Closing Thoughts: Part 1

I have been meaning to write a post-trip wrap up post for a while now. This is it. It’s probably kind of good that it took me a while to get to this, because almost daily I realize something new about my experience. A few coherent (I hope) thoughts have bubbled up so far, but there is plenty of unfinished and unexplored business in my brain related to the past few months.

I am definitely happier now. I understand much more about what makes me happy and what things keep me from being happier. I have learned more about how I can avoid tension and anxiety that was, prior to the trip, too common an experience. Getting to this point was ultimately the result of learning more about other people and myself by interacting with the world more than simply reacting to it. By simply reacting to the world I only strengthen existing biases and conclusions, even if they’re wrong. By interacting, I can actually test existing thoughts and feelings and continue to learn.

Throughout my trip I encouraged myself to “do” more, and the return on even a little “doing” has been huge. I learn by doing, and there is apparently no limit to where I can apply that strategy. I am still surprised by how much there is to gain from being even just a little more outgoing than usual.

I also have an interesting feeling about my life now, that can best be described as “the adult life I thought waited for me, someday”. As a child I had some weird foggy vision of what it’d be like – mostly what it’d feel like – to be free of the pressures of school (a fully planned/structured day in which I had no say) and authority figures (those who would implement such a plan/structure).

What I didn’t realize at the time was that, if you let it, life continues to follow this same pattern well after childhood. I achieved my independence only to find my days were still guided by people and forces that didn’t necessarily have my best interests in mind, yet still had control over me. It was hard for me even to understand a situation as anything other than someone else’s agenda being forced onto me, because the structure of education and corporation are so similar. As an adult I had been granted the freedom to choose, but from a number of options that each fell short of the mark I had set as a child for what I wanted from my “adult life”.

Breaking free of that situation (leaving work and a home) allowed me to gain perspective on my life and the world in a way that I wasn’t able to, even when I tried to be objective about it, while I was still part of that system. It wasn’t just about changing a temporary situation, it was about changing a huge chunk of reality as I knew it.

As much as I can’t know what things are possible in my life without actually trying them, I can’t know what things there are to try so long as I am walled in by boundaries, rules, and assumptions that only continue to exist because that’s all I have ever known. I knew there was another dimension to reality out there and now that I have experienced it I am forever changed for the better. To put it another way, I know more about what is possible now, so I am willing to settle for less.

I have been living in Austin, TX for about the past 6 weeks. A lot of that time has been spent working like crazy for Ontolo, which has been great, but I am happy to say that as of this week I am getting back into a more “normal” schedule, which was a goal for after the trip. I have made a few slight changes to my routine that have made a big positive impact on my day to day doings, and now that our product launch is complete and things are a bit less hectic, I can start working on some other life routine things, too. Fighting old habits continues to be hard, but I am much better about dealing with them now, and continue to strive for progress.

An interesting side note to settling back down is that in the past 2 weeks I have experienced more negativity than during my entire time on the road. My 4Runner was broken into, my Z was hit while parked (no note was left), and I am pretty sure a door to door salesman just tried to scam me (which is kind of a hilarious problem to have in 2010, when I think about it).

I am not sure exactly what I feel about these events in relation to my time on the road, but there is something there. It almost feels like the closer (physically) I settle to the status quo, the greater the chance that negativity from it will spill over into my life. But my thoughts on this are premature. I just find it interesting that after 6 months on the road, parking, living, going, and doing whatever, my property is violated while sitting at my apartment in a decent area of a town I love enough to call home (again).

As I slowly finish settling into my apartment, I am happy to see that I have managed to keep my belongings relatively minimal. I’m excited about printing up some of my photos from the trip and hanging them around the place. Many things I moved then decided to get rid of, I was able to sell, donate, or give away, which feels much better than keeping things I don’t use or throwing them away.

The tossing of unused things includes old data. I deleted almost half a terabyte of old “stuff” that I know I am never, ever going to dig into. Even getting rid of data – at least when there’s that much of it – feels great. Some of that data was things I thought I really cared about (old emails, mementos, etc), but I think I realized that rather than hanging onto old things that mean something to me, a lot of those things were just holding me down/back. It was therapeutic to get rid of some of that stuff.

I wish some of my thoughts were more complete, but they’re just going to have to keep working themselves out. This will probably be my last update here unless I find myself pulling together a lot of stuff that relates to the trip, but you might end up seeing a Part 2 to this entry.

I appreciate everyone who has followed and supported me along the way, and I hope that if nothing else, you were entertained by my little adventure.

Life’s more complicated now, but I think it’s also a lot better.

The Beginning of The End

Slowing down a fast paced road trip to spend 4 weeks in your home state with family and friends can really do a number on you (brain and waistline). As of yesterday I am out of TX and back on the road aiming to wrap up the rest of my trip, and my time in TX was spent with all sorts of stuff banging around in my head. Let me see if I can cut to the chase regarding the rest of my trip and plans once I’m done. Apologies if this winds up feeling like I am skipping over big chunks of thinkery, but it’s hard for me to keep straight exactly where my head was during my last update. A lot has happened.

I decided that I wanted to formalize the itinerary for the rest of my trip somewhat, and that it should be centered around visiting friends. I have cut out a lot of the proposed sight-seeing and exploration based destinations. In that regard I will be missing out on a lot of cool stuff, but I am confident that if I try to force it I’ll be too distracted, and that’s not the experience I want to have. I am too focused on settling back down and getting back to work (because I’m excited about both) to really enjoy 3 or 4 more months on the road exploring. The idea of spending a super long time on the road is enticing, but the reality of the situation is that, for now, my road warrior period is over.

Seeing friends who have spread across the country, however, is something that I don’t want to miss out on while I have the opportunity. I have the time now to catch up face to face with people I haven’t seen in years (some over a decade) and I don’t know when I’ll have that chance again. So, visiting friends is the core of the plan for the rest of the trip. I figure I’ll be wrapping up mid September then headed back West. I haven’t updated the map yet, but I’ll continue doing that soon.

Over the past month I have done a lot of thinking about what I want to do when the trip is over. Everything from going full on with the motorcycle maintenance angle (trade schools, apprenticeships, etc), to going back to exactly the same type of job I was doing before the trip.

I decided that as exciting and noble as it sounds to do something like radically changing careers, that’s just not what I really want to do. I have spent a considerable amount of time building the career I have now and I think it’d be a mistake to completely drop all that without feeling like it’s something I really need to do, and that’s just not how it feels. I do want to make changes, but a complete departure from the career I have built seems like the wrong way to go.

Part of me wishes I was feeling a strong drive to really change it up, but that’s not the reality of the situation, and I have to be honest with myself if I want to be happy. I can’t fake some sort of sudden passion. I have to just keep “doing” with changes here and new things there and see what happens. I do plan to seriously pursue motorcycle maintenance as a hobby, and if it grows into something more then I am open to that, but I do not think dropping everything to commit to that career change is the right thing to do.

So, it seems like I’ll be headed back to tech work, but it also seems like I should change things up somewhat. I scratched together a list in my head of things I do and do not want from my next tech job and started thinking about positions that could satisfy a good number of those requirements and still allow me to leverage my experience, even if the job is something I have never done. Eventually I landed on the idea that trying something in the realm of QA might be interesting, and I started poking around job boards to get a feel for what was out there. I came to the conclusion that if I decided to go that route I would be able to find work, but then something more immediate came up.

While in Austin I was crashing with my friend Ben Wills. For about two years now he and a good friend of his, Garrett French, have been cranking away on Ontolo, a link building company they founded together. Ben and I started talking about some of the technical solutions he has implemented and before I knew it I was deep in a coding marathon rewriting most of the backend with an aim towards efficiency and general tidiness. I am happy to say that the end result was a massive improvement that’s going to allow Ben and Garrett to focus more on the ideas and client work that will really continue to grow the company’s core competency, and less on the systems related nuts and bolts of the operation.

Although I don’t plan to make a habit of the nutty schedule Ben and I were keeping the week I was cranking out code, the experience in general was exciting and fulfilling. I really enjoyed being able to provide so much clear, specific value to project, let alone for a friend’s company. At some point Ben threw out the idea that maybe I’d be interested in working for Ontolo, and after some thought, I have decided that’s what I am going to do. I can see a lot of the work that’d be coming at me, and I think I’d enjoy doing it. It’d also be an exciting, enjoyable experience to work at a company of 3 (including me). It’ll be a mix of old and new that will allow me to have some valuable and exciting new experiences while using experience and skill I have spent years developing. I’m really excited about this, and very grateful to Ben and Garrett for their offer.

There’s no reason I need to live in Austin to pursue this opportunity, but as it stands right now that’s what I’m leaning towards. Why Austin is probably not worth analysis at this point – I just really like Texas, and I really like Austin. I think I’d enjoy living there again and I have the opportunity to give it a go, so I think that’s what I am going to do.

So…”The Beginning of The End”. Not as grim as it sounds, but I think that’s where I’m at. With the exception of my commitment to Ontolo any number of things could still change, but I think I’ve got a grasp on where I’m heading. For now.

Lose Your Illusion II

This is another many-faceted topic that could spiral a number of interesting, worthwhile ways. Once again I have tried to keep this entry from wobbling too much, but it was a bit of a challenge. Is the title of the entry a super corny play on words? You bet it is!

For much of my life I have been frustrated by the fact that I couldn’t whole-heartedly answer the question of what I wanted to do with my life career-wise. I feel like from as far back as I can remember, society has given me the impression that this is a question I should be able to answer enthusiastically. It never made sense to me that I hadn’t the slightest inkling of a heartfelt answer, and this resulted in confusion, frustration, and anxiety, especially in the grips of a school system that was pressuring me to figure out what my major would be in college – i.e.: what I’d be doing with my adult life – as far back as middle school.

I felt like most people had a passion they’d indulge if they could, whether that meant something that could clearly be a money-making career, or something that would rarely if ever generate income. I felt like everyone knew what they wanted to do with their lives in an ideal world, whether or not they felt they could actually spend their lives doing those things in the real world, while I had no clue.

Recently I have come to accept that whether or not those beliefs about other people’s passions are accurate, that’s just not how it’s going to work for me. I have decided that 31 years is more than enough time to determine whether or not there’s a raging passion hidden somewhere inside me, and the answer is that there isn’t, whether or not society suggests there should be.

I am coming to believe that if I want to be passionately involved in something I am going to have to cultivate that passion. This means exploring ideas I have about things I might like to do, rather than dismissing them because they don’t seem like the vision I have been waiting for. It also means dismissing the belief that there’s one “right idea” that is going to grab hold of my life passionately, and instead simply asking myself whether or not I am enjoying using my time and energy enough to stay involved in the activities I try.

To be clear, I am not suggesting, as I have often heard recommended, that I need to try “anything” that comes to mind. For me, that tactic doesn’t address the root of my frustration, which ultimately makes me even more aggravated.

I am suggesting that by forgetting the idea that a vision will guide me, I can give my previously “lesser” ideas the attention they deserve, but still without suggesting that all ideas are equally promising. Whether or not one or more of them will turn into things I’d refer to as passions, exploring them should set me on the right course to learn more about how I’d like to spend my time – and actually spending it that way.

It is with this newly refined attitude that I have, I think, made a decision about what I’d like to do with my career after the road trip. Since this is coming up more and more in conversation and I am not shying away from it, I guess I might as well mention it in the blog at this point.

Without getting deep into the details of how I made the decision (only in an effort to not bore you), I have decided to investigate motorcycle repair and maintenance as both a career and a hobby. I already know that I enjoy many of the general aspects of an activity such as this, and I am excited to find out if I could enjoy those that will be revealed as I dig deeper. I feel like I have reached a point where instead of pushing this idea aside as unrealistic, or not interesting enough (whatever that actually means), I am willing to give it the attention it deserves as a prominent idea in my mind.

I have started to do some research regarding how I’d like to go about getting into this for both hobby and career, but I haven’t made any decisions yet. I am also still very open to the idea that by the end of the road trip my mind might change about this specific idea. For now though, it feels like this is the direction I am headed.

Hopefully, if nothing else, this is only the first idea in a series that I’ll be less likely to dismiss, whether or not it’s related to something as big as a career change or as small as how I’d like to spend a Saturday morning.

Respect for the Power of Old Habits

This entry was hard to keep on track because there are so many interesting, worthwhile tangents woven throughout it, but I did my best.

In the week that I’ve been back home I have developed a new level of respect for the power of old habits. Especially bad ones. The speed and intensity with which some have been reintroduced into my life is surprising given the personal progress I feel I have recently made. I think a detailed look at these habits could get complex, but I don’t think that means that recognizing and avoiding these bad behaviors has to be complex or difficult.

The habits:

• Eating too much
• Mindlessly watching TV
• Bad sleep schedule

I have recently come to realize that each of these behaviors is the result of me thrashing to find a sense of satisfaction in my life when I feel one is lacking. Each bad habit has its own nuances, but that’s where they all stem from. Most often this is on the day-to-day level. Turning to these habits when I “have nothing do to” is a prime example of this behavior. These habits were formed during my early teens if not earlier, which makes them significantly comfortable and hard to fight when they present themselves.

Thinking about how I have been avoiding these behaviors on the road, the answer is two fold.

First, I am generally busy all day doing satisfying things that keep me from straying to indulgent, instantly-gratifying, generally unhealthy behavior for satisfaction. I think that this lesson – learning how to fill my day with healthy satisfaction – is probably the most important aspect to try to carry back into my life off the road.  A big bullet point here is doing my best to make sure I enjoy my work. However, I know there will be times when a day just isn’t going well in this regard and I will be tempted.

Secondly, and directly addressing when a day’s satisfaction is falling short, I have been making choices that make the worst of my bad habits unavailable to me. The absence of a TV, not keeping candy and snacks in the car, a daily routine that naturally encourages a better sleep schedule, and the acknowledgement that I will stray if I get too bored (as mentioned in an earlier blog entry) all address this. Conveniently, while on the road a lot of this behavior is just working itself out without much effort, but it will take more effort off the road (like, right now). The lesson here is that I need to take a more active role in avoiding those behaviors and situations that I know don’t serve my best interests. I now understand that I have a much harder time backing out of those situations than I do simply not getting into them, even though the latter takes more thought up front.

I could fight with myself over whether it’s better to learn how to deal with these distractions and temptations or to simply avoid them, but I have reached a point where I am satisfied with avoidance. Sometimes their availability is dictated by circumstance, and sometimes I have to make choices to make them unavailable. Either way, I have decided that fighting with the temptations to gain some sort of ultimate, unwavering power over them just isn’t worth it to me. Going that route results in me feeling anxious, stressed, and overly critical about my behavior and state of being, even in the cases where I ultimately make the “healthier” decision. I am learning that I’d just rather not have the unhealthy decision available as on option.

A big part of what has allowed me to come to that conclusion is that I am learning how to be comfortable with occasional indulgence. For a long time I have been in a state of almost constant concern about indulgence. It’s a state of worry that colors a big part of my days. Some days it’s worse than others, but I think it’s something that I think about way too much. This mostly manifests in worries about food, but it does relate to other situations as well. With the specific regard to food, one way to put it is that I feel like I am looking out for my physical health in a psychologically unhealthy way, and sometimes without even making the physically healthy decision in the end. I often felt like there was no gray area, and that’s really unfair to do to myself. The stress of worrying often made it even harder to avoid the bad behavior, because it made the satisfaction from it seem even more appealing. It’s a horrible cycle.

In a nut shell, I am coming to believe that a combination of avoidance and careful indulgence might lead me to a happier balance. Practically this means generally avoiding those situations that I feel I will overindulge in, but not completely disallowing myself from partaking in them from time to time. I think that occasional indulgence, and the mindset that truly, though cautiously, accepts it, will act as the “relief valve” I need to worry less and enjoy more even without ignoring legitimately bad habits and behaviors. Without this balance I will continue to find myself swinging between overindulgence (falling hard into bad habits) and overcautiousness (spending too much time worrying).

A big part of my time at home this past week has been a struggle with these old habits. Today is a new day though, and I am going to work to make the rest of this visit healthier. I’ll still watch some TV, but I won’t let it keep me up all night (cautious indulgence – last night was already an improvement on this). I am going to stop eating while I sit around the house, and if I get too antsy, I’ll go for a drive even if I don’t know where I’m headed (avoidance). When I sit down for meals I’ll eat more slowly, and won’t serve myself a ton of food just because it’s there, home cooked, and delicious (mainly avoidance – today I have made it past lunch and am doing better already).

I may continue to overdo it a little bit (cautious indulgence) since being at home right now honestly is a special thing that’s presenting some unique opportunities to me, but I don’t need to go as hog wild as I have been. I feel like I am now armed with the knowledge necessary to avoid being completely sucked in by old, bad habits, but I won’t soon be forgetting how quickly and strongly they can grab ahold of me if I am not careful.

Trip Report: Chaco Culture NHP

The past few days were spent in Chaco Culture National Historical Park with friends Meredith and Ben (left). Meredith is working as a real-deal park ranger out there this summer and was nice enough to invite Ben and I out for a few days. I didn’t really know what to expect from the park but am happy to say it was interesting and thought provoking, aside from also being a good time hanging out with friends.

Chaco Culture NHP exists to preserve the spiritually and culturally rich, not to mention beautiful, desert area where the Chaoan people established a mysterious empire from about 850AD to about 1130AD. Many Native American cultures around the area can trace some of their history back to this empire, though I get the impression this can be a bit fuzzy at times.

The site is covered with (mostly un-excavated) ruins including several “great houses” (Pueblo Bonito is seen in the background of the picture of Meredith above) that were large enough to hold hundreds of people each, but that so far show little sign of continual, large-scale habitation. It seems that this area was as inhospitable during the height of the Chacoan empire as it is today. In recent years estimates of the number of permanent residents have fallen sharply from thousands to hundreds as we have learned more about what went on there.

Archeo-astrological features can be found at several spots within the excavated ruins. Many are related to solstice, an event which was happening the weekend I left the park. There are also walls that are built within 1* of true North/South and East/West. One of the better-known petroglyphs in the park is believed to be a depiction of a 1054 supernova.

There is a network of what we’d refer to as carefully engineered and implemented “roads”, though as far as we know the Chacoans didn’t use the wheel and had no beasts of burden. Furthermore, some of the “road” design is illogical if these “linear landform modifications”, as one ranger at the park refers to them, were actually used as practical passageways of some sort. Most theories suggest these “roads” were more ceremonial or ornamental than practical, but no one knows for sure.

In a nut shell, the Chacoans decided to set up what appears to be a highly engineered and successfully implemented empire in an inhospitable place for reasons that are pretty much entirely unclear, and then a few hundred years later they just sort of left things to rot. No one knows why for sure, though there are many theories.

Although I’d like to say I found most interest in the spiritual and cultural aspects of the area, both of which are extremely rich, more than anything I was interested in the end of the empire. Stoked by the discussion of similar events in the recently read books Ishmael and My Ishmael, I find it intriguing that an apparently successful and calculated empire would, as far as we can tell, be left to rot after a few hundred years. It makes me wonder if our current path as a society might be headed in a similar direction.

That is to ask, are we going to learn something in the next few hundred years that makes us radically and immediately modify how we’re living, abandoning many of the things we now take for granted as part of how we live? And if so, is this knowledge at its core the same thing that many societies before us have learned at some point? It’s a real head scratcher, especially considering there are many examples of ruins like this one, where apparently successful societies seem to have suddenly abandoned their empires for no clear reason.

I don’t know how much thought I’m actually going to put into this, but it does seem like figuring out what happened to societies like these might be critical to helping us determine the ways in which we might be headed for disaster or radical change. This is kind of my big take away from the visit.

As an aside that I need to think more about but wanted to mention, the amount of graffiti and vandalism in the park (namely in the form of modern rock carvings) was depressing considering the sensitivity of what the park contains. It’s especially distressing when you realize that it takes a bit of effort to get to the park in the first place. You have to deal with 20 or so miles of rocky, pot-holed, washboarded, cattle-gaurded, sandy, rough dirt road to get from major highways into the park. I’d tend to think these kinds of considerations and hurdles would bring only those able to show the place the proper respect, but I would be wrong.

There are all sorts of ideas about how to combat this kind of thing, mostly revolving around controlled access to sensitive sites. Lotteries for access, requirements for group size and official representation, whether or not to pave the access roads, and so on. The consequences to these sorts of steps is part of what I need to think more about on this topic, so I don’t have much substantial to say on it just yet, but it’s something that is definitely sticking out in my brain as a take away from the experience.

Chaco National Historical Park seems to me to be a hidden gem, especially if you are deeply interested in the cultural and spiritual significance of the place. I’ve never been anywhere else that I had such up close and personal access to such significant archaeological treasures.

Three Month’s Thoughts

Over the past month or so I believe I have steadily suffered more and more from some form of writer’s block. This might have to do with a conflict between the way I was writing in my personal journal and the way I felt I needed to augment that behavior as I transitioned to this blog. To that end I think I am going to start writing in this blog much more how I would if it were my old personal journal. Hopefully this makes the blog more valuable for both of us, though this might mean the entries are less succinct and more frequent, which could be a bummer for you. We’ll see I guess.

So it has been 12 weeks since this trip started. In some ways that feels incredibly short, and in other ways it seems unthinkably long. If I consider what would probably have gone on in my life over the past 3 months had I not hit the road, it seems like the time would have essentially flown by without much of anything substantial happening. At least, nothing substantially positive. If I then think about what has happened over that time instead, it seems almost impossible that I could have done, seen, and achieved so much over that same period, not to mention the visions for my future that have been created.

The short of it, I think, is that although what I am doing now is extremely accelerated compared to how I’ll be living once the trip is over, it has shown me without question what I can accomplish with my time if I don’t let complacency lull me into stagnation. The best part is that this doesn’t mean I need to be doing extraordinary things all the time, a consideration that I think often brings with it a lot of pressure, worry, and can demotivate me. I can just continue to live this new basic philosophy of interaction instead of reaction. It’s easy to do and extremely rewarding even with minimal effort.

I feel like I have unquestionably proven to myself that interaction instead of reaction works, is sustainable, and most importantly, is overwhelmingly enjoyable. To sum it all up, I think I have learned to trust myself more, and I am identifying this with laying the foundation for a better, happier life. Learning to trust in myself, to essentially validate my own thoughts and emotions I suppose, has lead to higher self confidence, a better overall attitude, and has enabled me to enjoy more of my day (previously more would have been spent worrying or contemplating). Not every day is full of rainbows and unicorns, but man, are things substantially better over all.

That my own thoughts and feelings would need validation sounds kind of ludicrous when I write it out, but I think a lack of that validation is in fact a big part of what was shaping my life (negatively) before this trip. Stay with me here, but I think a big cause for this former lack of self-validation is the way in which society teaches us to judge others. I think that often as we judge others, we also judge ourselves, and it’s all unfair.

To get a bit more specific: As I walk through all sorts of neighborhoods filled with all kinds of people, carrying my huge camera and my pack, taking pictures of stuff many people don’t even see, I am subject to a wide variety of stares and comments. Believe me when I tell you that many people, upon seeing a 70-200mm lens, gets all sorts of thoughts about what you’re up to, and they’re not always nice.

I make it a point to interact with people who make faces (at least saying hello to them) or comments (continuing the conversation) not only because I am striving to interact more than react, but also because I have some interest in what I’ll call unsticking their minds (something I am working on myself, too, to be clear). It’s kind of amazing how much a person’s attitude can change from one of confusion and in some cases disapproval to one of approval and interest just by not allowing initial judgements to be the end of the story. In fact I’d go so far as to say that when you let initial judgements define the situation, you’re not just maintaining the status quo, you’re strengthening it.

To pull this back on track more directly – We’re constantly bombarded with depictions of what’s acceptable and normal, as well as what’s unacceptable and socially perverted. Based on these depictions, I think we regularly make subconscious snap judgements – usually involving more of our own imagination than the reality being presented (which is actually quite amazing to think about) – about anyone who seems to fall outside the norm.

Pulling this back even more, to speak to self-validation – Recently I have found that I used to subconsciously turn the sort of judgement I have just described inward as well. I think the way in which society teaches us to view things that aren’t “normal” results in a system of self-judgement that stifles our lives. I think that in an effort to make sure others don’t judge us the way we might judge them (as justified by society at large), we end up invalidating our own feelings and thoughts, which strips us of our true individuality, creativity, and destroys our spirits. I say “we” because I think this is something that a lot of people experience, but let me be clear that I am speaking for myself, based on my experiences. Think about this for yourself though if you haven’t. Maybe it means something to you. Maybe it doesn’t. But if it does…that could be the start of something really good. It has been for me.

So I guess that’s the big number one bullet point for the trip so far. There’s a bunch of smaller stuff knocking around in my head, but I don’t think anything that’s worth digging into yet. As things develop they’ll show up here, and for both our sakes I do hope more bubbles up into something coherent (as this entry hopefully is).

To leave you with a few lighter thoughts:

• Quick sketching suggests I’ll be on the road until mid to late October, but I am still open to deviations as I feel so this could swing around, most likely into a longer time period if anything, I think, but we’ll see how it goes. Having sketched out the rest of the trip, even tentatively, has made me feel generally more comfortable and “better” (I am waving my hands right now).
• I am skipping Zion and Arches on the way East, but I do plan to hit them on the way back West, so DON’T PANIC.
• For a variety of reasons that I think I have identified, this trip is costing way more than I budgeted. I think I am ready to just commit to that though. I need to actually commit to that, or to being more frugal (as I was the first month or so), within the next day or two. I think it’s gonna go the way of spending more than I planned, but we’ll see.
• I am getting better at reading. It’s not really a chore anymore. I used to feel like it was a chore and put a book down before say, getting tired and needing to go to sleep. Now I’m reading until I’m tired, which is an interesting change.

Okay. For now I think that’s all I’ve got. Maybe you can expect more regular entries from here on out though.

Trip Report: Canada

That’s right – CANADA. Okay, well, Vancouver BC, Jasper National Park AB, and Banff National Park AB.

My time in Vancouver was spent in what I imagine is the core tourist area, the peninsula that includes the core downtown, and the distinctly less touristy area East/Northeast of Chinatown.

From around Expo Blvd working Northwest towards Stanley Park, I found the layout of the city to be pretty cool. Down near Expo Blvd is essentially the core downtown/financial area, and the landscape manages to sort of blend from that into some lower-Manhattan like neighborhoods, then up into high-rise apartments that managed to keep a cozy feel (at least from the outside) and were architecturally interesting and pleasant. Basically, it felt like a really attractive, laid back city, and had a young vibe to it. No shortages of cozy little restaurants, coffee shops, and specialty stores.

There’s a long strip of road called Granville that runs through downtown that’s lined with restaurants, clubs, and bars, and is busy all the time, though most exciting at night. Not my cup of tea, but it’s there, it’s happening, and people seemed to be enjoying themselves. The other major “strip” in downtown that I identified was Robson St, which is lined with the cozy little places I mentioned previously. That’s a bit more my speed, if I had to choose between the two.

Although I found that part of Vancouver to be very nice (especially North Vancouver, across the Strait of Georgia, which has beautiful Canadian Wilderness as its backdrop), I most enjoyed taking photos in Vancouver, and that drew me to areas East of Main St and North towards the water. This area was a mix of big commercial and run down residential and business structures, which are all responsible for the conditions I enjoyed photographing, though those conditions bring other aspects to the mix, too.

East of Main St, especially along E Hastings St, are a few blocks that as far as I can tell, police just ignore when it comes to drug related offenses. The streets are covered with people obviously involved with drug activity (using, buying, and selling out in the open) 24/7. I clearly saw multiple people buying, selling, and using (including shooting up and smoking crack) in the clear light of day. Most of the alley ways have permanent used syringe disposal boxes, which I guess sheds more light onto the reality of the situation there.

I never had any problems down there, and in fact exchanged at least a few friendly words with quite a few people on the street and all was fine, but it was definitely a bit of a shock. Let me be clear and state that I am not trying to pass judgement on anything I saw there, but it’s all worth mentioning, I think, because it was such a different environment than I have ever been in. After getting adjusted to it somewhat, even in just the few days I was there, a lot of it became surprisingly normal feeling. I guess once you realize (or, once it appears) that no one out there doing traditionally “scary” things is interested in getting involved with you – to hurt you or otherwise – it’s just a bunch of people living differently than you do. Sure, very differently, and not something I’d like to spend my life around, but I guess to an extent it’s all just people doing what they do. At least in this isolated experience. I have a lot of mixed, unclear feelings about it all, but ultimately it was a very good experience.

See all of my Vancouver BC pictures at Flickr.

From Vancouver I moved onto Jasper National Park, a destination I am very grateful to have had recommended by a friend. I had a feeling I was in for something special when I realized that the majority of the 9ish-hour drive from Vancouver kept me completely surrounded by the most expansive rugged wilderness I think I have ever encountered. If all I knew of Canada was that drive, I’d expect 98% of the country to be wild (and for all I know, it is). This shot was taken from inside the park, so it’s a bit of an exaggeration in regard to the drive out there, but really, I felt like I was more or less surrounded by this type of scene even just off the highway.

Jasper is just incredible. Wandering around there – and the park is huge – is sort of like dreaming. Everywhere you look there’s something spectacular right off of a postcard or out of a picture book. Tranquil falls, meaty rock, crystal clear lakes and reflecting pools, glaciers (yes, real-deal glaciers), endless wild country, and beautifully sculpted peaks. Formations like this and this were my personal favorites.

The hiking was great. There plenty of trails of varying difficulty, and most of the ones I hiked were made extra-interesting due to remaining snow cover at the higher elevations. But it was a great time! I even achieved my first real summit on the Sulphur Ridge Trail! My reward, aside from personal satisfaction, was views like this and this. The Opal Hills Loop was also a favorite, providing this view from the top.

See all of my Jasper National Park AB pictures at Flickr.

I mentioned Banff National Park at the beginning of this entry because it was charted, but unfortunately the weather turned south for real during my drive down from Jasper, and I had to bail early. It appeared to be more of the same though – meaning, totally worth your time, weather permitting. The biggest problem for me really was that pretty much all trails in Banff were still officially closed due to snow, with many of them closed due to avalanche vulnerability. Not something I was interested in tempting even if I had snowshoes, which I didn’t.

So, to sum up: Canada – Do it.

10 Good Albums

Having occasion to listen to a bunch of music on this road trip, I felt like putting up a list of 10 albums you might not have heard that I think are great, and definitely worth one listen.

This specifically isn’t a “top 10″ list, so don’t despair if your favorite album isn’t listed. This is just 10 albums that, at the moment, are fresh in my mind as being really enjoyable and possibly missed.

You probably know all these artists and have heard one or two tracks off these albums, but if you haven’t heard the entire albums, I think it’s worth your time. Especially in cases where you might think “there’s no way that band put out a good album”. These are albums that I have listened to a zillion times.

In no particular order:

• Supergrass – In It For The Money
• Better Than Ezra – Friction, Baby
• Soundgarden – Superunknown
• Ben Folds Five – The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner
• Fountains of Wayne – Fountains of Wayne
• The Secret Machines – Now Here Is Nowhere
• Spacehog – Resident Alien
• Global Underground 013 – Sasha – Ibiza – CD1 specifically
• The Cardigans – Long Gone Before Daylight
• Beck – Odelay

The Good and The Bad, to Date

Last night while waiting out a storm near Lake Louise in Banff National Park, Alberta Canada, I decided to draw up two lists. One is a list of positive/enjoyable things about the road trip so far, and the other is a list of negative/unenjoyable things about the same. It was an attempt to spend some unintended downtime wisely, and actually stop and take more stock in the long term value of what I’m doing.

I am happy to say the negative/unenjoyable list is very short and pretty reasonable, I think, and that the positive/enjoyable list is longer and more substantial than I thought it might be at this point. This is a quick post to get it out there, so some detail might be missing (each of these could potentially be a post in itself, perhaps), but I think this is still valuable.

Without further ado, the lists (so far).

Positive/Enjoyable

• “Opening up” – Incorporating proactive, deeper conversation with new people into my daily routine. Quite simply, this enriches life.
• Setting my own “life schedule” - Not having work as an excuse (legitimate or not) for avoiding life experience (including critical thinking) has provided substantial clarity regarding what I might want to do with my life after the road trip. The need for this level of freedom (no work) diminishes as I experience it, but I believe more than ever than my hunch that I’d need this level of separation to make progress was right on.
• Inspiring others by sharing my experiences – This helps encourage my own positive behaviors as well as the same in others.
• Learning to trust myself and “just do” more, vs. analyzing myself into inaction – The amount I learn, and the quickness with which I learn it, when I just go do stuff is surprising, though it doesn’t sound like it should be.
• Seeing magnificent things that I think really must be experienced first hand to fully appreciate
• Recognizing “status quo” patterns of complacence and mediocrity – actually identifying some, and not just having general uneasy feelings about routines and choices. I am just starting to figure out how to work with this, but it’s a start. One example is ways I let work responsibilities impact choices to take steps to advance my entire life, and feel “good” about doing so (for some definition of the word good).
• Learning to take myself less seriously, which greatly improves life experience
• Finding a new respect for the value of history, especially recent history, which I am connecting with the most
• Deciding that people are generally “nice” – “Nice” is not the same as “good”, but this is still a valuable conclusion – Generally speaking, you can be civil with an incredible range of people, which goes a long way considering how many interactions are very short in nature.
• Having such a short “negatives” list!

Negative/Unenjoyable

• Searching for places to sleep when “established” spots like hotels, campgrounds, and Walmarts aren’t an option for one reason or another. The dumb thing is my biggest concern is that I’ll get hassled by law enforcement, not that my safety is at risk.
• Excitement over post-roadtrip plans encouraging me to hurry a little, when I know I need to stick this out at a pace slow enough to continue to make it a valuable experience. Also, disallowing excitement over post-roadtrip plans to mess with the road trip much helps validate my excitement over them, I think, which is a good lesson in general (stop before I act, and if I still want it “later”, then go for it). Calling this a negative is actually probably too strong, but I think it deserves mention.

Shop Class as Soulcraft

The book Shop Class as Soulcraft was recommended to me by an independent motorcycle repair shop owner I met in Silver Lake, Los Angeles, CA. I picked it up and read it through twice (some parts three times). In a nut shell, the writer makes a case for moral and cognitive value that he feels is often overlooked in “blue collar” work, like the trades.

This book has its problems and I don’t necessarily agree with everything in it, but it is chock full of excellent brain food. Additionally, it spoke to some personal feelings I have always had about manual labor/interaction with “things”, but haven’t been able to articulate myself.

The gist of the book as mentioned here and at the amazon page I linked to above is pretty much enough to guide you towards or away from this book, so I won’t get into my own review. I will however share some of my favorite quotes. I hope some of these give you something interesting and worthwhile to think about.

“The satisfactions of manifesting oneself concretely in the world through manual competence have been known to make a man quiet and easy. They seem to relieve him of the felt need to offer chattering interpretations of himself to vindicate his worth. He can simply point: the building stands, the car now runs, the lights are on. Boasting is what a boy does, because he has no real effect in the world. But the tradesman must reckon with the infallible judgement of reality, where one’s failures or shortcomings cannot be interpreted away.”

“The moral significance of work that grapples with material things may lie in the simple fact that such things like outside the self.”

The following quote is Aristotle, quoted in the book:

“Lack of experience diminishes our power of taking a comprehensive view of the admitted facts. Hence those who dwell in intimate association with nature and its phenomena are more able to lay down principles such as to admit of a wide and coherent development; while those whom devotion to abstract discussions has rendered unobservant of facts are too ready to dogmatize on the basis of a few observations.”

“…the great irony is that anti-modernist sentiments of aesthetic revolt against the machine paved the way for certain unattractive features of late-modern culture: therapeutic self-absorbtion and the hankering after “authenticity”, precisely those psychic hooks now relied upon by advertisers.”

“The intrusion of computers, and distant foreigners whose work is conceived in a computer-like, rule-bound way, into what was previously the domain of professionals may be alarming, but it also compels us to consider afresh the human dimension of work. In what circumstances does the human element remain indispensable, and why?”

At the introduction of the assembly line: “…[Henry] Ford was forced to double the daily wage of his workers to keep the line staffed…[resulting in] workers [who] were now anxious to keep their jobs…[Ford] was able to double, and then triple, the rate at which cars were assembled by simply speeding up the conveyors. By doing so he destroyed his competitors, and thereby destroyed the possibility of an alternative way of working…Here the concept of wages as compensation achieves its fullest meaning, and its central place in modern economy.”

“The habituation of workers to the assembly line was this perhaps made easier by another innovation of the early twenties century: consumer debt….through the installment plan previously unthinkable acquisitions became thinkable, and more than thinkable: it became normal to carry debt…The early twentieth century saw the moral legitimization of spending.”

“It is a view that is familiar to most of us from kindergarden: creativity is a mysterious capacity that lies in each of us and merely needs to be “unleashed”…The truth, of course, is that creativity is a byproduct of mastery of the sort that is cultivated through long practice.”

“There seems to be an ideology of freedom at the heart of consumerist material culture; a promise to disburden us of mental and bodily involvement with our own stuff so we can purse ends we have freely chosen. Yet this disburdening gives us fewer occasions for the experience of direct responsibility.”

“At an earlier stage of technological process, I am sure that contending with a motorcycle, like contending with the farm animals that likely inhabited the same barn as the motorcycle, helped along the process of becoming an adult. When your shin gets kicked, whether by a mule or a kickstarter, you get schooled.”

“It is a rare person who is naturally inclined to sit still for sixteen years in school, and then indefinitely at work…”

“Scrawled above the dingy parts counter at Donsco was a slogan: “Speed costs. How fast do you want to spend?”"

“The sheer perversity of making a VW go fast attracts a different human type than the type who is attracted to cars that are supposed to go fast.”

On interpretation of the world/reality: “We have an idea of the thing, that, in a sense, pre-constitues the thing for us, prior to sensual experience…Good art shows us how difficult it is to be objective by showing us how differently the world looks to an objective vision.”

“The truth does not reveal itself to idle spectators.”

“To be a good mechanic you have to be constantly attentive to the possibility that you may be mistaken. This is an ethical virtue.”

“…there are forces on the consumption side [of material culture] that parallel those we have seen on the production side. On all sides, we see fewer occasions for the exercise of judgement…the necessity of such judgement calls forth human excellence.”

“If occasions for the exercise of judgement are diminished, the moral-cognitive virtue of attentiveness will atrophy…We have to wonder, then, whether degraded work entails not just dumbing down but also a certain unintended moral reeducation.”

“When the point of education becomes the production of credentials rather than the cultivation of knowledge, it forfeits the motive recognized by Aristotle: “All human beings by nature desire to know.” Students become intellectually disengaged.”

“There is pride in accomplishment in the performance of whole tasks that can be held in the mind all at once, and contemplated as a whole once finished. In most work that transpires in large organizations, one’s work is meaningless taken by itself.”