DATELINE: SAN FRANCISCO. MONDAY, JULY 7, 2014
I’m screwed.
I’m about to take a long trip. The trip is part of a larger plan about getting more work done, taking risks, life fulfillment, blah blah stopBillyfortheloveofPetestop. Anyway. It’s a big move, one I’ve been thinking about for a long time, and my realizations and expectations for the journey have been hitting me ever since I finally committed to it in my mind, ever since I finally said to myself, “You’re doing this,” last fall.
One of those expectations is, I’m expecting to be in a lot of places-
(This blog is gonna have a lot of obvious statements. Endure them, please.)
-and it’s a given that there will be times when I’m in a certain place, and I’m lost. For Chrissakes-
(This blog is gonna have swearing. I would ask you to endure it, but I honestly feel you should get over it, and actually, that you should enjoy it. (shrug))
(This blog is gonna have stage directions.)
-for Chrissakes, part of the reason I’m taking this trip in the first place is, I’m lost. So I knew I would be in exotic cities around the world, cities like Singapore and Beijing and Dubai and Barcelona and Buenos Aires and, uh, Monterrey, Mexico, and I needed to get used to feeling lost and feeling okay with being lost, that I wouldn’t be able to know where I was or where I was going every single moment in every single city through which I travelled…
I didn’t expect, however, the first city where I was beset with that feeling to be frickin’ San Jose, California, United States of America.
(eye roll) Jesus.
I flew into San Jose after a lovely visit with my brother and his family in Boise, with the plan to take public transportation to San Francisco. I wanted to spend a nice evening in one of my favorite cities, an American city I knew, before I embarked on this journey and found myself in places of which I knew nothing for the next nine months. I wanted to take a walk alone, find a nice, quiet restaurant to have dinner by myself, and simply relax before the adventure began, all in a city that gave me comfort…
…and I did, more than an hour later than planned, because I can’t a)read a goddamn sign or b)distinguish my left from my right.
First, I got onto a light-rail train in uh, “downtown” San Jose and went south when I should’ve gone north, prompting the first innovation this journey has prompted - there should be a corollary to the “walk of shame” (don’t pretend you don’t know) called the “disembark of shame” for when someone gets on at one train stop, only to get off at the next stop so he can walk across the tracks and go right back in the direction from whence he came. So that cost me forty minutes.
Second, I almost got on the right bus going in the wrong direction until the bus driver convinced me that he actually knew more about the bus’s route than I did. By the time he had me persuaded, by pointing at the bus stopped RIGHT ACROSS THE STREET from where I was, I had missed that bus - that departed RIGHT ACROSS THE STREET - and that cost me another half-hour. Which brings me to what I hope to be a regular feature of this blog:
SOPHISTICATED ROGUE’S TRAVEL TIP #1©*:
“Chances are excellent that the bus driver knows more about where you’re going than you do.”
and its sub-tip…
SOPHISTICATED ROGUE’S TRAVEL TIP #1a©:
“Arguing with the bus driver is frequently counterproductive.”
I can’t even make it forty miles in the Bay Area without getting lost. I’m gonna be able to handle India and Ecuador? (sigh, rubs forehead)
So. I’m screwed. Pray for me. Include it in your prayers to get me to stop swearing, if you wish.
Eventually, I did get to San Francisco, got my walk, got my dinner, and got my first, “Wait? You just up and quit your fuckin’ job?” from a skeptical bartender. So I will call yesterday a measured success. My desire is for that judgment to hold for the next nine months.
For those interested, my goal for this trip is to travel around the world. Deliberately, I’ve made only three “hard points” for the trip - well, I guess five “hard points”, including the beginning and end points, which I guess one cannot avoid when taking a trip. I’m thinking of them as clothespins hanging the trip on a line, perhaps a dirty clothesline tied between two tenement buildings high over a street in a cartoon taking place in Depression-Era New York City. (shrug) Whatever helps, dude.
First clothespin is San Francisco. Tonight I leave SFO - that’s AIRPORT CODE for San Francisco Airport - for the second clothespin, Sydney, Australia. The image of me sitting still in an enclosed space for fifteen hours should amuse many of you who once employed and/or dated me. I plan to purchase a third and fourth clothespin in the form of a flight from Lisbon, Portugal to Rio de Janeiro on February 1, 2015. So basically, I’ll need to figure out a way to get from Sydney to Lisbon in seven months. Fifth and final clothespin is, I’d like to have a birthday dinner (April 17, 2015) at this restaurant in New Orleans, Gautreau’s, mainly ‘cause it has a bench outside a picture window and I want a cool-ass picture taken of me sitting on said bench.
A needlessly romantic imagined image to go with a needlessly romantic and overambitious plan, to be certain. A plan which I’ll fail to achieve in its conceived schematic, no doubt. But whatever. We’ll see what happens. Every creative project becomes something different from its imagined form, is what I’ve found and grown to enjoy over the years. This is no different. I enter into this with the hope that when it is done, it’s a creative project of meaning.
Logistics:
-This is the website. You’re here, obviously. I dunno, bookmark it? Don’t mind that you can’t comment on posts? Cherish it?
-I have started a Twitter account specifically for the trip: @Rogue_Trip. Don't forget the underscore. Follow that for updates, notifications, little random tidbits and mini-bites, etc., and holy shit, please tell other people to follow it. My God, if a couple months go by and I’m trying find free wi-fi in the jungle in order to post stuff for a mere 53 people, I might just disappear into the Indian Ocean (or the Pacific Ocean, or the fourth dimension, YOU DON’T KNOW IT COULDN’T HAVE HAPPENED, DO YOU?) like that Malaysian Air jet (not a legitimate threat). I may be re-tweeting links from @Rogue_Trip, but I will not be posting trip-related stuff on my personal Twitter account.
-If you haven’t “liked” the Sophisticated Rogue Media Facebook page, please do that. I’m looking to use that more than my personal page, for updates related to the trip. Don’t give me that look; that’s branding, buddy. Yeah, I’ve got a plan for that. My personal Facebook page is most likely gonna be less-used, at this point.
So if you’re up for it, please follow along. I’m excited about this, and it’d be nice if you read this blog as I go. I’ve got some ideas for what form it will take, but married to nothing other than maintaining it in a regular way. So keep checking back to see just how it begins to form, please.
Take care. I have to make sure getting to SFO is a straight shot on the BART…
*SOPHISTICATED ROGUE’S TRAVEL TIPS© are meant to be for entertainment purposes only. The title of the tips, the tips themselves, and in fact the sobriquet “Sophisticated Rogue” itself are meant to be ironic, wry, and in no way literal, and if you don’t know that by now, well, (sigh), Jesus, c’mon, dude…
