sounds familiar

Laundry day in Crescent City, CA.  High on the Northern Pacific coast.  

Dude walks in, 6ft tall and then some.  Gray hair, missing on top but still a bundled into a ponytail in back.  Sweatpants, too big.  Two front teeth nowhere to be found.  

Seeing my Grateful Dead shirt, “The Grateful Dead?”  Without giving me time to respond, I watch him pause for a moment to look me over a bit, which I assumed was him getting a mental fix on just how old I might be.  Then, like an old friend, “I have a Grateful Dead story for you.”  I’m intrigued.  I show as much on my face and make the right noises to spur him on.  

“I don’t really like the Dead; has nothing to do with their music either, I like the music.  I’ll tell you.  I grew up in the Bay.  Back in… oh… ’69 or ’70 or maybe ’71 I saw the Dead at the Avalon.”  I make some happy/encouraging response, we’re talking classic stuff here… some of those shows are legendary. 

“Anyway, there was this big barrel of water at the show.  I had two, maybe three very small cups, and I was shot.  The Dead put acid in the water; spiked it.  Without my permission.  That’s just not cool, man.”  I agree that dosing someone unbeknownst to them is, definitely, not cool man.  

He told me more.  About being so loopy he sat behind the wheel of his Volkswagen bus and couldn’t will himself to drive.  About living in the Bay.  About seeing Quicksilver, Canned Heat, Airplane.  About selling his parents Silicon Valley home for $1M after they died, the home they bought for $16k and that’s now worth $2M just six year later.  About working for Coors for 20 years in Colorado (“I was a liar and a drunk then, though; was a different time.”)

I have no reason to doubt my new buddy.  So what if he mis-remembered where the Dead’s infamous “acid punch show” really happened, I like to think he really was there and really was too messed-up to get his bus moving afterward.  

Laundromats have consistently been one of the most unpredictably cool and interesting parts of our previous trips, and this one is proving no different.

Goodnight.

We walked down to the sea today.

We did so on the way back from a longer walk around a good portion of the grounds here at the state park. That walk itself came after quite the bustling RV morning, including the momentous first day of home-school for the kids & a father/son bike ride.

Momentous as it all was, and it really was, in the grand scheme, it was being beside the ocean that I’ll ultimately take from today. I told Sharaun, who stayed safely just above the closer-to-the-crash rocks the kids & I clambered down to, that I could sit there and stare at the bubbling foamy chaos for hours.

So rough. The rocks taking beating after beating. The waves, unrelenting, smashing at them over and over again, throwing huge plumes of spray into the air and filling the little nooks and crannies of the rough shore with froth. Occasionally a swell of the tide would see the sea cover entirely over all but the most massive upshots of rock, making them temporarily disappear underneath boiling swirls of white.

It was chilly and there really was no “shore” to speak of. The mountains simply crumble into the sea, quite abruptly. You can look back a hundred yards from where you climbed down and see a redwood forest and ferns. The ocean has literally beaten the cliffs into a tumble of rocks.

It was fantastic for every second of the twenty minutes or so we spent there before heading back to the RV for dinner. Ever-changing, almost hypnotic, kind of like watching a campfire or a snow fall.

Goodnight.

We left home Friday morning.

We were about an hour and a half behind schedule, which, honestly, was pretty darn good. Sharaun, in true Sharaun form, propped her phone up on the roots of the tree in the yard and had the family pose in the RV doorframe for an auto-timed picture. I’m glad she did because it came out fantastic and it’ll be an awesome memory.

In the RV, I cranked the engine and paired my phone with the stereo to get some music going. Radiohead’s Last Flowers was on. It’s a little piano-driven number which, at times, sounds quite sad. Oh man, I cried. I just sat there, askew in the driver’s seat, engine running, and cried. Sharaun cried. We laughed at the luck of getting such a dirge as our shuffled-up departure track. Crying was important, though, so I saw the Lord’s hand in it all once again.

We swung by Mom’s house to say one last goodbye. More quick hugs, a bit more tears. Then Costco for gas and a lunch stop for burgers before we hit the road.

And then we were gone.

A Labor Day weekend trip with friends began our journey and marked the last few days of summer for the kids. Tomorrow, Tuesday, we start school. We’re camped at Patrick’s Point State Park on the Northern California coast. I anticipate we’ll stay here a couple nights at least, long enough to hopefully feel-out how the day’s routine is going to go. Although, I’m likely fooling myself… as I suspect we won’t really lock into that routine for quite a while.

There were moments today, on the road, where I felt waves of wonder. Big sweeping landscapes unfolding below and beside us, tacky roadside tourist traps, a laugh shared with a child. There were also moments where I felt waves of anxiety. Why does the house battery gauge show only a third left when we were plugged in all night? Is this pull-out level enough to boil the water I need for my instant noodle lunch? The bike rack is totally going to bottom-out right now…

Until tomorrow then. Goodnight.

Waking up & walking out of the bedroom this morning, I sighed.  

“What’s wrong?,” Sharaun asked, still just sitting up in bed herself.  

“I don’t know…  Everything’s weird,” I said, walking over to giver her a hug.

“Yeah, it is.”

Everything is weird, y’all.  Our lives are in transition, and so is our stuff, and our house.  It may seem silly, but the absolute mess that causes gets to me.  I take comfort when where I live is neat and clean, and right now our house is anything but.  Boxes from our new tenants are everywhere, our stuff is everywhere as we sort, inventory, and dither, stuff for my upcoming John Muir hike is, you guessed it, everywhere.  

We are completely uprooting our lives and going on the road for a year, I’m not naive enough to think that transition won’t be messy – but that doesn’t mean the messiness can’t bother me. 

I’m not the best at transitions.  Right now I just want to be doing what’s next, to have already started the new routine.  The fact that I feel this way is one of the main things I look forward to adjusting this year.  I want to be more comfortable during transitions… I’ll definitely need the skill upon returning to work.

Peace.

When I was a kid my mother’s parents lived in a log cabin house atop a certain mountain in sunny Southern California.  It was a bit of “community,” I think  Several houses spread wide across the hilltops, some owned some rented, one person sort of “head” of the thing (maybe the owner of the majority of the rentals, I think).  

There was, down the road a ways from their place, a community pool.  When we’d go visit them, we’d all go down and spend time there.  There were never many people there, the total population on the mountain couldn’t have been that large.  The pool had a diving board, and for a long time that diving board was my great challenge.

I’d walk over to it, get scared, and walk back.  I’d maybe walk out on it, get scared, and walk back.  Maybe bounce it a little, get scared, walk back.  You get the idea. 

The feeling out on the end, knowing it’d be fun, knowing I’d be OK, wanting so bad to do it but chickening out… 

And, then, you finally did it.  Woohoo.  So worth it.

Tomorrow is my last day at work for a year. 

OK, its really something like 357 days… but that’s close enough to a year.  

When Sharaun and I decided to do this trip, and it came time to inform the sawmill powers that be, I walked in resolved.  Not angry, not spiteful, just… resolved.  I was prepared to quit, but with intent to simply try to get back in after our trip.  I figured I’d have a good chance, my network is strong and track-record decent.  So I laid out my case; stated my intent.  And the sawmill said something like, “Oh don’t leave.  Just take some time.”  Not those words, but that was the sentiment.  So, I am.  I’m “taking some time.”

And that time begins tomorrow 5pm.  OK maybe 4pm; sue me.  The past week or so has been a blur of wrapping things up & send-off happy hours.  I’ve eaten tater tots for dinner and gotten Uber receipts with post-3am timestamps.  Not the best training for the ~80mi JMT hike I start next Friday, but a lot of fun regardless.  Re-born along the JMT into a new year… that worked out quite nicely.  

Anyway the last real work-things are now complete, yet I’ll finish my time in the office because that’s how I do.  It’s funny though, it’s like my career has wrapped around on itself… these “last” days blurring into something really familiar… sitting in a cube, mostly bereft of real work, listening to music – very much like those first days. 

Anyway, tomorrow is my last day at work for a year.   Guess I know what I’ll be listening to first-thing Saturday morning, huh?  Wow.

Peace.