Gifted Slacker

I’ve really lost track of what happened this month. It seems like everything in my life sped up sometime toward the end of this month.

Most of the things that I vividly remember aren’t things I’m willing to recount in public.

Basically, all I’ve got for you all is that I went contra dancing, turned 25, and did a lot of other stuff.

Note: I meant to post this long ago. I’m not sure why it didn’t take.

The rest of the YIR posts are going to have to wait. I’m still too close to the things that have happened from May through August to actually write about them. If I were willing to dig around for hours and hours I might be able to come up with the posts, but it’s not worth it. Let’s just say that life has been quite interesting lately.

Stay tuned, they rest are coming. I promise.

At least you can look forward to posts from across the pond, starting sometime after Monday.

On Saturday March 31st I started my cross-country bike trip. It was fairly uneventful until the weather started to get really cold the following week. The night of April 4th I stayed at a hostel in Charlottesville, VA, more than 200 miles from where the trip started. I planned to leave the following day and stay with the Cookie Lady the following night, but the forecast said snow, and, well, waking up at 5 a.m. for a 60+ mile ride through sub-freezing temperatures wasn’t in my game plan (I had no suitable clothing for temps that low).

The outlook was bleak for the next week or so, so I called my dad and he agreed to come pick me up.I planned to hole up with my parents for a week or two until the weather became more reliably non-sucky. Plus, there was a girl I wanted to see about.

After a few days of being home I hear from this girl again, she’s asking about how my trip is going, small-talk, that sort of thing. A few exchanges later we decide to go visit the zoo on April 13th.

Friday the 13th came, and I got in the car to go to the zoo. We were going to meet somewhere near the front of the zoo at about 10:30 am. I was very new to the area at that point and got completely lost on my way. It was after 11:30 when I finally met up with the girl. I felt like such an asshole for being late, but at the day’s end I felt things had gone pretty well.

The rest of April is kind of a blur. I went to Clemson one weekend to visit my brother, Contra danced for the first time, and spent some time in Baltimore. I also stressed about trying to figure out if/when I wanted to restart my bike trip, or if I just wanted to pursue work, or some other adventure.

(I’m a really shit storyteller. My stories don’t have any flow or narrative arc, or anything resembling good. At least my spelling isn’t too bad.)

March was an entirely different sack of squirrels than January and February.

I spent very little money in the first two months of the year. In March I spent about $2,500 on a bike and other assorted gear.

The expense wasn’t too big of a problem. I would save a ton roughing it. Stealth camping is free, and cyclist rates at most campgrounds are less than $15. The biggest drain on my pocket would be food. On a long distance cycling tour conventional wisdom says that you’ll need somewhere around twice your normal amount of calories. (I usually have to eat 3,500-4,500 calories to maintain weight.) That averages out to $30-$40 per day on food and a place to sleep, if you stick to self-prepared, healthy, calorie-dense food with an occasional splurge on a diner-type meal.

After crunching the numbers it became obvious that I could either starve to death on a 9-month round-the-globe trek, or I could cycle across the United States and maybe have enough money to start a new life on the west coast. I settled on the option that didn’t end with me dead in the middle of some desert in Australia.

So across the USA I planned to go. I bought maps and read dozens of trip logs. Launch date: March 31st!

About a week before I left I got a message from a woman on a dating site. She was fascinating, smart, funny, and absolutely gorgeous.

Did it make sense to meet her before I left? I was going to be gone for three months, if not forever. It definitely wasn’t optimal but, still, I was curious.

The night before I left, it turned out that we were planning to be in the same place at the same time. In the end my plans changed and I didn’t get to meet her that night. It was probably a good thing, too. I would have been so nervous between that and starting my trip in the morning it wouldn’t have been a good situation.

The morning of the 31st rolled around and off I went, down to Yorktown, VA to start my trek.

It’s January. I’m in a killer funk.

The holidays have passed, I’m recently graduated, and all of my interesting job prospects are falling through. Worst of all, I’m living with my parents. Quitting that cushy programming gig so I could hang around in a coffee shop is starting to feel like a bad decision.

What am I going to do now?

I’ve got some money saved. Perhaps I could travel. Sow my wild oats, and all that jazz. No, I can’t afford to go to all the places I dream of visiting.

Maybe I should start a business. I’ve got hundreds of ideas, some of them aren’t bad, either! No. No, that sounds too much like work.

I know, I’ll wallow in a low-grade depression for two months. Yeah, that’s a great idea. That’s what I’ll do!

So that’s what I did. Mostly.

During January and February my routine was to wake up, hit the gym, and then kill the rest of the day. Exciting, I tell you.

There were a couple highlights. I went on a few dateish type things with a roller-derby girl, which mostly involved hanging out at roller-derby events. That was pretty neat but I didn’t fit in due to my lack of tattoos, an all black wardrobe, and a healthy dose of psychopathic rage. It was a strange and enlightening experience. . .

In February I started kicking around the idea of a long-distance trek, either by bike or on foot. Cheap and exciting. This was definitely the ticket.

I ended up deciding on an around the world bike ride. I did some preliminary planning but basically didn’t get a jump on things until March.

That’s when things really took off.