? and so i did. i just fucking let go and i found funny things all around me and also in my mind and i laughed with myself, and i talked aloud to myself as well, which is great, you should try it. and i sang songs, and i spoke aloud to people who i love who were far away from me and i'm not sure if they heard me or not but maybe they did. and somehow, in the twenty five miles to bay center i learned to really truly enjoy being alone and it wasn't all serious or lonely or sad, in fact at times it was downright hilarious and so exploding with energy i wanted to scream, and so i did. and it was the best damn time i ever had with myself.

there are more stories to tell, but john and caitlin are awake now and john's making toast downstairs and it smells freaking bomb.

ciao.

free peaches, yum!

so i'm sitting here in the public library in montesamo, a town of 3,000 located about 30 miles inland from the coast. i just rolled into town for the day and as soon as my 36 more minutes of librarian-allotted internet time are up, i'm heading the 1 mile up the hill to set up camp at lake sylvia state park.

today is day 2 of being on the road and so far, it's pretty f-ing rad. highlights of the past 48 hours include: cruising past the olympic mountains on my way out the hood canal, watching the sun rise this morning a fiery red, and meeting dick and dwayne, who insisted on loading me down with as much fresh produce as they could fit in my already-stuffed-to-the-brim bags. when i pulled up to their road-side produce stand, i assumed they were farmers. this was, until they told me that i should come back tomorrow to look through the assortment of rare coins, fine jewelry and antiques they have available. "so you don't just sell produce?" i inquired, confused. "three days a week we do, we get it from our friends farm in yakima, the other days we sell all sorts of stuff. you name it, we got it." and these unlikely business partners go on to tell me that they spend a whole lot of their time acquiring other people's unpaid storage units (and apparently, this happens ALL the time) and selling off all the junk (or treasure) that they find inside. "we're thinkin about packin everything up in the truck and takin it down to arizona for the winter, settin' up at swap meets 'n such", dwayne tells me.

by they way, dwayne is also a cancer survivor and spends much of his spare time helping his parents run a women's shelter, at which his main job is acting as a sort of escort/body guard when taking the women to their new, undisclosed homes. dick, who has got to be at least 25 years dwayne's senior, tells me about hanging out in haight/ashbury in the 60's, being addicted to heroin for a couple years in the 80's, and how much his wife loves to backpack.



and this is when i realize that this is exactly why i am on this trip. the riding, it's great, but the people. the people are what make traveling around so fucking incredible. i realized that that is what's so remarkable about a bicycle as a mode of travel. If I were to embark on a backpacking, or kayaking trip, i wouldn rarely see or interact with other people except for perhaps on occasion, in the evenings, or in passing. but on a bicycle, you have to use the same routes that people use on their way to work and school and on the way home from the grocery store. and here you are on this adventure, but you get to interact with people who are just trying to lead their lives. and even while under pedal you are interacting with others: chatting with flaggers, returning a wave to a passing motorcyclist, or stopping to buy a peach on the side of the road and ending up hearing the life stories of two men. sometimes i can't believe how much people just want to talk. it's amazing, and being able to have the time to listen is a gift. a gift that i feel pretty f-ing fortunate to have.


anyway, i'm heading to westport tomorrow. it's a short day (who am i kidding, all my days i short)and then down towards bay center, and on to astoria.

catch ya'll on the flipside.

the right socks?

recently, it's been seeming like anything i need to get done to go on this supposed trip i'm planning, is nearly impossible to get done. I keep waking up in the morning, determined to fix my tent/find cheap panniers/find a twenty dollar bill on the ground, and keep going to bed having done none of these things. Why? This is a good question.

so today, i woke this morning at the early hour of 9 o'clock, determined to go to REI and just put some f-ing panniers on credit already. before leaving, i checked craigslist (like i do every morning) to see if some kind soul was selling their bike bags for cheap, and to see if any good labor gigs had been posted since last night. Of course, i found neither. So i headed for the door, but of course, every time i got down the front steps i realized i had forgotten my wallet/cellphone/waterbottle/where i was going and had to retrace. then, on the way to REI, i got fucked over by those damn one way streets, and drove in at least 7 circles before finally arriving at my destination.

what i'm getting at, though, is that all of these moments are leading up to something, because as i leaned over to check the price tag on what looked like the cheapest bags in the pannier aisle, i heard a voice. this voice was todd.

todd is about 6 foot 5, carries his i-phone in a gym sock, and has biked from seattle to los angeles "about 8 times". (about?) anyway, todd is fucking great, and proceeds to chat bike trips with me, getting me so freakin stoked like i cant believe. he tells me about all the bike trips he's done across the country and up through canada and how many times strangers invited him over for dinner and how he always carried a set of nice clothes so that he could crash weddings and eat good food. he tells me about how i'm leaving at the perfect time and he tells me about a syndrome he calls "organizing my closet" syndrome. which i definitely have. organizing-my-closet syndrome is basically the fear that you get before you go on a trip, the kind of fear that keeps you from going because you keep making excuses like, "oh, i can't go because i don't have the right socks", or "i have to organize my closet before i can leave." he's telling me this and all of a sudden, i am confessing all of my fears about this trip to a stranger. the thing is, all of the fears are irrational and the real fear, i realize, is failure. but of course, as we all know, the real way you fail is by not going. AND, todd reminds me that--like we all know from doing things that scare us--it's never as scary as it seems, and more often than not, all it takes is that first step or that first mile or that first word, and all of a sudden, we wonder what we were so scared of.

so todd confesses to me that although he's "no materialist", he does have quite the collection of panniers piling up at his house and that he'd like to sell me a pair for cheap, "at least," he said, "they'll be going to a good home."

so, while i'm still in no hurry, i'm not going to let the right socks get in my way. i'll leave when i'm ready, but maybe i'll be ready sooner than i thought. or maybe i won't be, but i think i'll go anyway. why not.

giving thanks

okay so im sitting here, at my brother's house in west seattle, chilling. it's september already, fuck! but it's sunny outside, thankgod.

from trying to leave orcas, to a blur of a weekend in bellingham, to now being posted up here in sea-town, the past week has been full of rediculousness to say the least. i'm pretty sure i went like at least 14 days in a row without sleeping in the same spot twice and was averaging something like four hours of sleep a night. which of course led to me falling asleep in such innappropriate places such as:

-in the middle of werwie's backyard.
-in the middle of game x.
-in the middle of the sidewalk at bumbershoot. (a police woman came by and told me, "time to wake up, sweetheart.")

but now, finally, after somehow moving all of my freaking belongings off of orcas island, passing them through many cars and hands, i have settled (for the week, at least) and my bro's casa. being here, i have realized how grateful i am for so much shit. for instance:

-access to a shower, laundry, and in general, running water.
-sleeping in a bed. by myself.
-having a toilet that not only flushes, but is located just a short distance from where i sleep.
-having internet access AND phone service in the same location. hot dog!
-friends and family who lead stable enough lives that they allow me to lead a chaotic, illegititmate whirlwind of existence.

more than anything, i've been thinking about how thankful i am for all of those people in my life who, without which, i dont know if i would ever have a stable place to rest.

so the thankyous for the past week go like this:

-thanks brett, and al, and the coop, for being my second home on orcas, and for feeding me feasts, for hiking and swimming and sitting and for letting me post-up for unknown amounts of time.
-devon and reed for cramming all of my shit into your car and driving it and me to bellingham.
-tim, for hosting tequila saturday.
-matt for cramming my shit into the neon and bringing it to seattle.
-dewey and pete for sponsoring me.
-anna and jack for gracefully packing ten people into a 2 bedroom apartment.
-my brother, for always taking me in, even when i show up without notice.

and last but not least:

-thanks in advance to caitlin and john. who knows how long i will stay.

catch ya'all on the flipside.

jump on the bandwagon

i guess there's no better reason to do something than the fact that everyone else is doing it. so here it is, here i go. i guess this is my blog. i'm sitting on a couch in a cabin at a camp on orcas island right now. it's ten o'clock in the morning and it's raining outside. i've been unemployed now for about a week and a half and there's no sign of work in my future. ahhh...the future. isn't it funny how everyone always wants to know what you are doing next. i feel like it's been the same since highschool. it's like nobody ever wants to talk about where you're at right now, because all people can think about is What's Next. i'm trying to enjoy my last year of highschool and all people want to know is "so, where are you going to college?". i'm trying to enjoy my last year of college and everyone's all, "so, have you got a job lined up?" i'm trying to be present here in my last week on orcas and i've found myself repeating the same two sentences over and over again in response to that question: what now? well, i've got a secret: i have no fucking clue what's next.

it's scary, but it's freeing at the same time.

i mean, how are we supposed to enjoy any bit of our life if all we ever look toward is the next horizon. because soon enough the next horizon is going to be the end of our lives and we're going to get there, and there won't be any more horizons, and we'll wonder what we were chasing after the whole time.

so for now, it's one day at a time.

sure, i've got ideas about where i want those days to take me. but i'm not stuck on any of 'em and i'm certainly keen on this very moment. right here. right now.

but, for those who are wondering. the conversations have been going like this:

"so, what are you going to do now?"

"um...i think i'm going to go for a bicycle ride."

"oh yeah? where?"

"i think down the coast, head south for the winter."

"oh wow. by yourself?"

"yea. by myself."

"gosh, have you ever done that before?"

"no."


so that's it. but i'm not stuck to it. who knows what will happen. maybe i'll fall off the ferry on the way back to the mainland. maybe i'll get to portland and freeload off john and caitlin for the rest of my life. maybe i'll fall in love and move to tahiti. for now, though, i just want to be free on two wheels. i want to have the ability to move around as i feel, to see places, to be with people who i love, to enjoy my own company, to be able to take advantage of every moment, to not worry about what's next. i'm not sure how far i'll make it, or if i'll make it at all, but i'm ready.

so, i guess this is the beginning of trying to possibly log some of whatever adventure i am about to embark on. not sure what will come of it. but it feels pretty good, i feel good about it. i guess that's all that matters.