Monthly Archive

I tell this to nora all the time, and now it’s my turn. I’m traveling across the country, any which way I want, the freedom is mine. Lately this has all been wasted on my attempt to record and share via youtube videos. Half an hour ago I made the decision to quit. I’ll keep recording the adventure, but wait till I’m done to edit and upload the story. The relief is slowly setting in, I’m still exhausted. The weather hasn’t been helping, it’s cold and wet. I’m tired of being around large urban populations. All too often this is what’s required to find a big enough connection for uploading videos. No longer, I will now spend my trip finding the most remote and out of the way locations, relaxing. The videos where helping to build up sponsorship money for the sailboat but I’m not going to worry about that, I’m just going to enjoy the ride. Also focus more on writing, which I seem to be bit slow at right now. Till next time.

and iMovie will be ready for my video editing expertise. The line between solitude and commune is thickening. Today I transitioned. Went from being completely alone aside a roaring creek to surrounded by humans and my electronics in a cafe. There’s an even larger roaring creek beyond the patio of the cafe and yet it seems so much smaller than the one I was along this morning. Can you tell I’m a bit agitated? I’ll have to start writing on pen and pad for a few of these entries, or your never going to catch me at peace. The computer is being a bitch, and my time is running out in the cafe, money wasted is agony gained. Dreamingly i consider walking away from it all, no more connections, no more electronics, no more money. But how? The electronics easy… but the currency part is tough. I’d try bartering, but my skills seem to be confined to electronics. I’d have to learn to make something with my hands, sell on the side of the road, then I’d be back to the money. I need to learn more about survival, providing for myself off land. But who am I kidding? I’d be rolling up into my solitude using a wheelchair that I have no idea how to create from scratch. My guess is no one does… sure one guy knows how to make metal, another knows how to shape it, somebody can create rubber, somebody else can create the mold, and then simple old joe handles the assembly. But me all alone up in the woods, i’d have to develop my own transportation. Something I knew how to create and could maintain. Probably a boat. This is part of my longing to be on the sea. Transporting oneself is much different at sea. Nobody walks around on the water except Jesus. The rest of us are reduced, or maybe upgraded, to swimmers. Depends on who you ask. I feel much more capable and equal to able bodied people when in the water. Not that I care about being equal or similar to anyone. I’m saying it makes my physical life seem more able. I can float, I can paddle, I can drift, I can sail. Then I just have to figure out the food part and I should be good.

My body and head ache from exhaustion, absolutey no motivation remains in me.  It’s not bad, i’ve accepted my current state.  But just because it’s not bad doesn’t mean i don’t wish it was different.  It’s my due sacrifice in return for the atlantic sunrise I witnessed this morning.  Sitting atop Cadillac mountian at about five fifteen a.m. I was one of the first people in the U.S. to see the sun today.  Didn’t make the occassion any more brilliant, being awake for the sun is always an exhilarating experience.  The lady sitting next to me asked if it was dorky to cry at sunsets, she was crying.  My response should of been no, however it is extremely dorky to try and record the power of a sunset on a video camera and then post said video to youtube.  At about five thirty this morning I had already accomplished my biggest task of the day and was beginning to feel tired.

It’s noon now and i’m spent, nothing left but, i froze on the but so forget it.

I wonder how in the world I’m going to manage sailing, singlehanded, around the world.  Not quite sure I want to go around, but sure I want to sail across a few oceans.  California to Hawaii would be my first, and if I can’t handle one sleepless night? how could I possibly handle 30 of them across the pacific? I’m still determined.  The situation will be different, my motives will be stronger sitting atop a sailing vessel versus nestled in the corner of a library in Bar Harbor, Maine.

This morning I realized a simple life philosophy behind one of the games I often play in my head.  I was getting out from under the covers into a sitting position, not easy when your legs don’t work.  Before I grabbed the seatbelt handle for the non existent van seats and yanked myself up, I thought in my head “finish this task and you’ll be able to make it driving across this country”.  I do this all the time, cross this curb and you’ll make it the 10 miles down the sidewalk.  It’s the old one step at a time philosophy.  But for me it’s also a simple acknowledging of the relativity of events.  The physical act of getting out of bed is really quite similar to driving across the country.  They both start out as thoughts of the mind, all thats left is the action.

Just found the second tick on Norah thus far.  Thus far, since I left Oregon last august.  I worry about the dog way to much, but’s she’s my only buddy on the road.  She doesn’t care which direction we’re headed, wether we stay in a walmart parking lot or bluff on the atlantic, norah’s my always happy rider.  I’m learning that the northeast has the largest US populations for ticks, and lyme disease is our enemy.  How do I make the transistion from Lyme Disease to the beautiful state of Maine?  There is none.  This state is incredible.  It sits sticking out from a firm plantation in the northeast corner of the United States.  Far enough away from the throbbing sore of New York, and the surrounding metropolitan areas.  The biggest town is Portland, strikingly and ironicly like Portland Oregon.  I’m trying to write like a travel guide, and it’s not working.  It’s sunday morning and I’m tired, thanks to the rain clouds hanging outside.  I’ve been experiencing about 5 days a week of sunshine and 2 of rain since entering Maine.  The sunny days are amazing.  Mixed with the ocean air and beach bum pine trees the atmosphere is exhilarating.  Thus when it rains I find myself feeling a bit exhausted.  So I’ll drink some more earl grey and try to give you more.

I had my first Maine Lobster yesterday.  An old man brought it in to me on a medium sized white trawler, aka a lobster boat.  He didn’t personally hand me the lobster put are paths did cross later that day.  The location was south deer isle.  Norah and I spent the day hanging around the fishing docks.  Across a very small cove sat the Isle a Haut(i think), a small waterfront town.  There are short steep hills covered in pine and leave trees huddled in so close it’s a wonder they don’t bother eachother.  The trees display the brightest and limyest of greens, it’s very early spring still. They work their way down through tiny bright houses to meet the oceans edge.  For the entire visit the ocean was calm as a mountian lake in august.  I’m guessing this is due to the thousands of islands and barrier penisulas that edge out maine’s coastline.  Where the ocean meets this small town sits giant rock formations, some climbing 10 or 20 feet out at high tide, others making there appearance as the water retreats.  These rocks are not jagged but smooth and warn, imagine petrified sand dunes.  That could be what they actually are, who knows.  They’re shaded in soft ambers, browns, and yellows.  Plenty hard for the seagulls to drop and split clams on.  The tide comes in and out quickly during the day, providing a new scene every time I look.  This is what I watched all day long.

About a hundred feet from a our spot is a small lobster dock.  Two guys stand around going through cigarettes, caffiene, and classic rock.  In between standing around they work as hard and as fast as Americans use to know how.  Each boat brings a quick break from the cigarettes and caffeine, and before the catch knows what’s happened it’s out of the salt water and lying on ice.  One of the two guys on the docks brings his black lab named blue to work.  Blues a male, and norahs a female, the rest is history.  Both incapable of mating, they spent the entire day running across the rocky waters edge with the pine trees above.  Blues owner and I talked the most.  He was real friendly.  Not the “real friendly” you hear someone say in a slow southern draw.  I’m mean the guy really approached me as a friend, it was comforting.  We talked mostly about our dogs, he had questions about my road trip and I had questions about his work.  This was good conversation.

I watched as the two guys unloaded the old mans lobsters and then asked for one myself.  Blue’s owner handed me a dark red and black, very cold, slightly subdued, rock hard crustaceans with rubber bands on it’s claws.  From his hand to mine, not sure what I was dealing with I set the lobster on my lap.  I asked Blues owner how much, he said free, my response was a smile filled thanks.   I believe this moment was the first I had ever held a lobster and probably the third or fourth that I had eaten one.  Earlier in the day a youtube video instructed me on how to cut and fry a lobster.  No pots in the van so frying was my only option.

With my knife pointed down between, what would be the equivalent of, the lobsters shoulder blades, I thrust.  In a matter of seconds, very noisy seconds, my lobster was split down the middle.  I sat in front of the cove, my two part lobster lying on a rock, staring out over the water happy to be.  Both halves went into the frying pan and came out tasting as golden meat should, as good as gold.

I like Maine.  People here are as real as they get on the east coast.  I find myself carrying my camera around and not finding a thing to shoot all day.  Not due to the lack of picturesque surroundings, it’s just so overwhelming.