On The Road Again, Again

I'm getting ready to leave on my next extended journey. I'm not sure what to call it...maybe World Journey 2.0? It's not the second extended journey I've taken, but it is the second one in which I am planning to completely go around the world, and take more than a year. But who knows what will happen. On the last one, I had planned to travel for about a year, but I was a year and several months in with no end planned. However, the journey got cut short because my father died, and I wanted to make it back for his memorial, even though it was difficult to return from the other side of the Earth. But, you gotta do what you gotta do, so come back I did. I returned from Belfast, Northern Ireland, flying to Newburgh, New York, where I spent the night, and then the next day, I took a flight from Newburgh to Detroit, Michigan. I bought a used car in Detroit (mostly because there were no good public transportation alternatives to rural areas in Michigan), and worked my way down from my father's memorial in Midland, Michigan to Austin over a few months. I stayed in a wonderful hostel in Detroit, the Hostel Detroit, on both my way up to Midland and on the way back.

Detroit is a great town that is coming back with a vengeance from complete calamity, and it has to be one of the coolest places I have visited in the world. The re-growth of the city is phenomenal, and though there are vast empty spaces where dilapidated structures have been bulldozed, they have been filled with stuff like urban farms, improptu performance spaces, and the likes. I went to the Henry Ford museum in Dearborn with a retired French automotive worker who was really into it. There was a plethora of fantastic food around Detroit, especially Arabic food, since there are a bunch of Arabic people who live in the area. Also, there was some really good Polish food. I took the People Mover, which is a monorail that doesn't really go much of anywhere, but it's an interesting novelty that circles the downtown.

I met up with some crazy soldiers with Canadian military intelligence staying at the hostel, and they led an expedition of people from the hostel to break into an enormous abandoned insane asylum just outside Detroit. I was really impressed with the briefing that one of the soldiers gave us before we entered the complex. It covered most eventualities that we might encounter in the abandoned structures, and was very comprehensive and informative. He had just come back from Aleppo, where he had been part of a team that had secured neighborhoods house by house, and the stories he had to tell about that were amazing. I told him I was thinking about going to Aleppo, and he cut me off contemptuously, and said, “Dude, don't go to Aleppo.” I told him that made me want to go even more, and he told me that I'd probably be fine if I went, but huge numbers of people would be risking their life to keep me safe. Food for thought, but who knows, I still might go.

On the way south, I stopped in Indianapolis for a couple of days, since I had never been there, and it was a convenient place to stop. Indianapolis didn't really impress me as being a spectacular tourist destination, but it was a decent place to hang out and chill for a bit. The hostel I stayed at there, the Indy Hostel, was a cool place to stay and had some really nice folks working there and staying there.

My friend Dave was kind enough to let me stay with him in Fulton, Missouri for a little over a month on the way back to Austin. We played and recorded some music, and it gave me a little respite from my travels. Also, I got to travel all around the state and to some areas in some neighboring states. While I was in Fulton, I got to see the total eclipse, as Fulton was in the path of totality. There was a big gathering place in the middle of town where a whole bunch of people hung out to watch the eclipse, and right as it went into totality, somebody played “Dark Side Of The Moon”. My phone camera was way too lame to get good pics of the eclipse, but Dave and his mom (who also visited for a while) got some great pics.

After my stay in Missouri, I headed back to Austin, and got back in September of 2017. While I was back, I took care of some details that needed attention at some point. Since I had the car, I was able to drive rideshare for several months once I got to Austin to make some money to get back on the road, often working long hours, sometimes up to 20 hours a day. Also I was able to get some medical attention for some issues; I could have maybe done some of that stuff abroad, but the language barrier in some countries and the brevity of some of my stays prevented me from investigating all my options.

So here I am, getting ready to leave again in a couple of days. I went through the same packing process that I did last time I traveled around the world. I had a huge pile of stuff, and I had to cull it down to what would fit in my backpack. Then I had to cull the backpack a few times also, because it was packed to the brim, and I needed more space so the zippers would close. Now the zippers are closing, and it's still more full than I would like, but I feel like I have cut to the bone. But you need a good amount of stuff if you travel long-term. I still may cull some more, though. If I don't, I'll probably end up getting another backpack to wear on the front, which I REALLY don't want to do. Because I'll need more room for stuff like food and medical supplies that I acquire on the way (you really need a lot of food unless you just eat out all the time, but even if you mostly eat out, you still need some for when you get stranded in the middle of nowhere). I'm not bringing food at the outset, except for a few snack bars. It's a big pain when you cross borders and you have to declare whatever food each country requires you to declare, and then you have to be searched and possibly surrender some items. I prefer to keep that to a minimum. This time, I am bringing an REI 85 liter Grand Tour backpack and leaving my Osprey Farpoint 70 behind. The Grand Tour supposedly has 15 more liters of capacity, but I'm skeptical; it doesn't seem bigger. Both of them have attached removable day packs, but the Osprey's day pack zips in, whereby the Grand Tour's day pack drops into a pouch and straps in. This seems more versatile, as I can maybe drop other stuff into the pouch if the day pack is separate.

Though I've been home, I'm still living the traveling lifestyle, and still basically living out of a backpack. I've let extended family stay at my place, and there is really no room for me in the house, so I've been living in a tent in the backyard for the last six months. I've been fairly comfortable doing that, but there have been some minor challenges due to weather issues. I tried to go through some of my boxed up stuff to get some items I might need, but was only partially successful, because my boxes were not marked and arranged as well as I could have done, and there was too much to go through.  Plus, every time I move the boxes, they degrade, and so after one go-through, I decided not to do it again, because I'll have a bunch of collapsed boxes in storage.  Oh, well, live and learn.  Note to self: next time put all the stuff I might need at the top of the pile of boxes and mark it all better.

I'll be starting in London, UK, and then a few weeks later, I'll be flying from Edinburgh, Scotland to Porto, Portugal, and right now I don't have more planned out than that. But this time I would like to hit Africa and South America, and go to a bunch of places I didn't visit on my last trip, and maybe visit some repeat destinations. You might think it's all fun and games, but it's not always great, sometimes it's a real slog.

My first day in London is going to be relatively horrible.  I'll be leaving Austin in late afternoon, and flying all night in an uncomfortable airplane seat trying to sleep, which I hate. I don't have a reserved seat (because it costs extra) and may be in the middle seat or whatever the airline chooses. I'll arrive at Gatwick Airport at seven in the morning, probably not having slept all night and feeling highly uncomfortable, and will have to go through whatever immigration and customs decide to subject me to in that state.  But I won't be able to check in to my hostel until about two in the afternoon. Groan. Maybe I'll be able to sleep at the airport for a bit, maybe not. Then I'll spend the next two days recovering from jetlag.

Traveling long-term is a much different animal than going on a vacation. Though, I have to say, the highs definitely outweigh the lows. But I constantly have to plan out my next few days or weeks, and then when I get a little weary, I will stay somewhere for a while if I can. Sometimes I can't really stop anywhere too long for a variety of reasons, and I'll have to wait quite a while before I can find a place to chill. Sometimes my trip is shaped by bureaucratic requirements that are beyond my control. Sometimes it changes because facts on the ground change, or because I have some whim to see something I hadn't planned to see. All in all, I'm hoping for a really rewarding experience over the next year or two or three (or maybe longer?). But there is a small chance that some persistent issues back home will force me to return earlier than expected. Here's hoping that doesn't happen.