San Diego, USA
The Beginning
November 15, 2007
Lighten up while you still can
Don't even try to understand
Just find a place to make your stand
And take it easy
- The Eagles
As wildfires ravaged the southern California countryside forcing people to abandon their homes and their lives I too prepared to abandon mine. At the time the irony of the coincidence was completely lost on me. Of course, my action was by choice, a choice precipitated from years of unmotivated efforts towards finishing my Ph.D. in engineering. After five years of unrewarding research work resulting in a few personally unfulfilling yet professionally impressive scientific publications that undoubtedly function as sedatives for those (un)lucky enough to read them, I was finally free.
Overall I was lucky enough to have been provided with a steady paycheck for my unfruitful labors and unlucky enough to be provided with a steady stream of unfruitful labors. With the same success rate as a state lottery I was able to author two scientific publications offering meager contributions to the scientific community. A good accomplishment but still nowhere near those of many of my compatriots. But in the end, that mattered little as I was still receiving the same degree as those who had been vastly more successful. Had I had aspirations for a teaching job at a prestigious university or highly regarded and competitive company this may have impacted me, but at the moment this was not a concern of mine.
Having graduated, or infinitely less glamorously, having turned in my formal paperwork with the most valuable five signatures in the history of mankind I was perched on the doorstep of absolute freedom. I wouldn’t actually be awarded my degree until the following June as they only hold the actual ceremony once a year but for me that was inconsequential and literally just a formality. I was already gone.
Everyone else I worked with had already taken or lined up jobs at prominent companies, eager for professional advancement. I had always been somewhat of the black sheep and this was turning into the ultimate embodiment of that. I had not even entertained the thought of looking for jobs. After a solid decade of schooling I was intellectually spent. I was completely uninterested in diving into that world; the driven and competitive world of corporate America, the domain of two weeks of vacation, middle management, and pointless inefficient meetings; in other words, a form of incarceration. I knew that rosy picture would be waiting for me, whenever I wanted to step into it. I, however, had entirely different plans.
Where I was going was south, as far south as I could go. I had thumbed through atlases and maps and looked through volumes of travel guide books. I was motivated to travel overland as that is the mode of travel that I have always felt to be the most interesting and rewarding, too much is missed flying at high altitudes. This necessitated large contiguous areas that could be traversed, eliminating many small isolated areas. The remaining regions had been eliminated, mostly for reasons of cost. Whereas a generation ago the post-collegiate European trip had become a rite of passage, these days with the dollar declining and the country hanging precipitously on the economic cliff, the money I had saved simply wouldn’t last in Western Europe, Scandinavia, or Russia. Due to difficulties with getting visas and general political instability I was able to narrow the list to two areas, South America and East Asia. The other interesting wrinkle was the amount of frequent flyer miles I had accumulated were substantial enough to either get me to Asia for free or to transport me to South America and back for free. Considering the substantial arrival and departure costs and the fact that I had already seen bits and pieces of East Asia, this secured my decision to roam around South America.
With the destination picked I only had a few minor things to attend to. If you’ve never sold almost all of your possessions and pared your collection of items down to a single carload, you will never realize how much shit you actually accumulate over the course of everyday life. And most of it is just that, shit. Unnecessary shit. For me, it was very liberating to get rid of it all. The firesale also provided a bit of money to finance my upcoming trip. I cleaned out my office where I had spent most of my days for the last five years, filling the recycling bin with a small forest preserve of paper, and turned in my keys. On my way home I drove up to the top of the aptly named Mt. Soledad. The smoke from the wildfires and the fading sun combined to paint the sky a vivid blend of reds and purples, the cloud of colors settling like a curtain over the city. Those days every hour brought fresh news of the advancing wildfires and a new set of mandatory home evacuations and dismal pictures of burned out homes and shattered lives. In so many ways I was glad to be leaving all of that behind. And hopefully all of my possessions that I donated would find their way to people that had a use for them. I’m sure it didn’t actually turn out that way but at least I would like to think it did.
The plan was to store my car and few meager possessions and permit them to collect dust at my parent’s house in North Carolina. So, having consolidated everything I now owned into my car I started driving across the country, the same trip I had made five years earlier on my way out to graduate school from New York. Fast forwarding five years, I was driving the same car and transporting many of the same things but with a markedly different outlook.
Three thousand miles to go and I was already gone.